The First Regiment (West) Virginia Infantry Volunteers

The First Regiment (West) Virginia Infantry Volunteers was organized in the counties that would become the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia and in Southeastern Ohio in May, 1861. It was mustered into the service for the period of three months.  Shown below is the organization of the ten companies, their commanders and the date each was mustered into service:

Company    - Commander, Date of Muster, Place of Muster

Company A - Captain AH Britt, May 10, Wheeling

Company B - Captain E. W.  Stephens, May 11, Wheeling

Company C - Captain I. N.  Fordyce, May 15, Wheeling

Company D - Captain M. Stokeley, May 15, Steubenville, OH

Company E - Captain Geo. C. Trimble, May 16, Wheeling

Company F - Captain T. C.  Parke, May 17, Wellsburg

Company G - Captain James Kuhn, May 18, Wellsburg

Company H - Captain James F. Donnelly,  May 21, Marshall County

Company I - Captain B. W. Chapman, May 21, Hancock County

Company K - Captain G. W. Robinson, May 23, Wheeling

               B.F. Kelley (LOC)

     When the regiment was complete, former Wheeling resident Benjamin Franklin Kelley, who was living in Philadelphia at the time, was assigned to command the unit.  Regimental assignments included Henry B. Hubbard, of Wheeling, as appointed lieutenant-colonel, Isaac H. Duval, of Wellsburg, as major, John B. Lukens, of Wheeling, as adjutant, Isaac M. Pumphrey as quartermaster and Dr. Joseph Thoburn as surgeon.  This regiment was the first to be organized on southern “soil” for defense of the Union. 

     The companies camped in the Fairgrounds near the Back-River Bridge on Wheeling Island. This camp would become known as Camp Carlisle. The citizens of Wheeling supplied many of the men with blankets and clothes.  Arms, however were still needed. Application for these arms was made to the Secretary of War Simon Cameron.  However, due to divided loyalties, it was not thought safe to send arms directly to Wheeling.   Through the office of Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts Unionists, W. H. Brothers and Campbell Tarr received the arms, which were then shipped by steamboat to Wheeling where they were supplied to the regiment.  

     Upon receiving orders for a movement, Colonel Kelley requested transportation by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He was flabbergasted by the response.  The request was refused.  The B & O wished to remain neutral and would not carry troops or ammunition for either side. Colonel Kelley tersely replied to the agent:

“This is war. Railroad companies cannot be their own masters. They are to serve the government that guarantees to them possession and protection for their property. You have a train of cars in the depot tomorrow morning at four o’clock or I will place you in prison and take possession of your railroad by military authority.”

     The cars were at the depot the next morning.  The B&O remained faithful to the Union for the remainder of the war.

     On May 27, 1861, the 1st left Camp Carlisle, on Wheeling Island and proceeded on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad toward Mannington as General McClelland had received word that bridges on the B&O in western Virginia had been burned the previous night.  From there the regiment marched to Grafton and was joined by regiments from Ohio (14^th and 16^th Ohio Volunteers) and Indiana (6^th, 7^th, and 9^th Indiana Volunteers).

     Receiving intelligence that the Federals were approaching, Colonel George Porterfield, commanding the Confederate forces in Grafton (a pro-Union town) withdrew to Philippi (a secessionist town).  On June 2, 1861 the Federal forces, under General Kelley, attacked and completely routed the Confederates in this first land battle of the Civil War. The Confederates beat it out of town so fast that the battle came to be known as The Philippi Races.  During the engagement, Colonel Kelley was shot in the chest, a wound at first thought to be mortal.  Kelly recovered and was promoted to Brigadier General.  He would go on the command the Department of West Virginia.

     After the Battle of Philippi, the regiment was separated. Five companies advanced to Laurel Hill and served in the battles at Rich Mountain and Corrick’s Ford under General George B. McClellan.  Company G was left as a guard at Philippi.  In July and August, the regiment was scattered throughout the country.  Part of the regiment guarded the bridges between Fairmont and the Cheat River from Confederate sympathizers.  Companies A, D, and F moved east to intercept defeated rebels from Cheat Mountain.  Yet another detachment was with Colonel Tyler in the campaign against General Wise, in the Kanawha Valley.

     At the end of July, the 1^st controlled Beverly and Sutton.  From this point, until August 19, the regiment’s only activities were scouting for bushwhackers and Confederate sympathizers.  On August 19, 1861, the regiment received orders to return to Wheeling.  When the regiment arrived in Wheeling on August 21 it received “the grandest reception extended to ANY body of men by the people of Wheeling.  On August 27 and 28, the three months men were mustered out of service.  The service of these men was vital to the Union cause.  Except for times it was damaged by the enemy, the B&O was able to remain open and throughout the war was under Union control.  In addition, enemy lines had been pushed far away from the Ohio Valley. Now Western Virginia was under Union control.  The birth of a new state was near.

     Two days later, the regiment was reorganized for three years’ service under command of Colonel Joseph Thoburn of Wheeling, who was Surgeon of the regiment in the three months service. Many of the three months men re-enlisted for this year years’ service.

 

Martin Robison Delaney

   

Martin Robison Delaney 

 Martin Robison Delany, the youngest of five children was born on May 6, 1812 in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia). His mother Patti, a seamstress, was a free born African and his father Samuel was a slave, working as a carpenter.  Martin’s mother wanted to give her children every advantage, so she started teaching them how to read (illegal under Virginia law at the time). When word of her teaching got out, Patti moved the family to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania so she could continue educating her children.  Martin’s father, still a slave could not join them.  Once he was able to buy his freedom, he joined them the following year.

     In 1831, when Martin turned nineteen, he travelled to Pittsburgh (walking the 160 miles) to enroll in the Bethel Church school for blacks and Jefferson College where he studied Latin, Greek, and the classics.  He also apprenticed under Dr. Andrew McDowell, becoming his medical assistant.  Delany soon became a part of the Underground Railroad and in 1843, he established The Mystery, an abolitionist newspaper.  The Mystery was the first black newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains.

     Famed abolitionist Frederick Douglas came calling in 1847 and convinced Delany to become co-editor of his newspaper The North Star. Although the two men would become lifelong friends, they were, at times, bitter rivals. The partnership lasted a mere 18 months before each went his separate way.  Their ideas began to become diametrically opposed.  Douglas was preaching patience and integration for freed blacks and the continuation of the anti-slavery battle of the abolitionists.  Delany, however, preached emigration.  He believed the only way that blacks could achieve equality was by emigrating to Central America, and later to Africa.  These feelings were made clear in 1852 when he published his manifesto:  The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered.

     Soon after parting ways with Douglas, Delany became one of the first blacks, along with two other men, to enroll in Harvard Medical School at the invitation of Dean Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. All three men were dismissed from the school a few weeks later because of protests filed by many white students.

     During an earlier journey down the Mississippi, Delany witnessed, firsthand, the plight of blacks in the south.  Upon returning, Delany married Catherine Richards. The couple would have eleven children. His experiences during the southern trip inspired him to write a novel, Blake, or the Huts of America.  Soon thereafter in 1856, Delany moved his family to Canada.  In 1858, he aided John Brown during the Chatham Convention. With his novel now complete, he saw its publication. First by Anglo-African Magazine in 1859 followed by the Weekly Anglo-African in 1861 and 1862.  Both magazines published the novel in serial form (it was not published in complete book form until 1970). Many thought the novel to be a response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  It was, in fact, a response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Dred Scott decision of 1857. It tells the story of an escaped slave (Blake) who plans a slave insurrection while traveling through the south. It was quite a contrast to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

     Delany returned to the United States at the onset of hostilities. He, along with many others, proposed that blacks be recruited for service in the Union Army. Soon after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, Massachusetts Governor John Andrew, himself an abolitionist, “issued the Civil War’s first call for black soldiers.”   Delany began his recruiting efforts.  In fact, one of his sons, Toussaint L’Ouverture Delany enlisted in the 54^th Massachusetts regiment. The 1989 movie “Glory”, starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman, told the story of this unit.  Toward the end of the Civil War, in 1865, Delany was commissioned a Major 104th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, becoming the first black officer to receive a field command.

     Following the war, Delany was assigned to the Freedman’s Bureau in South Carolina.  He also entered the field of politics.  He narrowly lost an election for Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, where he later served as a judge.  In 1880, he moved to Wilberforce Ohio where his wife had been working as a seamstress. He died there of tuberculosis on January 24, 1885.  Unfortunately, his private papers, given to Wilberforce University, were destroyed in a tragic fire.