Sistersville and Tyler County

By Luke N. Peters

In 1802, Charles Wells brought his family of 22 children down the Ohio River to a point later known as Wells Landing. With its ferryboat, tannery, blacksmiths, lumber, and flour mills, the village became a stop for river traffic and a commercial center where the scattered farming population would sell their wares. When Charles Wells died in 1815, he willed part of his estate to two daughters, Delilah Wells Grier and Sarah Wells McCoy, which they plotted and named Sistersville. In 1816, two years after Tyler County was formed, Middlebourne was chosen as the county seat. When the railroad reached Tyler County in 1884, its quiet communities enjoyed moderate prosperity; however, when Joshua Russell struck oil at the Polecat well in 1891, nearly 15,000 people rushed into the Sistersville area to find their fortunes. Discover the story of the oil boom with its saloons, hotels, opera houses, theaters, mansions, industries, and churches as told in detail through photographs from local collectionsand museums.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439635292

Luke N. Peters

Author Luke N. Peters grew up in Tyler County on tales of Victorian Sistersville and his grandfather�s arrival in the area as a peddler on the heels of the oil boom. Since graduating from Tyler County schools, Peters earned degrees from Concord College and Ohio University and currently works in Appalachian community development. He will always call Sistersville home.

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INTRODUCTION

The city of Sistersville, West Virginia, located about midway along the length of the Ohio River called the Long Reach, enjoys one of the most beautiful natural settings in the Ohio River Valley. All of Tyler County, in fact, even as it was originally organized as a portion of Ohio County, Virginia, has been noted for lush rolling hills, fertile valleys, forests rich with game, peaceful meandering creeks and streams, and a great concentration of sandy shaded islands along the Ohio River. In 1755, George Washington, then a young surveyor, remarked in his journal that he had camped about midway on the western bank of the Long Reach across from present-day Sistersville. The members of the Lewis and Clark expedition passed through on September 11, 1803, with Meriwether Lewis noting a great many squirrels seen swimming the river, well fed from impressive hickory and walnut trees lining the banks. Later on, ornithologist Alexander Wilson wrote of snowy owls along the river, and James Audubon took in the wealth of nature here.

The natural beauty of Tyler County, fully intact if not enhanced by the changing world around it, remains a joy to residents and visitors alike. However, Sistersville and Tyler County’s high point in the trajectory of history was determined by something dark and crude far below the rolling hills. The retreat of prehistoric life, the glacial pressures, and the sands of time determined the pinnacle of worldly importance for Tyler County. When the Sistersville oil field, invisible to the world for so many years, was coaxed to the surface in 1891, Sistersville became the oil capital of the world. The story told through the photographs shared here give a sense of the huge changes experienced by a tiny river town injected with thousands of souls bent on building their fortune from the black gold that would spew from Tyler County’s thousands of oil wells.

The Ohio River is forever entwined with the history of Sistersville, and it brought the first settler of prominence to the area in 1802. Charles Wells, his second wife, Elizabeth Prather, and many of his 22 children landed their flatboat on a sandy bottom south of Sistersville where he had previously surveyed 200 acres. He was a native of Maryland, where he was born April 6, 1745, and in 1764 married his first wife, the wealthy Michal Owings, who died in 1783 after giving birth to their 10th child. When in his 40s, he immigrated to Bethany, Brooke County, and in 1793, he was a member of the Legislature of Virginia. The Wellses were prolific in general and had already founded Wellsville and Wellsburg to the north. He brought with him the machinery for a horse mill to run for the family and as a business, building it along with the first Wells residence about a mile below where the town now stands. Other early settlers followed, including R. Grier, who opened the first local store in the Wells home; William and Joshua Russell, whose descendant would drill the Pole Cat Well, and James Jolly, who started a ferry across the Ohio.

Charles Wells had 400 acres of land north and south of Wells Landing, as the river town was known, and cleared and cultivated much of it as a farm until he died on his birthday in 1815. His will was the first recorded in Tyler County, created by an act of the Virginia General Assembly on December 16, 1814, from parts of Ohio County. The county was named in honor of John Tyler (1747–1813) from James City, Virginia, who had been a lawyer, judge of the admiralty in 1776, and a member and speaker of the Virginia General Assembly (1778–1788) and who was appointed by Pres. James Madison judge of the U.S. District Court for Virginia in 1811. His son, John Tyler, was the 10th president of the United States.

In his will, Charles Wells specified the following:

To my daughter Sarah Wells I give and bequeath a part of the tract of land I purchased from James Caldwell; beginning at the mouth of Whittens Run and running with the wagon road now leading to the Jug Handle Mill to the upper end of the Tanyard Lot, thence up the Run to the back line, thence with said line so far that a due west line come to the corner of the fence as it now stands that divides Simon Seamons and Lemual Scott lots; thence with the meanders of said fence to the River bank; thence with said river bank to the place of beginning be the same more or less; to her and her assigns forever. Also one half of a Tract of Land I located the 9th of May last in Ohio County Land Office, adjoining lands of the heirs-of John Williamson deceased; containing Four Hundred Acres; to her and her heirs or assigns forever.—and—To my daughter Delilah Wells I give and bequeath all the residue or upper part of the aforesaid tract of Land purchased from James Caldwell whereon Samuel Scott now lives: also the one half of the aforesaid Tract I located the 9th of May last; to be divided by a straight line from the River bank between her and her sister Sarah, and her to have the lower part adjoining her other land. The two Tracts to be hers and her heirs or assigns forever.

The line that divided the sisters’ possessions is now Diamond Street. In 1815, the two laid out the town and, though it had been referred to as Ziggleton, called it Sistersville because of their joint proprietorship. The plat of the original town contained 96 lots on four streets running back from the river and four running parallel with it. These were named in this order from the river back: Water, Main, Wells, and Brown Betty Streets. The cross streets beginning at the lower end of the town were Catherine, Charles, Diamond, and Elizabeth Streets. Hill and Virginia Streets were subsequently added to the north end of town. The Wells sisters intended for Sistersville to be the county seat, so at the crossing of Main and Diamond Streets, a diamond-shaped spot was laid out around which were to cluster the courthouse, jail, whipping post, and offices of the lawyers. The first court for the county was held