Editing Delbarton, West Virginia (section)

==History==

Delbarton was [[incorporation (municipal government)|incorporated]] September 6, 1946, by the Mingo County [[Circuit Court]].

The name Delbarton comes from the [[New Jersey]] country estate of Luther Kountze, a [[Wall Street]] financier and part owner of the United Thacker Land Company, a large coal mining company.  Currently a [[Catholic]] high school with the same moniker, the Delbarton School, is located on this site. The estate and town and school all derive their name from a portmanteau of syllables in the names of Kountze's three children (DELancey, BARclay and LivingsTON).<ref name=lkjh>{{cite web |url= https://blueridgecountry.com/archive/hatfields-mccoys-revisited-blog/winners-and-losers-feudists-and-financiers/|title= Hatfields & McCoys Revisited Part 7 |first=Ryan |last= Hardesty |work= BlueRidge Country Magazine |date= December 10, 2014 | access-date=April 23, 2020 }}</ref>

Prior to being incorporated as a town, Delbarton was a [[coal camp]] built and owned by the Thacker company.  Thacker needed such camps; soon after, in 1909, acting for the company, Luther Kountze arranged the purchase of thousands of acres in the area from Jane Hatfield, a woman widowed in 1882 by the murder of her husband, Ellison Hatfield in the famed [[Hatfield-McCoy Feud]].  Jane required money for herself and her children and sold cheaply, unaware of the fantastic mineral wealth she was losing out on.  After this acquisition of land, Delbarton was created for the needed miners who were recruited and brought in to work the soon to be opened coal mines.<ref name="lkjh"/>

The town is located in the heart of the richest coal area of the state, the Williamson Coalfield.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.coalcampusa.com/sowv/index.html |title= Southern West Virginia Coalfields |first= Chris |last= Della Mea |work= Coal Camps USA |year= 2001–2020 |access-date= April 23, 2020 |archive-date= July 11, 2020 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200711182107/http://www.coalcampusa.com/sowv/index.html |url-status= dead }}</ref>

Poverty is endemic in the town of Delbarton, as it is in Mingo County where it is located.  [[US Census Bureau]] estimates as of 2018 put the residents living below the poverty line percentages at 36.5% for Delbarton and 28.7% for Mingo County. These rates compare to 17.8% for West Virginia and 15% for the USA overall.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US5420980-delbarton-wv/ |title= Delbarton West Virginia - Profile |publisher= Census Reporter |year= 2018 | access-date=April 23, 2020 }}</ref> Economists attribute the most significant cause of this high level of poverty to the drastic decline in the number of jobs in the local coal mining industry. The loss of such employment which has been going on for several decades is blamed on two factors: the reduction in the amount of coal being extracted in the area and the ever increasing use of less labor intensive removal methods for what coal is still mined.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060038554 |title= COAL: Killing in 'Bloody Mingo' Casts Shadow Across Appalachia |first=Dylan |last= Brown |work= E&E News |date= June 9, 2016 | access-date=April 23, 2020 }}</ref>

Some commercial buildings in town, no longer needed for their original purposes of retail or mining administration, are now used to cater to the growing tourist industry.