Editing Raleigh County, West Virginia (section)

==History==
Raleigh County and the surrounding area have long been home to many indigenous peoples. Early encounters describe the land as being the ancestral home of the [[Catawban languages|Catawba]]-speaking [[Moneton]] people, who referred to the surrounding area as "okahok amai", and were allies of the [[Monacan people]].<ref>{{Cite thesis |last=Emrick |first=Isaac J. |title=Maopewa iati bi: Takai Tonqyayun Monyton "To abandon so beautiful a Dwelling": Indians in the Kanawha-New River Valley, 1500-1755 |date=2015 |degree=PhD dissertation |publisher=West Virginia University |url=https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/5543/ |doi=10.33915/etd.5543 |doi-access=free}}</ref> The Moneton's [[Catawban languages|Catawba]] speaking neighbors to the south, the [[Tutelo]], (a tribe since absorbed into the [[Cayuga Nation]]<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Vest |first=Jay Hansford C. |year=2005 |title=An Odyssey among the Iroquois: A History of Tutelo Relations in New York |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4138803 |journal=American Indian Quarterly |volume=29 |issue=1/2 |pages=124–155 |doi=10.1353/aiq.2005.0072 |jstor=4138803 |s2cid=201754013}}</ref>) may have absorbed surviving Moneton communities, and claim the area as ancestral lands. Conflicts with European settlers resulted in various displaced Indian tribes settling in West Virginia, where they were known at ''Mingo'', meaning "remote affiliates of the Iroquois Confederacy".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jennings |first=Francis |date=December 1993 |title=A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774. By Michael N. McConnell. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Xiv, 357 pp. $40.00, ISBN 0-80323142-3.) |url=https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/80/3/1056/697282 |journal=Journal of American History |volume=80 |issue=3 |pages=1056 |doi=10.2307/2080440 |jstor=2080440}}</ref>

Raleigh County was formed on January 23, 1850, from portions of [[Fayette County, West Virginia|Fayette County]], then a part of Virginia. [[Alfred Beckley]] (1802–88) said that he named the county for Sir [[Walter Raleigh]] (1552–1618), the "enterprising and far-seeing patron of the earliest attempts to colonize our old Mother State of Virginia".<ref>Wood, Jim. ''Raleigh County: West Virginia, p. 91'' (1994). BJW Printing & Office Supplies, Beckley WV</ref>

Raleigh was one of fifty Virginia Counties that were admitted to the Union as the state of West Virginia on June 20, 1863. Later that year, the counties were divided into [[civil township]]s, with the intention of encouraging local government. This proved impractical in the heavily rural state, and in 1872 the townships were converted into [[minor civil division|magisterial districts]].<ref>Otis K. Rice & Stephen W. Brown, ''West Virginia: A History'', 2nd ed., University Press of Kentucky, Lexington (1993), p. 240.</ref>  Raleigh County was initially divided into six townships: Clear Fork, Marsh Fork, Richman, Shady Spring, Town, and Trap Hill. These became magisterial districts in 1872, and the same year a seventh district, Slab Fork, was created from land that had previously belonged to [[Wyoming County, West Virginia|Wyoming County]]. These remained largely unchanged over the next century, but in the 1970s the seven historic magisterial districts were consolidated into three new districts: District 1, District 2, and District 3.<ref>[[United States Census Bureau]], [[United States Census|U.S. Decennial Census]], Tables of Minor Civil Divisions in West Virginia, 1870–2010.</ref>[[File:P042510PS-0483 (4609216378).jpg|thumb|President [[Barack Obama]] stands for prayer on April 25, 2010, at the [[Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center]], while attending a memorial service for the 29 miners who were killed in the [[Upper Big Branch Mine disaster]].|left]]Heavily involved in the coal mining industry, Raleigh County has been the scene of numerous deadly incidents, of which the most severe was the [[Eccles Mine Disaster]] in 1914. At least one hundred and eighty miners died in what was the second-worst coal mining disaster in state history. More recently, the 2010 [[Upper Big Branch Mine disaster]], which killed twenty-nine miners, occurred in Raleigh County. Raleigh County miners were also killed by violent suppression of labor organizing, such as in the so-called [[Battle of Stanaford]] during the 1902-1903 New River coal strike in which an armed posse led by a US Marshall who shot up miners' houses while they and their families slept, killing at least six. The perpetrators were later acquitted.<ref>{{Cite web |date=February 25, 2020 |title=February 25, 1903: Lawman Cunningham Leads an Armed Posse into Stanaford |url=https://www.wvpublic.org/radio/2020-02-25/february-25-1903-lawman-cunningham-leads-an-armed-posse-into-stanaford}}</ref> The lead-up and aftermath were witnessed and widely recounted by [[Mother Jones (magazine)|''Mother Jones'']],<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chapter 9 - Murder in West Virginia &#124; Industrial Workers of the World |url=https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/9/}}</ref> and the massacre is considered a prelude to the [[West Virginia coal wars]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=E-WV &#124; Battle of Stanaford |url=http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/547 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305164842/http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/547 |archive-date=March 5, 2021}}</ref>

The town of [[Sophia, West Virginia|Sophia]] in Raleigh County was the home of [[United States Senate|Senator]] [[Robert Byrd|Robert C. Byrd]].