Editing Star City, West Virginia (section)

==History==
Star City was founded in 1907,<ref>Town of Star City Original Charter, compiled and copied under Order of Council by Thomas Ray Dille, Esq., September 1908</ref> and took its name from the local Star Glass Company.<ref>{{cite book|last=Capace|first=Nancy|title=Encyclopedia of West Virginia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K30UKW0aewgC&pg=PA192|year=1999|publisher=North American Book Dist LLC|isbn=978-0-403-09843-9|page=192}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Kenny|first=Hamill|title=West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015009099824;view=1up;seq=623;size=125|year=1945|publisher=The Place Name Press|location=Piedmont, WV|page=599}}</ref>

===Socialist Party government===
By 1910 the [[Socialist Party of America]] had organized a branch in the town and within a year had won four out of five seats in the city council, as part of a wider national political movement of the time.<ref>''Morgantown New Dominion'', January 5, 1912, January 20, 1913, January 9, 1914, January 8, 1915 and January 7, 1916, footnoted in Cresswell, Stephen, [http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh52-5.html "When The Socialists Ran Star City"], (chapter) ''West Virginia History'' Volume 52 (1993), pp. 59-72, via West Virginia Division of Culture and History</ref><ref>Critchlow, Donald T., ed., ''Socialism in the Heartland: The Midwestern Experience, 1900-1925'' (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1986); Judd,Richard W. , ''Socialist Cities: Municipal Politics and the Grass Roots of American Socialism'' (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1989), footnoted in Cresswell</ref>

The Socialist Party would continue to be the dominant party in Star City politics through 1917, when its rival the Citizens' Party took over municipal government. To avoid un-American connotations that became associated with the name after [[World War I]], the Socialist Party of Star City in 1918 renamed itself the Independent Citizens' party and won back local government, partly due to its opposition to the [[regressive tax|regressive]] "capitation tax" the Citizens' Party had imposed.<ref>''Morgantown Post-Chronicle'', January 1 and 5, 1917; ''Morgantown New Dominion'', November 6, 1912, and January 5, 1917; ''Morgantown Weekly New Dominion'', October 10 and 31 and December 12; ''Morgantown New Dominion'' January 3, 1918, and January 1, 1919; Frederick, ''Cinder Heads in the Hills: The Belgian Window Glass Workers of West Virginia'' (Charleston: West Virginia Educational Services, 1988), p. 7, footnoted in Cresswell</ref> However, in 1924, the People's party, formed two years earlier and composed largely of former Citizens' party supporters, took over.<ref>Minute Books, Star City Town Council, Star City town hall, I:163 (1919), II:63 (1922) and 133 (1924), footnoted in Cresswell</ref> Until that time, the Socialists were a mainstay of this working-class town, organizing the Workingmen's [[Co-operative]] Store and creating community pillars with Local Twenty-six of the [[American Flint Glass Workers' Union]] and the [[Young People's Socialist League (1907)|Young People's Socialist League]].<ref>''Morgantown Weekly New Dominion'', October 7, 1914; ''Morgantown New Dominion'', June 12, 1913, January 7 and December 27, 1915, and Barkey, Frederick Allan, "The Socialist Party in West Virginia from 1898 to 1920: a Study in Working Class Radicalism" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1971), p. 118, footnoted in Cresswell</ref>

===Star City Volunteer Fire Department===
The Star City Volunteer Fire Department was founded in the 1939. The department has an all-volunteer firefighting staff and a combination of paid and volunteer EMS staff. The agency responds to approximately 1,200 emergency calls per year and provides Firefighting and Rescue services to the town of Star City and surrounding unincorporated areas. It is designated as the district's Company 20 (Fire) and Station 20 (EMS).<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.starcityvfd.com/about-us/ | title=About Us| publisher=Star City Volunteer Fire Department|access-date=December 11, 2015}}</ref>