Editing Point Pleasant, West Virginia (section)

===19th century===
Mason County was carved out of Kanawha County in 1804, and Point Pleasant was designated the county seat then. According to historian [[Virgil A. Lewis]], "Point Pleasant did not flourish for many years [after the turn of the century]. There was no church for over fifty years, and society was low. There was a popular superstition that because of the fiendish murder of Cornstalk there in 1777, the place was laid under a curse for a hundred years".<ref>Lewis, Virgil A., ed. (1892), Notes to "Lewis Summer's Journal of a Tour from Alexandria, Virginia, to Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1808", ''Southern Historical Magazine: Devoted to History, Genealogy, Biography, Archæology and Kindred Subjects'', Vol. 1, No. 2 (February issue), pg 67, n. 59.</ref> Lewis also relates that a visitor to Point Pleasant in 1810 observed that ... <blockquote>Point Pleasant is pleasantly situated immediately above the mouth of the Great Kanawha, on an extensive and fertile bottom of the Ohio, of which it has a fine prospect up and down that river. It is the seat of justice of Mason county Virginia, and contains about 15 or 20 families, a log courthouse, a log jail and as usual (but unfortunately) in the Virginia towns, a [[pillory]] and [[whipping post]]. Point Pleasant seems rather on the stand in point of improvement, arising, it is said, from the difficulty in establishing the land titles. It is, however, a considerable place of embarkation for those descending the Ohio from the back and western parts of Virginia. There is one merchant. Mr. William Langtry.<ref>Lewis, ''[[Op. cit.]]''. (He is quoting the anonymous 1810 traveler.)</ref></blockquote>

Point Pleasant was incorporated in 1833.

During the [[American Civil War]], the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861, Mason County's delegate, lawyer James H. Couch (1821-1899), although an enslaver, voted against declaring secession. Mason County then sent no delegates to the Virginia House of Delegates until West Virginia's statehood, which Virginia's House of Delegates refused to recognize, thus seating James Hutcheson, who Confederate soldiers had elected in their camp. Meanwhile, William W. Newman claimed to represent Mason and nearby Jackson, Cabell, Wayne, and Wirt counties throughout the war.<ref>Cynthia Miller Leonard, The Virginia General Assembly 1619-1978 (Virginia State Library 1978) pp. 482, 485, 488</ref> Mason County sent more than 1000 men to the Union army and one company of 61 men to the Confederate Army (the [[37th Virginia Infantry]]).<ref>Virgil A. Lewis's Soldiery of West Virginia (1911, 1972 reprint) p. 223</ref> In March 1863, in the only wartime skirmish in Point Pleasant, during the [[Jones-Imboden Raid]], the 6th Virginia Cavalry and 8th Virginia Cavalry attacked the Mason County Courthouse, where they believed munitions stored, leaving bullet holes in the walls until a replacement was built in 1954.<ref>Mason County West Virginia: Experience History and the Mystery (Mason County Welcome Center) p. 8</ref>