LEGISLATIVE PETITION FROM AUGUSTA COUNTY, 6 November 1777. Virginia State Library, Req. C 170.

To the Honourable the Speaker & Gentlemen of the House of Delegates of Virginia.

The Petition of a number of the Inhabitants of Tigers Valley Settlement and the West Fork of the Monangalia River and Buckhannan's Creek Settlement.

Humbly Sheweth that your Petitioners Labours under great Hardships from their being obliged to tend Courts at Stauntown in Order to have their necessary business done, at the distance of one hundred & eight Miles from the nearest Inhabitants in the Tigers Valley. One hundred and fifty from the nearest Settlement on the West Fork of the Monangalia and two hundred Miles from the best inhabited part of our Settlement, which great distance & exceeding badness of the Roads, and the Difficulty of Crossing eight Large Mountains, forty Miles of which Road is uninhabited Viz from the Tigers Valley Waters to Powtowmack Waters. We are informed that the old part of Augusta are petitioning to have the same Divided into Smaller Counties for the convenience of the People; We your Petitioners Humbly Pray we may not be joined to any County on the Waters of James River or the South Branch of the Potowmack, nor Monongalia County for we flatter our selves we are able to Build & Support all Public buildings necessary for a County Town - Therefore we your Petitioners humbly request your Honourable House would take their Case under your Consideration & grant them a New County including the Tigers Valley Settlement & the Settlement on the west fork of [torn] Monangalia and also Buckhannan's Creek Settlement, which will greatly Ease your Petitioners

     and they in duty shall ever Pray &c.

The names are arranged on the first page in four columns and on a shorter second page in three columns.

ENDORSED: Inhabitants of Tygers Valley Petition November 6, 1777. Referred to Propositions. December 16, 1777 referred to the consideration of the next Session of Assembly. November 25th 1778 (Rejected)

EDITOR'S NOTE: It is no wonder this petition was circulated in 1777. In 1776 the VA Legislature had finally defined the bounds of the District of West Augusta and by the same act wiped it off the map and created Monongalia County from it. But as the maps of the boundaries published in Core's MONONGALIA STORY show the legislature seems to have had motives other than efficiency in mind. The courthouse was on the river below present day Morgantown. Persons in today's Fairmont area, only about 20 miles from the Mon County court, were left in Augusta County with the courthouse 120 miles away (distances are given as the crow flies). Yet persons (if any) on the headwaters of the Shavers Fork of Cheat River, only about 50 miles from the Augusta Court at Staunton were placed in Monongalia with the court below Morgantown nearly double the distance from them as the court at Staunton. The people in this petition would not get their wish for a separate county until 1784 when the county of Harrison was formed.