Several academies in West Virginia aspired to collegiate status. As early as 1823 Mercer Academy advertised that its courses were taught “by lecture precisely in the mode adopted in the College of William and Mary.”6 In 1824 it added chemistry, political economy, and natural, national, and municipal law to its curricula and in 1826 other “Collegiate branches.” By mid-century, Monongalia Academy at Morgantown contemplated elevation to collegiate rank. Already, in 1846 Romney Academy had become Romney Classical Institute and Brooke, at Wellsburg, in 1852 had merged with Meade Collegiate Institute. Emerging from the trend were Weston College at Weston, Union College at Union, Levelton Male and Female College at Hillsboro, Allegheny College at Blue Sulphur Springs, and Marshall College at Huntington, all chartered from 1858 to 1860.
In spite of the tendency to upgrade academies, collegiate education in West Virginia was limited before the Civil War. Bethany, founded in 1840 by Alexander Campbell, was the strongest college in the state. Its preeminence stemmed from its ability to attract students from areas outside West Virginia, its affiliation with the rapidly growing Disciples of Christ Church, and, perhaps most of all, the devoted leadership of Campbell, who gave it much of his time and personal fortune. Rector College, a Baptist institution founded at Pruntytown in 1839, also flourished for a time. The Reverend Charles Wheeler, its principal, lavished attention upon it, but his death in 1851 accelerated a decline that had already set in.
Even before the Civil War West Virginians evinced an interest in practical education. John Cook Bennett, an educator of questionable principles, tried in vain during the 1830s to persuade the legislature to establish Wheeling University, with a medical college as its main component. Efforts to establish an agricultural college in western Virginia had the support of Professor Robert Richardson of Bethany College, who advocated a broad curriculum that included chemistry, geology, botany, natural science, zoology, and bookkeeping. Richardson pioneered activities that led to the Morrill Act of 1862, which provided for land grant colleges to teach agricultural and mechanical arts. In southern West Virginia, several residents, including the author Thomas Dunn English, incorporated Aracoma Polytechnic College, at Aracoma, now Logan, for instruction in agriculture, mining, and other useful arts, as well as languages, literature, arts, and sciences.
Except for Bethany, West Virginia's oldest surviving institution of higher learning, and Marshall, now grown into a university, antebellum colleges of West Virginia were generally weak and unstable. Poor transportation, arrested economic development, and inadequate financing combined with popular indifference to higher education to keep enrollments low and operations tenuous. Flourishing colleges were almost impossible in a milieu so inimical to higher education.
Literary Societies and Libraries. Often working in close association with academies and colleges were literary societies. At Harpers Ferry, Romney, Lewisburg, Charleston, Wheeling, and Wellsburg they served as sponsors or patrons of academies. The Buffalo Creek Farmers Library Company, in operation by 1812, and the Morgantown Circulating Library, chartered in 1814, may have been instrumental in the founding of Monongalia Academy at Morgan-town in 1814.
Perhaps no literary society did more to affect the cultural climate of a community than that at Romney. Organized in 1819 and incorporated in 1822, it accumulated more than three thousand books and scientific apparatus by 1860. It provided public lectures on agriculture, manufacturing, mechanical arts, ethics, and political philosophy and until 1846 operated Romney Academy.
More impressive than the small subscription libraries found in many towns were the college collections. One of the finest libraries was that of Alexander Campbell, which became the nucleus of the Bethany College holdings. Rector College had about two thousand volumes when it closed, part of which were evidently from the large collection of Charles Wheeler.
Men of learning and refinement were to be found in nearly every part of West Virginia. John G. Jackson of Clarksburg, a member of Congress and federal judge, left a collection of 725 books at his death in 1825. A man of catholic interests, Jackson owned works on law, politics, eloquence, and medicine, as well as novels, textbooks, and miscellaneous titles. John Hite of Berkeley County owned a modest ninety-three books, but they included works of Pope, Milton, Congreve, Addison, and Steele and titles in ancient, medieval, and modern history.
Families not of the professional classes seldom possessed more than a few books. Most depended upon the stocks of merchants in the towns and country crossroads, whose selections seldom extended far beyond Bibles, Testaments, almanacs, and school textbooks. For most literate families the two most common possessions were the Bible, very likely well worn, and an almanac, almost certainly tattered from use.
Newspapers and Periodicals. Interest in political issues and events led to a rapid expansion of newspapers in the United States during the late colonial and early national periods. The press made its entry into West Virginia in 1790, when Nathaniel Willis, a Boston newspaperman who had participated in the famous Tea Party, moved to Shepherdstown and founded the Potowmac Guardian and Berkeley Advertiser; later known as the Potomak Guardian. Aware of agreements between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton regarding the ultimate location of the United States capital, Willis probably expected Shepherdstown to become the seat of government of the new nation. When the District of Columbia was chosen, Willis moved his press to Martinsburg, where he remained until 1810.
The staunch Jeffersonian position of the Potomak Guardian made a rival organ in the lower Shenadoah Valley, where Federalists were strong, almost a certainty. In 1799 John Alburtis founded the Berkeley Intelligencer at Martinsburg. The paper continued, under at least ten different titles, until the Civil War. Seven other newspapers, most of them short-lived, were established at Shepherdstown by 1830. Other noteworthy publications of the Eastern Panhandle and the dates of their establishment were the Martinsburg Republican Atlas, 1800; Charles Town Patriot, 1803; Harpers Ferry Free Press, later the Virginia Free Press, 1821; and the Romney Hampshire and Hardy Intelligencer; later the South Branch Intelligencer; 1830.
In trans-Allegheny West Virginia thirty-five years elapsed between the beginnings of settlement and the founding of the first newspaper. In 1804 Joseph Campbell and Forbes Britton began publication of the Monongalia Gazette and Morgantown Advertiser at Morgantown. Britton and his brother gave Clarksburg its first newspaper, the Bye-Stander, in 1810. By 1830 four other newspapers had been founded at Morgantown and six others at Clarksburg. Gideon Butler introduced the press at Weston, with the Western Star, in 1820 or 1821.
Wheeling initially proved less hospitable to newspapers. The Wheeling Repository, started in 1807, lasted less than two years, and for about a decade the town had no newspaper. In 1818, the year the National Road was completed to Wheeling, Thomas Tonner founded the Va. North-Western Gazette, later the Wheeling Gazette, which dominated the Wheeling press for the next quarter of a century. It had no rival until the establishment of the Virginia Statesman and the Compiler in 1828 and 1829, respectively. Wellsburg supported the Charlestown Gazette, later the Wellsburg Gazette, begun in 1814, and its successors.
The press took root slowly elsewhere in West Virginia. In 1820 Herbert P. Gaines, who later became principal of Mercer Academy, founded the Kenhawa Spectator at Charleston. Its four successors and the Lewisburg Palladium of Virginia, and the Pacific Monitor, begun in 1823, were the only newspapers in the southern part of the state before 1830. Because of widespread illiteracy, circulation problems arising from poor transportation, and scarcity of money, most of the forty-five newspapers attempted in West Virginia prior to 1830 were short-lived. The social ferment between 1830 and 1860, however, provided fertile soil for the press. By 1860 at least thirty-nine towns, ten of them in the southern counties, had established at least one newspaper.
Religious journals enjoyed considerable popularity. The Lay-Man's Magazine, founded at Martinsburg in 1816, was an organ of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Christian Baptist, published by Alexander Campbell at Bethany from 1823 to 1830, and its successor, the Menial Harbinger, which continued to 1870, expounded Disciples of Christ views and were among the