Clarksburg West Virginia History & Facts

Clarksburg is a city in and the county seat of Harrison County, West Virginia, United States, in the north-central region of the state. The population of the city was 16,039 at the 2020 census.It is the principal city of the Clarksburg micropolitan area, which had a population of 90,434 in 2020. Clarksburg was named National Small City of the Year in 2011 by the National League of Cities.

Indigenous peoples have lived in the area for thousands of years. The Oak Mounds outside Clarksburg were created by the Hopewell culture mound builders between 1 and 1000 C.E.

The first known non-indigenous visitor to the area that later became Clarksburg was John Simpson, a trapper, who in 1764 located his camp on the West Fork River opposite the mouth of Elk Creek at approximately 39°16′53″N 80°21′05″W (39.28128, -80.35145).

As early as 1772, settlers began claiming lands near where Clarksburg now stands, and building cabins. In 1773, Major Daniel Davisson (1748-1819) took up 400 acres (1.6 km2), upon which the principal part of the town is now located. By 1774, people settling near present Clarksburg included: Daniel Davisson, Obadiah Davisson (Daniel's father), Amaziah Davisson (Daniel's uncle), Thomas, John, and Matthew Nutter, Samuel and Andrew Cottrill (brothers), Sotha Hickman, and Samuel Beard. Undoubtedly, others located on these public lands, of which no official records were made. The Virginia General Assembly authorized the town of Clarksburg in 1785. Now a city, it is named for General George Rogers Clark, a Virginian who conducted many expeditions against the British and Indians during the Indian Wars and the war of the American Revolution, including the strategically critical capture of the Forts of Vincennes, now in the State of Indiana, in 1778.

As now-President George Washington had proposed years earlier, the General Assembly also authorized a road from Winchester, Virginia to Morgantown in 1786, and a branch from this road (which decades later became the Northwestern Turnpike) would soon begin through Clarksburg toward the Little Kanawha River (which flows into the Ohio River at Parkersburg). In 1787, the Virginia General Assembly authorized the Randolph Academy at Clarksburg, a private school led by Rev. George Towers and the first west of the Alleghenies. However, although many here as the 19th century began wanted the National Road westward to follow McCulloch's Path (improvements beginning after the Northwestern Turnpike company's formal incorporation by the Virginia General Assembly in 1827), Congress instead authorized construction on an easier route (Nemacolin's Path) through Maryland and Wheeling, which opened in 1818.

Construction of the first Harrison County courthouse began in Clarksburg in 1787. That building was followed by four increasingly larger courthouses; the most recent one completed in 1932. The first Court House stood on what is now the North East Corner of Second and Main Streets; the jail stood on the opposite side of Main Street near where the Presbyterian church now stands.

Relatively poor transportation slowed northwestern Virginia's development, so subscribers in Winchester, Romney, Kingwood, Clarksburg, Parkersburg and other towns en route caused the Northwestern Turnpike to be built. While the toll road increased development around Clarksburg in the 1830s, it also used a relatively anachronistic model. Nonetheless, the Randolph Academy was razed and replaced by the Northwestern Academy in 1841, a year after stage coach service began between Clarksburg and Parkersburg on the Ohio River. Clarksburg's development increased more a decade later due to new technology and further subscriptions. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad reached Clarksburg from Grafton in 1856.

Famous Peoples From Clarksburg West Virginia

Tony Anthony (actor)

Tony Anthony (born Tony Roger Petitto; October 16, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director best known for his starring roles in Spaghetti Westerns, most of which were produced with the aid of his friends and associates Allen Klein and Saul Swimmer. These films consist of The Stranger series - A Stranger in Town (1967), The Stranger Returns (1967), The Silent Stranger (1968) and Get Mean (1975) - and the Zatoichi-inspired Blindman (1971). Anthony also wrote, produced and starred in Comin' at Ya! (1981) and Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983), the first film being largely credited with beginning the 1980s revival of 3D films in Hollywood.

Anthony was born Tony Roger Petitto in Clarksburg West Virginia. With his friend Saul Swimmer directing, Anthony and Peter Gayle produced the half-hour children's short The Boy Who Owned a Melephant (1959), narrated by actress Tallulah Bankhead. The three men would become his frequent collaborators. The film won a Gold Leaf award at the Venice International Children's Film Festival. Following that short, Anthony and Swimmer co-wrote the Swimmer-directed independent features Force of Impulse (1961), a Romeo and Juliet story about a high school football player who turns to robbery, filmed in Miami Beach, Florida, and Without Each Other (1962). Anthony then moved to Italy to film Wounds of Hunger and La ragazza in prestito. Swimmer had moved to England, where he befriended Allen Klein.

Anthony was in Europe when Sergio Leone's Westerns were setting box office records, but had not yet been released in America. Anthony contacted Klein, then a major stockholder at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, about releasing a Spaghetti Western, for which he had played the lead role, in the United States. Anthony had also served as an uncredited executive producer on the film, having raised $40,000 with another American, James Hagar.The film Klein released was called A Stranger in Town, starring Anthony as the Stranger, a shotgun-wielding antihero who helps a group of Mexican bandits steal gold from the US Army and Federales, and then steals it right back from them. Released by MGM to compete with United Artists' Dollars Trilogy starring Clint Eastwood, it became a surprise success, and spawned three sequels in which Anthony reprised his role.

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