Talk:West Virginia

Date of Statehood
The article states "West Virginia became a state following the Wheeling Conventions of 1861, at the start of the American Civil War." That's a false statement. West Virginia became a state on June 20, 1863. SimpsonDG (talk) 04:11, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
 * If you can find reliable sources to back this up, then edits can be made. Currently, the statement you claim is false is sourced. The article currently says that the 1863 date is when WV became part of the Union. Airplaneman (talk) ✈ 04:46, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I suppose the problem here is with the phrasing, "became a state". Airplaneman (talk) ✈ 04:54, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
 * No wonder Wikipedia is so full of errors. All it takes is for someone to claim to have a "source" for something that is easily checked and found to be false.  If you actually check the claimed source [26] shown in the article, you'll see that there is no place where it says that "West Virginia became a state following the Wheeling Conventions of 1861," nor is there even any mention of the Wheeling Conventions or of 1861.   Yet there must be thousands of reliable sources stating that West Virginia became a state on June 20, 1863.  (1) West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture, and History: http://www.wvculture.org/history/archives/statehoo.html (2) West Virginia: A History by Otis K. Rice, p. 153 (U. Kentucky Press, 1985); (3) West Virginia Governors by John C. Morgan, (2nd ed., Charleston Newspapers, 1980) p. 10; (4) The West Virginia Encyclopedia, Ken Sullivan (ed.), p. 338 (West Virginia Humanities Council, 2006); (5) The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume 12 ("West Virginia"), 15th ed.; (6) The flag of the state of West Virginia itself clearly shows the date of statehood: June 20, 1863.  And many more: just about any encyclopedia, almanac, or history book you care to pick up. And there's no dispute over what's meant by "became a state."  It can only mean "officially admitted to the Union as a new state."  I'd fix this myself, but I don't edit Wikipedia anymore. SimpsonDG (talk) 05:45, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm going to come out of retirement very briefly and fix this. The first two sentences in the second paragraph read: "West Virginia became a state after the Wheeling Conventions of 1861, at the start of the American Civil War. Delegates from northwestern Virginia's Unionist counties decided to break away from Virginia, which also included secessionist counties in the new state." That is a completely false statement. West Virginia became a state on June 20, 1863 (as shown in the many references indicated above). Just because this sentence is "sourced" doesn't make it true. In fact, I have a copy of the claimed "source" (Foner, Eric, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, Harper, 2002, p. 39) and it's phoney. NOWHERE in the book is there even any mention of the "Wheeling Conventions". Since the sentences are proveably false and the "source" is phoney, I'm deleting these sentences. As "Airplaneman" indicates above, "If you can find reliable sources to back this up, then edits can be made." I have (see above), and so I'm going to make the edits myself. SimpsonDG (talk) 02:18, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

"Virginie-Occidentale" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Virginie-Occidentale and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 19 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. TartarTorte 00:43, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation
Somone put in the non-rhotic pronunciation. I added the rhotic one, which would be usual in the state. Kostaki mou (talk) 03:54, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Featured picture scheduled for POTD
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October 1861 vote totals
In the October 1861 election the article says that "18,408 votes were cast for the new state and 781 against." But the graphic showing the vote by county has only two counties (Monogalia and Preston) where the yes votes exceeded 50% of the total. Many counties don't show any votes for statehood. What's going on? I looked up the source, only to figure out that much of this history is taken nearly verbatim from the Encyclopedia Brittanica's poorly written article on West Virginia. There's no source for the graphic, so I have no idea where the data came from. MiguelMunoz (talk) 03:05, 27 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Many counties had no vote on statehood. The percentages in red show what percent of that county voted for statehood, relative to the number of voters in that county. The vote results can be found in Richard O. Curry's book "A House Divided". The number of voters in each county was taken from the 8th United States Census. The vote was poorly attended, so few counties had over 50% in favor. See this page from the WV Archives https://archive.wvculture.org/history/statehood/statehood10.html Dubyavee (talk) 03:44, 27 June 2024 (UTC)