Wytheville, Virginia

Date: 1789
Location: Wytheville, Wythe, Virginia, United States

Wytheville

Wythe County was created in 1789 and named for George Wythe, the "father of American Jurisprudence" and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Wytheville, it's county seat, was also named after him.^[1] He held a lifelong aversion to slavery, and freed all of his slaves in his Will.

On October 19, 1792, the General Assembly passed an act establishing the town as Evansham, probably pronounced Evans-ham as it was named for Jesse Evans, a prominent local citizen at the time. On March 6, 1839, following the great town fire, the name was changed to Wytheville at a time when the town had 500 inhabitants.^[2]

A unit called the "Wythe Grays" and a home guard were organized in Wytheville during the Civil War.^[3] The Battle of Wytheville occurred on Tazewell Street in 1863.^[3] Several raids were conducted on Wythe County, in attempts to hinder salt delivery, but they were not successful.^[3]

There are a great many pictures of Wytheville and its inhabitants in the W.R. Chitwood Collection held by the Virginia Archives, and within the Kegley Library. Pocahontas (Monroe) Page (1877-1949) was one such person. She operated the Cozy Cafe Restaurant in the early 1920s until a fire destroyed the building in 1924.

When the polio outbreak spread in America in the 1950s, it was said that "Wythe County was one of the hardest hit communities in the nation. Not one family was left untouched by this terrible disease."^[3]

Residents of Wytheville

These people were residents of Wytheville, Virginia.

Sources

1. ↑ "Whytheville, Virginia," as viewed on Wikipedia.org 1 July 2022.
2. ↑ https://wcgha.org/
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3} Hall, Karen Lynn Jones. "Wythe County" (Chicago, IL: Arcadia Publishing, 2004), n.p. (Preview on Google.com)

• Logan, Linda H. "Wythe County," (Wytheville, VA: Arcadia Publishing Inc., 2009), n.p. (preview on Google.com)