Discovering Earnshaw: A Forgotten Community in Wetzel County

While traveling late at night to a campsite in rural northern West Virginia, I did a double-take when I passed what looked like an abandoned general store and hotel.

While traveling late at night to a campsite in rural northern West Virginia, I did a double-take when I passed what looked like an abandoned general store and hotel. I snapped a quick phone photo, the building briefly illuminated by my brake lights.

The next morning, I walked back to take a closer look. The community was Earnshaw, a small settlement along Long Drain in Wetzel County, originally known as Lewistown before being renamed for the Earnshaw family. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it had developed into a typical farming and logging community, supported by churches, schools, general stores, and small local businesses.

At its peak, Earnshaw had two general stores, a post office, a hat shop, a blacksmith shop, a barber shop, and two boarding houses. The Hughes store later became Starkey’s store after O. A. Starkey purchased it and operated it for more than 50 years, until his death in 1981. That was the building I had come across in the dark, still standing along the road as a reminder of the community’s once-busier years.

Churches and schools were central to life in Earnshaw. Union Chapel opened in 1888, and the Church of Christ was rebuilt in 1898 after an earlier building burned. Several schools served the area over time, from an early log schoolhouse to a later two-room school that closed in 1957, when enrollment had dwindled to just 13 pupils.