Braxton County

BRAXTON COUNTY HISTORY

Braxton County was created by an act of the Virginia General Assembly on January 15, 1836 from parts of Lewis, Kanawha, and Nicholas counties. It was named in honor of Carter Braxton. He was a noted Virginia statesman who graduated from William and Mary College, was a long-time member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The first land survey in the county took place in 1784 on behalf of John Allison who had a warrant on 11,000 acres of land in the area. Adam O'Brien, an Indian scout and noted hunter, was part of the survey party. 7,000 acres of Allison's land were purchased by John Sutton of Alexandria, Virginia. His son, John D. Sutton, visited the area in 1798 and found a small, abandoned cabin on the land. He learned that John (or Adam) O'Brien once lived in the hollow of a large sycamore tree in the area around present day Sutton in 1773, but he never did discover who had built the cabin.

The county's first permanent English settlers were the Carpenter family, including brothers Jeremiah, Benjamin, Jesse and Amos, and their mother. They arrived in 1789 or 1790 and built a cabin at the mouth of the Holly River. Less than a year later, Benjamin Carpenter and his wife were killed by two Indians who were passing through the area. In 1800, Jeremiah and Henry Mace settled near present day Sutton. In 1807, Colonel John Haymond moved from Harrison county and settled near the Falls of the Little Kanawha. His three brothers, Benjamin, Daniel, and John Conrad, settled three miles south of him. Also in that year, Nicholas Gibson and Asa Squires moved into the county. In 1810, John D. Sutton moved to the present site of Sutton, which at the time was known as Newville.