Always Free – West (by Gawd) Virginia

Montani Semper Liberi–Mountaineers are Always Free, the state motto of West Virginia

Deep Roots

I was born  in Montana in 1949, but my parents came from West Virginia in 1946.  Their parents, grandparents. great-grandparents lived in West Virginia.  My ancestral roots go back before the American Revolution in the western part of the colony of Virginia.  While I have never lived in the Mountain State, I feel at home there, bound to the land and people by dint of my ancestry.  At the time I write this, July 2025, I have driven through and photographed fifteen of the state’s counties.  It is my intention to visit the remaining forty over the next few years.  Bear with me.

West Virginia’s Fifty-Five Counties:

Of those fifty-five counties, five date from before or during the American Revolution. These are Hampshire (1754), Berkeley (1772), Monongalia (1776), Ohio (1776), and Greenbrier (1778). Another five came into being after 1863 when West Virginia became a state. Those five are Grant (1866), Mineral (1866), Lincoln (1867), Summers (1871), and Mingo (1895). The Commonwealth of Virginia created all but the last five.