FAYETTEVILLE, WV (WOAY) – The Town of Fayetteville has now reached its sesquicentennial, celebrating 150 years of being a municipality.
Dignitaries and community members of Fayetteville, as well as those beyond, gathered in the main courtroom of the Fayette County Courthouse on Monday, November 21, 2022 to recognize the achievement.
Representatives from Governor Justice’s and Senator Manchin’s offices came to give their remarks, as well as Senator Shelley Moore Capito herself.
The Mayor of Fayetteville, Sharon Cruikshank, says it was a milestone that no one was expecting quite yet.
“When I first took office in 2019, we were all under the impression that Fayetteville was incorporated in 1883, however, when trying to identify when mayors had served, we discovered that we had some missing mayors,” she says.
After celebrating the town’s 100th anniversary​‌ in 1983, Cruikshank, along with Dr. Lewis Cook, the town’s historian, among others, started noticing some discrepancies.
While they thought the original evidence was from 1883, upon further research they made the surprising discovery that it was a little over a decade older. When acquiring some older documents, they found proof that Fayetteville was actually incorporated as a town on November 21, 1872.
“It was kind of unbelievable since I was the town historian who had written the previous book on the history,” Dr. Cook says. “I think it occurred because in the early 1920s, a publishing company published a book on the history of Fayette County, and it published the date as the 1983 date in that book.”
The town is currently publishing an updated book about the history of Fayetteville. While it wasn’t ready for Monday’s event, Dr. Cook says that it should be ready in about a week or two.
For more information about the updated historical publication, you can contact Fayetteville’s City Hall at (304)574-0101.
Town organizers expect the book to most likely be for sale at the Fayetteville Visitor’s Center shortly after it’s released.
