The Shadow
Bill Wilson, a Covington attorney for the past 60 years, represented the Virginia State Bar and the Commonwealth of Virginia at the rededication ceremony in Lewisburg for the 1834 Law Library on Mon., Aug. 1.
Wilson and Lang, his wife, traveled to Lewisburg where Wilson served as an honored guest alongside Al Emch, a Charleston attorney, and others. Emch provided Wilson with a written historic account of the way West Virginia and Virginia split apart during the 19th century. Wilson was substituting for Stephanie Grana, president of the Virginia State Bar Association, who asked him to attend the event in her absence.
The rededication of the 1834 Supreme Court of Appeals of the Virginia Law Library and Study Building was attended by John A. Hutchison, the main speaker who is the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.
The Greenbrier Historical Society plans to restore and maintain the historic building according to its needs, and the rededication ceremony was scheduled on the 191st anniversary of the date that the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia first met in Lewisburg.
The historic building is also known as the “Pink Library.”
Wilson, for a long time, held licenses to practice law in W.Va. and Va., but now he concentrates on practicing law in Virginia where he represents victims who suffer from sundry injuries.
The following account provided to Wilson by Emch is being published without the many footnotes that would have prohibited the “Virginian Review” from sharing Emch’s informative account about historic events surrounding the history of the structure and others nearby.
By 1830, those who lived in the part of Virginia that lay west of the Blue Ridge Mountains were unhappy with their state government, which was centered far away and catered to the landed gentry of the Tidewater area.
Western Virginia’s population had grown rapidly over the preceding 30 years, and they (Virginians west of the Blue Ridge Mountains) wanted a bigger say in their government. This long-simmering unrest was largely responsible for the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1830 and the new Constitution that resulted from it. But the western delegates were not satisfied, and all save one voted against the new Constitution.
One of the most inconvenient aspects of state government that irritated the westerners was the fact that the highest court in Virginia met only in the Capital City of Richmond. While the need for westerners to come before that court had increased significantly, the great distance involved and the extraordinary difficulty of traveling across the mountains to get there remained a formidable impediment to doing so. Seeking recourse to the highest court was much harder if you were from “west” Virginia.
In an effort to remedy this arguable unfairness, in 1831 the Virginia Assembly determined that the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia ought to hold a session every year somewhere on the western side of those difficult-to-cross mountains. But where?
The answer becomes all too obvious when one contemplates closely, as the Assembly no doubt did, the subject that was driving the whole decision: geography. A glance at a topographical map of WV/VA reveals that those of our hills that may appropriately be designated as “ranges” (all part of the Appalachian Mountains) run essentially North/South, thus making the more imposing barriers to traveling East/West. And none of those ranges are east of the Blue Ridge.
Furthermore, in 1831 the ONLY major transportation artery between eastern and western Virginia from its completion as a state road in 1790 (as urged by George Washington) until after the Civil War was the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, which ran from Richmond almost directly east along rivers and through natural mountain passes to Charleston and on to Guyandotte (present day Huntington).
And what lovely town lay astride the Turnpike just west of those pesky mountain ranges and nestled at or near the terminus of the valleys that channeled roads and watercourses north and south toward the Turnpike? Lewisburg, Virginia.
Travel from Richmond to Lewisburg was direct and, by the standards of the time, easy and convenient. Travel to Lewisburg from counties laying among the Allegheny and other Appalachian mountain ranges immediately west of the Blue Ridge could come down the valleys to Lewisburg more easily than across the mountains to Richmond; those coming from Wheeling could come to Lewisburg—one-half as far away as Richmond as the crow flies—without crossing any mountain range; and those coming from the rest of what is now West Virginia could go north and south to the Turnpike and thus to Lewisburg in a fraction of the time it took to make it to Richmond, again without contending with those difficult mountain ranges.
No surprise then that the Virginia Assembly passed a statute on April 8, 1831, requiring that the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia hold “a session annually at Lewisburg in the county of Greenbrier beginning on the first Monday of July and to continue 90 days unless the business should be dispatched…for the hearing and determining of all cases brought to the court by appeal…from the counties lying on the western side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
An act passed on March 20, 1832, further provided that “…the joint library use of the judges during the sessions of that court, the statues at large, the sessions acts since the revisal of eighteen hundred and nineteen, the Virginia Reports, and such other law books whereof duplicate copies are now in the library.”
In 1833, another statute was passed requiring that, “…the general librarian shall transmit to the librarian at Lewisburg a copy of every book in the library fund not heretofore sent, of which there may be several copies belonging to the said fund, also have placed in each of the law libraries a copy of every law book which may be hereafter published for the commonwealth, as soon after the publication thereof as it can conveniently be done.”
Later, in December of 1833, the then huge sum of $1200 was appropriated to “purchase a library for the court of appeals in Lewisburg,” and the “Report of the Librarian to the Joint Library Committee” given on December 31, 1834, indicates that $1184.25 had been expended to purchase “books ordered by judges for the use of the court of appeals at Lewisburg.”
The start of the first session of the Court in Lewisburg was delayed a bit in order to complete necessary arrangements and opened on August 1, 1831. The five Judges of the Court, and many of the lawyers who traveled to Lewisburg to appear before them, likely lodged at James Frazer’s Tavern in “downtown” Lewisburg and its first Clerk, John North, lived in the North House (built in 1820, now the North House Museum and home of offices, library, and archives of the Greenbrier Historical Society).
In need of their own chambers and workspace, the Judges asked the entrepreneurial Mr. Frazer to construct a building for the purpose of housing the newly established and growing Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia Law Library and provide study and meeting areas for them to use when in Lewisburg.
He complied. The new building was completed in 1834 just yards from the North House (John was the Clerk of the Court in Lewisburg from 1831 to his death in 1862) and leased to the state of Virginia.
Serendipitously, in 1846, the ever-industrious Mr. Frazer purchased the North House from John, enlarged it considerably, and opened it as the Star Tavern, which logically became the favorite lodging place for the Judges and lawyers who transacted judicial business in the Supreme Court Appeals of Virginia Law Library and Study located just a minute away.
Thus, the Court had quarters that were appropriate for and conducive to their work, close to their lodging, and fitting to their station, and they conducted the appellate business of “west” Virginia there each year from 1834 until 1864 (it took Virginia a little extra time to accept that the far west, including Lewisburg, had become a new State in 1863).
Thus, the very first “highest court” for what is now West Virginia sat in Lewisburg during thirty of what one might describe as the most formative years of our great state and did their research and study in our treasured “Pink Library.”
The case files and records of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia sitting in Lewisburg from 1831-1864 now reside in the West Virginia State Archives in Charleston; we also know that many of the law (and other) books that once comprised the first state law library in what is now West Virginia are in the custody of our Archives or our Supreme Court of Appeals Law Library; those books were transported to Wheeling (the then capital of our new state) in 1866 and delivered to the Clerk of the newly formed Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Sylvanus W. Hall, where they formed the nucleus of its Law Library.
The “Pink Library” went through several owners and uses from 1864 until 1939, when the Town (now a City) of Lewisburg acquired it, restored it, and it became the Greenbrier County Library and Museum. The new Library was opened to considerable fanfare on August 1, 1941, the 110th Anniversary of the opening of the first session of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia held in Lewisburg.
Although many dignitaries attended, the principal address was given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, the Honorable J.N. Kenna. It continued as the Public Library until 2007 when a new library building was constructed, then in 2010 was leased to the New River Community and Technical College for use as its library, which use has continued until the present time.
We are very excited that the Greenbrier Historical Society has acquired the long-term lease of the “Pink Library” and adjacent property from the City of Lewisburg and is now embarking on a labor of love to return the building, which is very near to its original condition but in need of substantial study and careful restoration, back as closely as possible to what it was in the first half of the 19th century.
The college vacated the property in July of this year, and we held an initial “grand opening” and “rededication” of the building as a public museum on August 1, 2022—the 191st Anniversary of the date that the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia first met in Lewisburg to conduct the appellate business of what is now West Virginia. Fittingly, the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, the Honorable John A. Hutchison, was the principal speaker at this auspicious event.
The wonderful building is significant for both Virginia and West Virginia, juxtaposing the judicial histories of the two states and providing a platform for telling the story of how our state developed, including the story of the Civil War (the building was used as a hospital during the Battle of Lewisburg in 1862, and some of the graffiti that the soldiers wrote upon its walls has been beautifully preserved, and obtaining its library was the goal of the Battle of White Sulphur Springs in October of 1863).
The property also includes a separate building, constructed in 1835 as quarters for the enslaved people of the Johnson Reynolds family and moved to its present location in 1976, which provides a backdrop for educating the public about how enslaved people lived and worked in the first half of the 19th century; we are excited by the opportunities for education that this building presents as well. Together the North House, “Pink Library,” and Enslaved Quarters will compose a museum complex that we believe will be unparalleled in West Virginia.
We have begun our work to restore these magnificent historic structures by accessing and accomplishing some critical maintenance. Soon, we will have the necessary engineering and architectural studies done to lay the groundwork for our restoration efforts, which will be guided by our continuing research into the history that lies within these buildings that we will bring back to their full splendor for the public to see, understand, and appreciate.
Given the unique place that the “Pink Library” occupies in the judicial histories of both Virginia and West Virginia, we are hopeful that the lawyers and judiciary of both states will unite once again to encourage and support our efforts. Start by coming to see us. We are located just west of the Blue Ridge Mountains on the James River and Kanawha Turnpike in beautiful, historic Lewisburg, an easy trip from wherever you are.
