Welcome to McDowell County WV History and Genealogy Presented by West Virginia Genealogy Trails a part of Genealogy Trails Volunteers Dedicated to Free Genealogy This Site is Available for Adoption Our goal is to help you track your ancestors through time by transcribing genealogical and historical data for the free use of all researchers. We're looking for folks who share our dedication to putting data online and are interested in helping this project be as successful as it can be. If you are interested in joining Genealogy Trails, view our Volunteer Page for further information and then contact Kim. (Enough knowledge to make a basic webpage and a desire to transcribe data is required) We regret that we are unable to perform personal research for folks. All data we come across will be added to this site. We thank you for visiting and hope you'll come back again to view the updates we make to this site. If you would like to be kept informed of our state and county website updates, subscribe to any or all of our mailing lists West Virginia is covered under our "Northeastern States" mailing list. McDowell County is the southern-most county in the state, geographically. The county is named in honor of James McDowell, Governor of Virginia from 1843 to 1846. McDowell County was nationally known for its prominence in the coal mining industry, setting records for coal production and was a major player in the state's economy. Before the industry's decline that began in the 1950s, McDowell's population was almost at 100,000 residents, third highest in the state in 1950, then declined at a rapid pace after each decennial census afterwards, setting the highest percentage in the state for population loss each time as younger residents move out of the county to seek better futures and leaving behind a much older population and many that lack transportation to find work. For many years McDowell County was nicknamed the "Free state of McDowell" due to social and political race relations that is uncommon in the rest of the state. McDowell County is considered as one of the core counties in Appalachia on which the national War on Poverty focused, a national effort started during President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration.  Its county seat is Welch. - wikipedia.org MCDOWELL COUNTY ONLINE DATA BIOGRAPHIES BIRTH  CEMETERIES CENSUS DEATHS HISTORY MARRIAGES MILITARY RECORDS OBITUARIES NEWSPAPER DATA  WILLS Website Updates: Dec 2011: Census Excerpts; William Walter Presley Biography Jul 2011: Harman Family Marriages Apr 2011: Payne Family and James French Strother Biographies Surrounding Counties Wyoming County (north) Mercer County (east) Buchanan County, Virginia (southwest) Mingo County (northwest) Tazewell County, Virginia (south) Back to WV Genealogy Trails Back to Genealogy Trails Copyright © Genealogy Trails All data on this website is Copyright by Genealogy Trails with full rights reserved for original submitters.