Princeton, is a city in and the county seat of Mercer County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 5,872 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Bluefield micropolitan area. The city hosts the Princeton WhistlePigs baseball club of the Appalachian League.
History
Early history
Princeton was named after the Battle of Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey, where General Hugh Mercer, the namesake of Mercer County, had died. When the county was formed in 1837, William Smith donated 1.5 acres of land for the county courthouse in what would become Princeton.
Although Princeton did not see any major battles on its soil, there was the Battle of Pigeon Roost, or the Battle of Princeton Courthouse on May 17, 1862, a victory for the Confederates defending the Dublin railroad.
Princeton had been burned a couple of weeks earlier on May 1 under the command of Captain Walter Jenifer, CSA to prevent the Union army from acquiring their supplies. The town was not burned in retaliation or anger toward the residents of Princeton. In fact, according to local history, many of the residents of Princeton torched their own homes and moved on from the area. Few structures would remain after the fire. The Robert McNutt house is the only structure that remains in Princeton which, ironically, served as headquarters for the Union army at one time. Princeton and Mercer County would remain supportive of the Confederacy, and was not included in the original counties that made up the new state of West Virginia.
By the end of 1865 Judge Nathaniel Harrison was appointed as circuit judge, and Princeton residents shunned him because he was a Confederate turncoat. Princeton slowly rebuilt during Reconstruction, but the railroad would eventually bring significant growth to Princeton.
Current City Council
Mayor: David E. Graham
Vice Mayor: Marshall V. Lytton
Council Members: Joseph G. Allen, Aiden Stout, Bryce Havens, James Hawkins, James V Hill, Jacqueline Rucker, Austin Husband, Dewey Russell
Growth of coal industry
In Southern West Virginia, in the late 19th century, coal mining and transportation by the emerging technology of the railroads combined to form a new industry. Much of the region's bituminous coal was sent northwest to the Great Lakes, or northeast to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's coal piers at Baltimore, or to the world's greatest ice-free port of Hampton Roads in eastern Virginia.
Princeton's location was east of the primary coalfields, and most of the coal mining and railroad activity was initially elsewhere. However, a combination of factors would soon change that, and have profound financial and developmental impact on Princeton.
Railway development
In 1896, engineer William Nelson Page developed the Loup Creek and Deepwater Railway, a logging railroad connecting a small sawmill on the old Loup Creek Estate at Robson with the C&O railroad's main line at Deepwater on the Kanawha River. In 1898, it was rechartered as the Deepwater Railway, with modest plans to extend to nearby coal mines at Glen Jean. Around 1903, the new town of Page became the location of one if the earliest stations on the expanding Deepwater Railway, as well as home of the Page Coal and Coke Company.
In 1902, William Page enlisted the support of millionaire industrialist Henry H. Rogers as a silent partner to finance the expansion of the Deepwater Railway much further, about 80 miles through Mullens to reach a N&W railroad branch line at Matoaka to open up new territory with untapped deposits of high volatile bituminous coal. Page, Rogers, and other wealthy investors owned much of this land.
However, as construction of the expanded Deepwater Railway line got underway, Page found he was unsuccessful in negotiating fair rates to interchange traffic with either major railroad, nor in interesting them in buying his short line railroad. This was later revealed to be caused by collusion by the leaders of the big railroads, notably Alexander Cassatt, William Kissam Vanderbilt, and Frederick J. Kimball, who sought to control shipping rates and coal prices, and prevent any newcomers from entry. They assumed that any entrepreneurs of modest means, such as William Page appeared to be, would become discouraged and give up. In their experience, building costly enterprises such as railroads customarily meant raising large sums of money through public stock offerings and bonds.