Appalachian Community Histories – Girard, Wayne County: Roads, Coal, and Life in Stonewall District
Girard is the kind of Appalachian place that can be easy to overlook if history is measured only by incorporated towns, courthouses, railroad stations, and large coal camps. Tucked into the hills of eastern Wayne County, West Virginia, Girard never developed the paper trail of a Huntington, Wayne, or even nearby East Lynn. Its history instead has to be pieced together from old maps, county records, newspapers, census schedules, geological surveys, and the history of the larger Stonewall District around it.
Yet Girard was not imaginary, nor was it simply a name that appeared on a modern map. West Virginia’s historical place-name records document Girard in Wayne County by 1907, the 1933 New Descriptive Atlas of West Virginia placed it among the recognized communities of Stonewall District, and a 1935 newspaper article named Girard directly when describing one of the county’s major Works Progress Administration road projects. Those scattered references reveal a small rural community whose story followed many of the patterns that shaped southern West Virginia in the twentieth century: isolated settlement, family landholding, mineral development, difficult transportation, and finally the construction of better roads that tied the hollows more closely to the outside world.
Before Girard Had a Name
Long before the name Girard entered West Virginia’s place-name records, settlers were moving into the eastern part of what became Wayne County.
A retrospective history published in the Wayne County News on November 27, 1919, described Stonewall District as lying in the eastern part of the county and said that it had been named in memory of Confederate general Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. According to that account, John Bias built a cabin at the mouth of Lick Creek in 1802. David Bartram arrived the following year, and by 1807 other pioneer households had appeared in the district. The newspaper named Berry Adkins, Thomas Napier, William Lambert, Jesse Adkins, John Ferguson, Thomas Moore, Eldridge Smith, William Thompson, William Ferguson, Absalom Queen, Walter Queen, John Withrow, John Osburn, Ambrose Watts, and William Watts among the early settlers.
These families entered a landscape where the creek bottoms offered the most practical locations for cabins, fields, mills, roads, and eventually schools. Mountain ridges separated one drainage from another, which meant that communities often developed less like compact villages and more like networks of farms strung along branches and forks.
The same 1919 account reported that Sherrard Adkins established an old-fashioned gristmill at the mouth of Lick Creek in 1817. A sawmill followed in 1843. Thomas Napier reportedly built Stonewall District’s first schoolhouse near the mouth of Rich Creek, while Bethesda Church, organized in 1835, was remembered as the district’s earliest religious organization. A Methodist congregation at Queens Ridge followed in 1840, and the district’s first Sunday school was said to have begun in 1852.
Girard had not yet appeared under that name during these earliest decades, but the pattern was already in place. Families settled the creek valleys, mills turned local grain and timber into usable products, churches and schools provided gathering places, and family names became attached to hollows, branches, cemeteries, and roads.
By the time H. H. Hardesty & Company published its history and map of Wayne County in 1884, the county had been developing for generations, but Girard does not appear to have been established as a recognized place name in the surviving references from that period. That absence makes the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries especially important because somewhere during those years a section of Stonewall District acquired a new name.
Girard Appears in the Historical Record
The clearest early evidence comes from West Virginia Archives and History.
Its statewide historical place-name index gives a remarkably brief entry: “Girard | Wayne | 1907.” The notation should not be read as proof that Girard was founded in 1907. Small Appalachian communities rarely began on a single documented date. Instead, the entry establishes that the name was recognized in historical geographic records by that year.
That distinction matters. Girard may have been used informally by residents before 1907, or it may have emerged around that time as surveyors, road officials, mapmakers, or local residents needed a recognizable name for the settlement.
An early USGS Wayne-area map from 1909 provides another tantalizing clue. A modern index of the original U.S. Geological Survey sheet lists a settlement spelled “Gerrard” alongside East Lynn, Armilda, Nestlow, Stiltner, and other places in the same part of Wayne County. Whether that represents an alternate early spelling of Girard, a cartographic error, or a distinct naming convention has not yet been conclusively established. The map nevertheless places a similarly named settlement within the same early twentieth-century landscape where Girard was emerging in state records. Pastmaps
By 1933, the spelling was no longer ambiguous in one of West Virginia’s major reference works. The New Descriptive Atlas of West Virginia listed Girard among the communities of Stonewall District together with Armilda, Bartram, Cove Creek, East Lynn, Gilkerson, Nestlow, and Stiltner.
That list says something important about what a “community” meant in rural Appalachia. Girard did not need incorporated boundaries, a mayor, or a courthouse square to be a recognized place. A cluster of households connected by a road, creek, school, church, cemetery, store, or shared identity could be enough.
Coal, Gas, and the Changing Stonewall District
Girard’s emergence as a named community coincided with a period when Stonewall District was becoming increasingly important for its natural resources.
The 1919 Wayne County News history stated that coal and natural gas could be found across much of the district and that shallow oil pools were also known, though the newspaper said the oil had not been developed profitably. It credited the East Lynn Coal Company with doing much to develop the area’s mineral wealth and predicted that additional coal lands might encourage further expansion.
A major West Virginia Geological Survey report published in 1913 offers the broader scientific background. Charles E. Krebs and D. D. Teets Jr.’s Cabell, Wayne and Lincoln Counties devoted hundreds of pages to the region’s geology, coal measures, petroleum, natural gas, soils, timber, road materials, and Wayne County well records. The report appeared only a few years after Girard entered the state place-name record, capturing the physical and economic landscape during precisely the period when the community was becoming identifiable by name.
It would be misleading to describe Girard itself as a major coal camp without stronger evidence. The surviving material does not show a large company town at Girard comparable to those found farther south in Logan, Mingo, or McDowell counties. What the sources do show is that Girard belonged to a district increasingly shaped by mineral development.
Coal leases, gas wells, timbering, road construction, and nearby industrial activity changed how people moved through the hills and how isolated farms connected with outside markets. A family might continue farming a narrow valley while mineral rights beneath the property became economically valuable. A road originally used by wagons might begin carrying machinery, timber, coal workers, or trucks.
Girard’s history therefore fits a broader Wayne County pattern in which agriculture and extractive industry existed side by side rather than one instantly replacing the other.
The Road Through Girard
The strongest surviving newspaper reference to Girard itself appeared during the Great Depression.
On November 7, 1935, the Wayne County News reported that work had begun on a Wayne County road project approved through the Works Progress Administration. The first section ran from Lavalette through Bowen and Winslow to the mouth of Bowen’s Creek, with additional work extending through Cabell County. Crews were widening and draining the road, laying a stone base, surfacing it with creek gravel, and constructing steel-beam bridges with stone abutments.
Then the newspaper described the larger goal.
The road was eventually intended to continue all the way to East Lynn “via Nestlow and Girard,” creating a route of approximately thirty-five miles from Lavalette to East Lynn. The projected cost for the entire stretch was $197,328.
For Girard, that single sentence may be one of the most important surviving pieces of evidence in its history.
It shows that by 1935 Girard was recognizable enough that a county newspaper could use the name when describing a major transportation route without explaining where the community was. Girard was part of the geographic language of Wayne County.
The project was also part of a much larger transformation occurring across rural America. The newspaper called these WPA improvements “farm-to-market roads,” a phrase that explains their importance better than almost anything else. Better roads allowed families living along remote creeks to move produce, livestock, timber, and other goods toward towns and markets while gaining easier access to schools, physicians, stores, government offices, and employment.
The state road commission supervised the work, while WPA labor supplied the manpower. The equipment listed in the newspaper included a shovel, tractor, air compressor, and six trucks. Wayne County’s WPA allotment was reported at $482,000, with employment planned for 1,739 people across approved projects.
For residents of places like Girard and Nestlow, New Deal road construction was not an abstract federal program discussed only in Washington. It arrived in the hills as men with shovels, trucks, bridge beams, crushed stone, and road machinery.
The road changed the meaning of distance.
A Community of Hollows, Branches, and Family Ground
Later topographic maps reveal just how deeply Girard remained connected to the landscape around it.
The 1962 Nestlow U.S. Geological Survey quadrangle, later revised and republished, identifies Girard together with Gilkerson and Nestlow amid a dense network of creeks, forks, hollows, cemeteries, roads, and resource-development features. The map records names such as Camp Creek, Millers Fork, Peter Cave Branch, Tiger Fork, Coal Hollow, Horse Hollow, Sweet Potato Knob, Buzzard Roost Knob, and Windy Oak Knob.
Equally revealing are the cemeteries. Adkins, Bradshaw, Davis, Isaacs, Mills, Morrison, Parsons, Sanders, Skeens, and other family burial grounds appear across the surrounding landscape. These small cemeteries are more than map symbols. They represent generations of settlement in which families remained tied to particular ridges, hollows, and watersheds long enough for their names to become part of the geography itself.
The map also records gas wells and other evidence of resource extraction in the wider area. Again, those features should not all be assigned directly to Girard, but they help reconstruct the world in which Girard residents lived. By the middle twentieth century, the countryside around the community combined older family farms and burial grounds with schools, churches, county roads, mines, and gas development.
That mixture is one of the defining characteristics of rural Appalachian history. Modernization did not always arrive by wiping away the old landscape. More often it layered new infrastructure over it.
A gas well might stand near a family cemetery. A surfaced county road might follow a route first worn by wagons. A twentieth-century school could serve children whose grandparents had grown up in scattered cabins along the same creek.
Girard survived within those layers.
The Mystery of Girard’s Name
One of the most interesting unanswered questions is also one of the simplest.
Why was the community called Girard?
There is an intriguing possibility involving the Adkins family. An annotated transcription of the 1900 Wayne County census includes a man named Girard Adkins, born in April 1857, the son of Thomas and Louisa Adkins. His household included his wife Elizabeth Bradshaw Adkins and several children, including a son also named Girard.
The timing immediately attracts attention. Girard Adkins was an adult resident of Wayne County before the state place-name index recorded the community of Girard in 1907. The Adkins family also had deep roots in Stonewall District, where Adkins families appeared among the pioneers remembered in the 1919 district history.
It would make a satisfying explanation to discover that the settlement took its name from Girard Adkins or from property belonging to his family.
At present, however, the evidence does not justify making that claim.
No deed, county road record, newspaper article, map annotation, post-office document, or contemporary history located so far explicitly states that Girard was named for Girard Adkins. The connection is therefore a research lead, not an established fact. The source research behind this article likewise cautions that the possible Adkins connection remains unproven until stronger documentary evidence can connect the man to the place name.
That unanswered question is exactly why small-community history can be so rewarding. A deed describing property “at Girard,” a road order referring to the “Girard Adkins place,” or a forgotten newspaper item could settle the question with a few lines of text.
Until then, the responsible answer is that the origin of Girard’s name remains uncertain.
The Records Beneath the Story
Much of Girard’s deeper history probably still exists, but not in sources that have been fully digitized or indexed.
The West Virginia State Archives holds extensive Wayne County court materials, including nineteenth-century deed books, deed indexes extending well into the twentieth century, wills, appraisement books, survey records, chancery materials, marriages, births, deaths, and other county records. These collections offer the best chance of tracing the actual landowners around Girard before and after the name appeared.
The federal census schedules for Stonewall District are equally important. Rural people were often enumerated under a district rather than beneath the name of a tiny settlement, meaning that simply searching a census for “Girard” may miss the families who actually lived there. Mapping households against deeds, cemeteries, creek names, and enumeration districts could eventually reconstruct the community almost farm by farm.
Other collections offer similar possibilities. The Fred B. Lambert Papers at Marshall University contain Wayne County deeds, wills, cemetery readings, family histories, newspaper material, and interviews, while the Cabell-Wayne Historical Society Collection preserves regional photographs, court records, genealogy, transportation materials, church information, correspondence, and newspapers.
Somewhere in those records may be the missing story of how Girard became Girard.
What Happened to Girard?
Girard never became a large town, but that does not mean it disappeared.
Later topographic mapping continued to identify Girard, including the detailed Nestlow quadrangle of the 1960s and its later revisions. Modern USGS-derived mapping still recognizes the name alongside Nestlow and Gilkerson, preserving more than a century of documented geographic continuity.
What changed was the nature of rural community life.
Improved roads made neighboring settlements easier to reach. Schools consolidated. Automobiles reduced dependence on tiny neighborhood stores and gathering places. Employment increasingly required travel beyond the immediate hollow. Postal addresses could become associated with a larger nearby community even while an older place name remained alive on maps and in local speech.
The result can make places like Girard look almost invisible to outsiders.
There may be no downtown to photograph, no municipal boundary to cross, and no large roadside sign announcing arrival. Yet the community survives through a name, a landscape, family cemeteries, road networks, memories, and the archival records left behind by people who lived there.
Why Girard Matters
Girard’s history is valuable precisely because it was never one of West Virginia’s major towns.
Most people in Appalachian history did not live beside a courthouse square or inside a booming company town. They lived in places more like Girard, scattered along creeks and branches where the meaning of “community” depended on neighbors, kinship, roads, schools, churches, cemeteries, and the geography of the mountains.
Girard emerged from the older settlement of Stonewall District, became a recognized place name by the opening years of the twentieth century, lived through the coal and gas development reshaping eastern Wayne County, and appeared directly in plans for a major WPA farm-to-market road during the Depression. By the middle of the century, detailed maps still placed it within a landscape crowded with family names and Appalachian institutions.
There are still gaps. We do not yet know exactly when neighbors first began calling the place Girard. We do not know with certainty who or what gave it that name. We cannot point to a single founding ceremony or one surviving document that tells the entire story.
But that may be the most authentic part of Girard’s history.
Communities in the Appalachian hills were not always founded. Sometimes they simply grew until everyone around them knew what to call them.
Girard was one of those places.
Sources & Further Reading
West Virginia Archives and History. “Place Names in West Virginia: G.” Entry for “Girard | Wayne | 1907.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Accessed October 9, 2026. West Virginia Place Names Index
West Virginia Archives and History. “Districts and Place Names in West Virginia.” Adapted from New Descriptive Atlas of West Virginia. Clarksburg, WV: Clarksburg Publishing Company, 1933. Districts and Place Names in West Virginia
Wayne County News. “Squibs from Early History of Districts in This County: Stonewall District.” November 27, 1919. West Virginia Archives and History. Wayne County News, November 27, 1919
Wayne County News. “Beech Fork Road Project Started Tuesday by WPA.” November 7, 1935. Transcribed by the Wayne County Genealogical & Historical Society. Wayne County News, 1935 Transcriptions
U.S. Geological Survey. Wayne, West Virginia Quadrangle. Historical topographic map. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, early twentieth century. Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas at Austin. West Virginia Historical Topographic Maps
U.S. Geological Survey. Nestlow, West Virginia Quadrangle. 1:24,000. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1962, with later revisions. Nestlow Historical Topographic Map
Krebs, Charles E., and D. D. Teets Jr. Cabell, Wayne and Lincoln Counties. County Reports and Maps 4. Wheeling, WV: West Virginia Geological Survey, 1913. National Geologic Map Database Record
Krebs, Charles E., and D. D. Teets Jr. “East Lynn Sandstone.” In Cabell, Wayne and Lincoln Counties. West Virginia Geological Survey, 1913. U.S. Geological Survey National Geologic Map Database. USGS Geolex East Lynn References
H. H. Hardesty & Company. History of Wayne County, West Virginia. 1884. Reproduced by the Wayne County Genealogical & Historical Society. Hardesty’s History of Wayne County
United States Census Bureau. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900: Wayne County, West Virginia. Record Group 29, Microfilm Publication T623. National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives Census Resources
United States Census Bureau. Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910: Wayne County, West Virginia. Record Group 29, Microfilm Publication T624. National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives Census Resources
United States Census Bureau. Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920: Wayne County, West Virginia. Record Group 29, Microfilm Publication T625. National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives Census Resources
United States Census Bureau. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930: Wayne County, West Virginia. Record Group 29, Microfilm Publication T626. National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives Census Resources
United States Census Bureau. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940: Wayne County, West Virginia. Record Group 29, Microfilm Publication T627. National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives Census Resources
National Archives and Records Administration. Enumeration District Maps for the Twelfth through Sixteenth Censuses of the United States, 1900–1940. Microfilm Publication A3378, Record Group 29. National Archives Census and Enumeration District Resources
West Virginia State Archives. “Wayne County Court Records.” In County Court Records Microfilm Holdings. Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Includes deeds, deed indexes, wills, survey records, chancery records, vital records, and related county materials. West Virginia State Archives County Court Records
West Virginia Archives and History. “West Virginia Vital Research Records: Birth Records.” Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. West Virginia Birth Records Search
West Virginia Archives and History. “West Virginia Vital Research Records: Marriage Records.” Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. West Virginia Marriage Records Search
West Virginia Archives and History. “West Virginia Vital Research Records: Death Records.” Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. West Virginia Death Records Search
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Historical Records Survey.” Wayne County, Reels 252–254. West Virginia University Libraries. The Wayne County holdings include a county history, office inventories, births, marriages, wills, and inventories. WVU Historical Records Survey
Marshall University Special Collections. Fred B. Lambert Papers, 1809–1964. Manuscript Collection 0236. Huntington, WV: Marshall University. Fred B. Lambert Papers
Marshall University Special Collections. Cabell-Wayne Historical Society Collection, 1880–1973. Manuscript Collection 0099. Huntington, WV: Marshall University. Cabell-Wayne Historical Society Collection Finding Aid
West Virginia and Regional History Center. Wayne County Newspaper Clippings, 1949. A&M 0168. West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. Wayne County Newspaper Clippings Collection
Wayne County Genealogical & Historical Society. 1900 Census of Wayne County, West Virginia. Annotated transcription. Includes Girard Adkins and his family. Wayne County 1900 Census Material
Massey, Tim R. “Wayne County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Last revised April 23, 2026. e-WV Wayne County
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Maps, Atlases, and Gazetteers.” West Virginia University Libraries. Includes the 1933 New Descriptive Atlas of West Virginia, USGS topographic maps, Hamill Kenny’s West Virginia Place Names, and other West Virginia geographic references. WVRHC Maps, Atlases, and Gazetteers
Kenny, Hamill. West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains. Piedmont, WV: Place Name Press, 1945. West Virginia and Regional History Center. WVRHC Gazetteer and Place Name Resources
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. West Virginia Gazetteer of Physical and Cultural Place Names. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, 1986. WVRHC Gazetteer Resources
U.S. Geological Survey. West Virginia Geographic Names. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, Topographic Division, 1981. WVRHC Geographic Name Resources
Author Note: Girard is one of the many small Appalachian communities whose story survives more clearly in maps, newspapers, and county records than in traditional town histories. I hope this article helps preserve its place in Wayne County history while leaving room for future records to answer the mystery of its name.