The History of Princeton.

In 1837, settlers scattered across the far reaches of Giles and Tazewell counties faced a hard journey over the mountains to reach a county seat — Pearisburg, for Giles County, or Jeffersonville (now Tazewell).

Owning land was the reason most families had come to America, and the county courthouse was where land was recorded and taxes were paid. Tired of the long trip, these settlers petitioned the Virginia legislature to form a county of their own.

The legislature agreed, and on March 17, 1837, Mercer County was created from parts of both Tazewell County to the west and Giles County. It was named for a Revolutionary War soldier, Brigadier General Hugh Mercer. A commission of men was appointed to choose the location of the county seat, meeting at the home of Mitchell Clay near Clear Creek — close to present-day Morrison Drive by the hospital.

The land of Mercer County was still nearly empty — a country of trails and a few scattered log farmhouses, with no real roads. Captain William Smith came to the commission's meeting and offered to donate 112 acres for a courthouse, on the spot where the courthouse still stands today.

Smith had good reason to be generous: his own land surrounded the donated ground, and the surveyor, Christian Walker, laid out and sold forty town lots on it. The town was named Princeton for the New Jersey battle where General Hugh Mercer had been mortally wounded in the Revolution. Walker Street took the surveyor's name.

Captain Smith also gave land for churches, schools, and what became the Town Spring, on the corner of Honaker and North Walker. The first brick courthouse was built in 1839 — but it was so poorly made that it soon had to be torn down and rebuilt.

For fifty years the Town Spring was the only source of water in Princeton. Two hotels stood on either side of the courthouse, and each day sent barrels drawn by oxen down to the spring to be filled for the day's use.

The town's first doctor was Robert B. McNutt, who built a house in 1840 on the corner of North Walker Street and Honaker. Dr. McNutt was the only physician between Kanawha Courthouse — now Charleston — and Bristol, Virginia, and he helped found the Princeton Savings Bank, the only lender in town.

In 1865, a Confederate surgeon named Dr. Isiah Bee settled in Princeton and bought a large tract of land that took in much of today's Stafford Drive and Rogers Street — including the ground where the Railroad Museum now stands, and where the Episcopal Church was later built on land he donated. Even so, Princeton was tiny: the 1840 census counted just 243 people in all of Mercer County, with only 45 houses in the town.

Early in the war, the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, under General J. D. Cox, pushed Confederate troops southwestward through the mountains. The Mercer County line along Flat Top Mountain became the dividing line between Union and Confederate territory.

On May 1, 1862, a small but important skirmish broke out around the home of Henry Clark, west of town. As Union forces drove the Confederates south toward Princeton, the retreating Confederate soldiers set the town ablaze — even though Princeton was a Confederate town.

Only a few buildings escaped the fire. One was Dr. McNutt's house, which served as headquarters for Lieutenant Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes — a future President of the United States — and as a hospital. Another was the home of attorney David Hall, then the largest house in Princeton, spared because it too was used as a hospital.

After the war, a circuit judge named Harrison — distrusted as a turncoat — carried off the courthouse records, which had been saved from the flames by an enslaved man named George Hall, and began holding court at Concord Church. Sheriff Ben White brought the records back to Princeton, and for years they moved between the two places until, in 1874, the West Virginia legislature officially returned the county seat to Princeton.

Concord Church was given a state college as consolation — Concord College, now Concord University — and the town renamed itself Athens.

Later, the booming railroad town of Bluefield tried to seize the county seat for itself. In a hard-fought 1890s election, Princeton allowed the roughly 600 Virginian Railway construction workers living in tents on what is now the museum grounds to vote as residents — and Princeton won. Bluefield, in turn, received a state school, the Bluefield Colored Institute, today Bluefield State University.

Nothing changed Princeton like the coming of the railroad. The Virginian Railway began surveying its line through the town in 1905, on its way from Norfolk, Virginia, to Deepwater, West Virginia.

The Virginian's depot on Mercer Street — and, even more, its great shops built just north of it — set the town booming. A 45-stall roundhouse for steam locomotives rose alongside a car-repair shop, an erecting shop and a reclamation plant. Utilities followed the workers: in 1907 the Princeton Power Company was franchised to bring electricity, and a water franchise was granted the same year.

The line reached Deepwater in 1909, and Princeton's center of gravity shifted toward the depot at the end of Mercer Street — a road once known as Concord Road, now lined with stores, hotels and restaurants. On February 26, 1909, the Town of Princeton officially became the City of Princeton, and that December a trolley line began running from the courthouse to the Virginian station.

Princeton's growth was extraordinary. Its population climbed from about 881 in 1900 to 3,027 in 1910, and to 6,224 by 1920. The Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian congregations all moved their churches from the old courthouse square out to Mercer Street. In 1912 the town paved its streets and installed a sewer system.

By the mid-1920s the Virginian shops employed more than 800 men, with an annual payroll of over a million dollars. At its height, Princeton boasted some sixty stores, three banks, four hotels, two hospitals, drugstores, mills and factories of every kind.

The Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1927, and the cornerstone of the Memorial Building was laid in 1928. Other employers followed the railroad — among them the Maidenform plant, which opened in Princeton in 1940 and, at its peak, employed hundreds of workers.

At their height the Virginian shops employed up to 1,100 men and served Princeton for more than fifty years. Locomotives and cars were repaired here, and some freight cars and cabooses were even built in Princeton.

In 1959 the Virginian was merged into the Norfolk & Western, and passenger service through Princeton ended that same year. The passenger station was torn down in 1970, and as work moved to Roanoke the shops fell silent; the last of the main shop buildings were cleared in April 2007.

But the story did not end there. In 2006 the lost passenger station was rebuilt on Mercer Street as the Princeton Railroad Museum — the very place you are visiting now, keeping the memory of the Virginian Railway and the town it built alive for the next generation.

Before the Revolution, the Anglican Church was the official church in Virginia, supported by taxes paid by everyone regardless of their faith. Once the Constitution separated church and state, congregations were free to build their own — and Princeton's did.

The first Baptist church began on West Main Street in 1840, organized that October with 35 members under circuit rider Matthew Ellison. The Methodists formed the Princeton Circuit in 1848. In 1891–1892 the Baptists and Methodists even built a shared Union Church on Main Street, taking turns at services — until the partnership dissolved over how to baptize. The First Baptist Church later moved to Mercer Street, dedicated in 1915, and the old Methodist building on West Main was bought by the Black congregation of Mount Calvary Baptist Church and moved to High Street, where it remains.

The Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest was built on land deeded by Dr. Isaiah Bee and his wife Mary, and dedicated in August 1896; a bell tower was added in 1908.

Before 1865 the schools of Mercer County were subscription schools — private schools paid for by parents. Public schools came after the Civil War, often one-room, meeting in churches or private homes. The first Princeton High School was built around 1922 on North Walker Street; after a new high school opened on Stafford Drive in 1981, the old building became Princeton Middle School.

The Princeton Public Library was established in 1914 by the Princeton Women's Club in a small three-room house. It later moved to the basement of the Memorial Building, then to Center Street in 1968, and finally, on August 28, 2010, into the old Princeton Post Office — where it serves some 26,000 residents of Princeton and Mercer County today.

And through the growing city ran the trolley. Samuel J. Evans built an interurban streetcar line that carried passengers from the Virginian rail depot up Mercer Street to the courthouse, and on all the way to Bluefield. The last trolley lines were removed in 1947, and the old brick streets — with their car tracks down the center — were paved over.