The town of Gilmer of today is about two miles south of the spot where
the city was first located. A century ago it was two miles north, on the
Cherokee Trace, and the occasional district court was held in the home
of Captain William Hart. We find that the first court trial was in 1837.
There was no public building, so court was held either in the Hart home,
or if the weather permitted, under a large oak tree, that until a few
years ago, was still standing.
Then Gilmer was, for the most part, a swampy waste, with a few houses
dotting both sides of Cypress Creek. The location was most unfavorable
as the creek often rose so high that the town was threatened with
disaster. So the settlers decided they would move some distance either
to the north or to the south of this location. There seemed to be a
considerable sectional feeling among the settlers, however, and every
one on the north side of the creek wanted the town to go north, while
those on the south side wanted it to go south. The location was finally
left to a vote. The night before the day for the election, so it is
told, a heavy rain storm came up, and the creek rose to such a height
that a number of those on the north side could not cross the creek to
vote, and the voting place was located on the south side. So it was
decided to move Gilmer to the south.
The legislature of 1849 appointed three of the board of the county
commissioners of Upshur County to select the site for Gilmer, the county
seat. They were Benjamin Fuller, M. M. Robertson, and Benjamin Gage. The
committee selected the present site and bought the land from Mathew
Cartwright, who made the deed to the commissioners as is recorded in
Volume A, Book 1, of the Upshur County records. T. D. Brooks was the
first county judge of Upshur County, and the first deed recorded in the
sale of town lots of Gilmer, was to Augustus Walker for lots 1 and 2
from James H. Hunt. It was dated March 1, 1851. The home of Benjamin
Gage, one of the first commissioners, was on White Oak Creek, north of
the Gilmer and Big Sandy road, and is still standing, although built
near a hundred years ago. The house is now occupied by Alton Gage, a
grandson of Benjamin Gage, and bids fair to last another hundred years.
It is reported that Mr. Gage paid a man one hundred dollars to build
this house for him. It is said that the nearest neighbor when he settled
here was nine miles away.
Gilmer was moved to its present location in 1848, and began a rapid
growth. Eighteen years later, it was incorporated into a town with Alias
Oden as first mayor. He named the boundaries of the town as follows: As
far north as the termination of Trinity street; west to its present
limits, just beyond Oak Lawn Sanitarium: South to what is now Warren
Avenue, and east, one block from the square. The area of the town was
almost as large as it is at present with fewer inhabitants. The
incorporation charter died after a few years, but in 1894 the town was
re-incorporated with Jim Bussy as mayor, and new boundaries were set up
which remain the same to this day.
When Gilmer was moved to its present site, it had to be built from the
very beginning. The land had to be cleared and lumber prepared for the
building of houses, usually from logs from trees cleared away from the
new town. It was a wild country they had to open up and make safe for
living, since in 1849 it is reported that bears came from the nearby
woods and ate food from the back doors, and deer and turkey and other
game could be killed in the clearing of the town square. Many residents,
now not so old, can still remember a great ditch, carrying a stream from
the old Indian camp (Roosevelt Park) almost to the square. And it was
not until Judge T. H. Briggs’ first term of office as mayor that a great
gully ran diagonally across the square from the southeast to the
northwest corner.
So Gilmer and Upshur County have had to change with the changing times.
First the pioneer and the sawmiller, then the cotton farmer, then oil,
now yams and a greater diversification than was ever known.