By Mary Johnson

The West Virginia Conference Commission on Archives and History looks forward to welcoming people to all over West Virginia for the Northeastern Jurisdictional CAH annual meeting May 9-11, 2017, in Charleston.

Our host city is the state capital of West Virginia and the state’s largest city. The meeting will be held at the picturesque Saint John XXIII Pastoral Center, 100 Hodges Road, Charleston, which is operated by the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball will lead the opening worship on Tuesday, May 9. After dinner at John XXIII, an evening presentation will review the history of the salt industry in the Kanawha Valley, setting the stage for part of Wednesday’s bus tour. Carved by the river of the same name, the Kanawha Valley was blessed with salt and other natural resources and developed into one of West Virginia’s most important industrial centers.

The Wednesday tour will begin with a visit to the West Virginia State Museum in the State Capitol
Complex, where we will explore West Virginia’s history. Then we will visit Tamarack, the unique artisan center in Beckley, for lunch and perhaps a bit of shopping. (For more information on Tamarack, see www.
tamarackwv.com/what-we-are/experience-tamarack.html) In the afternoon, Bishop Francis Asbury will provide a perspective on the faith journey, from the church in his time to our day and time, and discuss his travels in and experiences of the trans-Allegheny frontier. Asbury was a frequent visitor in the late 1700s and early 1800s to what was then western Virginia. The return trip to Charleston will feature a tour of the J. Q. Dickinson Salt Works at Malden, currently operated by two 7th-generation descendants of one of the Kanawha Valley’s early salt manufacturers. Malden also was the boyhood home of Booker T. Washington. The tour will conclude at Simpson Memorial UMC, where we will have dinner and hear a presentation on the African American congregation, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in October 2016. Afterwards, we will learn about the role of Methodism in the West Virginia Statehood movement that culminated in our admission to the Union on June 20, 1863. We hope to see you in Charleston in May!

The form below provides options for registration with or without lodging at Saint John XXIII:
Information and Registration

NEJCAH Meeting 2010, Vermont