Qualla: Welch, West Virginia

Welch, West Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coal town guy, CC BY-SA 3.0. On May 29, 1961, in the McDowell County seat of Welch, Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman handed Mr. and Mrs. Alderson Muncy ninety-five dollars in federal food stamps. The Muncys had fifteen people in their household. They lived in Paynesville, about half an hour away. Reporters watched. It was the first issuance of food stamps under the Kennedy administration, the beginning of what would become a national program, and it happened in Welch because Welch was the place that had taught John F. Kennedy, the year before, what an emptying coalfield actually looked like.

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Image: Coal town guy | CC BY-SA 3.0

Welch, West Virginia: Records by Wagon

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Russell Lee, Public domain. Welch became the county seat of McDowell County in 1892, before it was even incorporated. The election was contested. To stop the brewing violence, James F. Strother and Trigg Tabor loaded the county records into two wagons one night and quietly moved them from the old seat at Pe...

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Image: Russell Lee | Public domain

Welch, West Virginia: The Heart of the Nation's Coal Bin

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Magnolia677, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the first half of the twentieth century, Welch was the retail and medical center for a county pushing toward 100,000 people, with three hospitals and a downtown of brick commercial buildings that pulled coal miners' wages from every direction. The town built the first public c...

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Image: Magnolia677 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Welch, West Virginia: Hatfield and Chambers at the Courthouse

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Russell Lee, Public domain. On August 1, 1921, Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield and his friend Ed Chambers walked up the McDowell County Courthouse steps in Welch to face charges related to the alleged blowing up of a coal tipple in Mohawk. Detectives from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, the same agenc...

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Image: Russell Lee | Public domain

Welch, West Virginia: What Kennedy Saw

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Russell Lee, Public domain. When John F. Kennedy's campaign caravan drove into Welch in 1960, the candidate from Massachusetts saw closed storefronts, empty company houses, and lines of men out of work in the highest coal-producing county in America. In Canton, Ohio that September he repeated the contradict...

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Image: Russell Lee | Public domain

Welch, West Virginia: The Long Decline and the People Who Stayed

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Russell Lee, Public domain. The 1986 closure of the US Steel mines at nearby Gary erased more than 1,200 jobs in a year. Personal income in McDowell County dropped by two-thirds in the following year alone. Welch's annual Veterans Day Parade still draws crowds — Presidents Truman and Johnson both spoke at i...

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Image: Russell Lee | Public domain