BURLINGTON, WV HISTORY

A hamlet and post office on Mill Creek, Welton District, Mineral County WV. Burlington may have been established as early as 1833. Named for Mr. Burl who once operated a grist mill here or for the English town of the same name. It's located where Mill Run empties into Patterson Creek iin the Patterson Creek Manor. First white settlers are believed to have settled here as early as 1738.
When the white men (Englishmen and Germans) first came to this area, there were no permanent Indian villages here. It had been used as a summer hunting ground as the winters were too cold and harsh for comfortable winter living. It is believed the Indians abandoned their villages in this general area, when the iroquois to the North and the Cherokees to the south fought for possession of the valleys of VA from 1650-1700. From then on, after the Iroquois or 5 Nations of New York conquered their southern neighbors, our state became a seasonal hunting ground for many tribes.
We know the location of this village is in the Patterson Creek Manor. Lord Fairfax's game and fish preserve, a 9000 acre manor surveyed by Joe Neville for Lord Fairfax in 1773. It is recorded there were originally 30 farms in the Patterson Creek Manor. Part of the Fairfax land came into the hands of Rev. Denny Martin, nephew of Lord Fairfax, providing the Rev. change his name to Fairfax. When he died without leaving heirs, tow maiden aunts inherited the whole Manor of 14,000 acres. They in turn sold it to John Marshall (who later became Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court), Richard Henry Lee or Revolutionary War fame and one Henry Colston. Colston soon bought out Marshall and Lee, and the Manor was kept intact until his heirs sued for a divinsion in 1830. It was about this time that Lot #6, owned by Solomon Hedges, passed into the possession of the Sloan family. It was the Solomon Hedges home that young George Washington, then a member of a survey team spent the night. Some of this Colston Land has been Bane property over the years.
Fairfax died near the end of the War, and the matter of confiscation of the Fairfax estate was taken to the Supreme Court. The Court decided that any person who had leased any of this land, raised crops on it, was entitled to the land. Also people who had purchased land from the persons to whom Fairfax had willed the land were entitled to keep it.
The influx of settlers came after the Revolutionary War, when the above mentioned land boundaries were settled. Some sources believe Joh, William and Archibald VanMeter were some of the earliest landholders here.