Fairmont - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

FAIRMONT, a city and the county-seat of Marion county, West Virginia, U.S.A., on both sides of the Monongahela river, about 75 m. S.E. of Wheeling. Pop. (1890) 1023; (1900) 5655, of whom 283 were of negro descent and 182 were foreign-born. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio railway. Among its manufactures are glass, machinery, flour and furniture, and it is an important shipping point for coal mined in the vicinity. The city is the seat of one of the West Virginia state normal schools. Fairmont was laid out as Middletown in 1819, became the countyseat of the newly established Marion county in 1842, received its present name about 1844, and was chartered as a city in 1899.