Section 1 of the Ordinance to Provide for the Formation of a New State, passed on August 20, 1861, Virginia Convention (1861: Wheeling), Ordinances, 1861, Acc. 40654, State Government Records Collection, Library of Virginia.
The final session of the series of Virginia Conventions that met in Wheeling adopted an ordinance on August 20, 1861, to hold a convention to write a constitution for a new state. The name that the August convention chose was Kanawha, but the convention that met from November 26, 1861, to February 18, 1862, and wrote the constitution named it West Virginia. The first section of the ordinance listed thirty-nine counties all in the Ohio River Valley and in the western mountains of Virginia, but the third section allowed for the possible inclusion of Berkeley, Greenbrier, Hampshire, Hardy, Jefferson, Morgan, and Pocahontas Counties. All of them had become part of the new state of West Virginia by 1865, as well as the counties of McDowell, Mercer, Monroe, and Pendleton. The Fairfax Stone mentioned in the first section was the boundary marker placed in 1746 to mark the western boundary of the Northern Neck Proprietary. It was at the approximate longitude of the western boundary of Maryland.