[4] The first Episcopal Church in present-day West Virginia was established as a log structure in 1740 near Bunker Hill in Berkeley County.

Services at Morgan Chapel were led by local lay readers and by occasional priests visiting from Christ Church in Winchester, Virginia.

Morgan Chapel is maintained as a historical site, but worship services are now held in nearby Zion Episcopal Church, Charles Town.

[6] Westward expansion of white settlers in the late eighteenth century encouraged the founding of Episcopal Churches near the Ohio River.

Mirroring Virginia politics, diocesan bishops based in Williamsburg and Richmond often overlooked Episcopalians living west of the Blue Ridge.

Dr. Joseph Doddridge, a Pennsylvania-born missionary, were especially significant in establishing frontier churches in the Upper Ohio Valley.

At the organizational meeting led by Virginia bishop Francis McNeece Whittle (who chose to remain with the larger diocese), 14 clergy and 16 lay delegates agreed to extend an invitation to Rev.

He thus made the town diocesan headquarters and ultimately succeeded in raising the funds and building the Church of the Good Shepherd in Parkersburg in 1891.

In 1899, Peterkin found visitations increasingly difficult and asked for a bishop coadjutor, the diocesan convention elected Rev.

[12] In the early 1950s, the diocese acquired Sandscrest Farms near Oglebay Park in Wheeling as a bequest from philanthropists Harry and Helen Turner Sands.