Gordon Battelle (November 14, 1814 – August 7, 1862) was a Methodist minister, educator, abolitionist, chaplain and one of the founders of the state of West Virginia during the American Civil War.
Battelle then continued his education (for Christian ministry) at Allegheny College at Meadville, Pennsylvania, graduating with the highest rank in his class and receiving a B.A.
Battelle received his preaching license in 1842 and was ordained as a Methodist deacon in 1847 and minister in 1849.
By that time Battelle had become the principal of the Northwestern Virginia Academy at Clarksburg, a position he held until 1851, when he resigned to concentrate on his ministry (at a church in Charleston).
[4][6] In 1859, he accepted a call to serve a congregation in Wheeling and became involved in the growing division between slaveholding Virginians who proposed to secede from the Union.
Battelle as an official visitor to Federal military camps to investigate reports of poor conditions, particularly concerning medical supplies and a shortage of doctors and nurses.
[7] Battelle was also among the many Methodist ministers elected in October 1861 to serve as delegates to the West Virginia Constitutional Convention.
[4] Partly as a result, however, of his published"An Address to the Constitutional Convention and the People of West Virginia" Congress refused to admit West Virginia as a new state until its people adopted a resolution against slavery (the Waitman Willey amendment) in March 1863.