One of the first settlers in the area was John Ice, who was born in the valley of the South Branch of the Potomac River in what was then Virginia.

As a child, Ice and his father searched in vain for his mother, two sisters and brother who had been captured by Native Americans.

Native American activity was not uncommon in the area and many settlers and travelers met their fate at the hands of the Native Americans, including John Madison, the cousin of James Madison the future president, who was killed on a surveying trip in the area in 1783.

Most of the land now falling within the city limits, some 1,360 acres (5.5 km2), was owned by Robert Rutherford, a Revolutionary War financier and an intimate friend of George Washington.

A number of log houses began to be built, with the accompanying entrepreneurial activities that one might expect in an early settlement.

It was not until 1856 that the village officially became known as Mannington, named after Charles Manning, a civil engineer with the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad.

New planing mills, sawmills, and woodworking plants were started, and the availability of transportation also witnessed an increase in cattle, sheep and crop production.

During the American Civil War, the B&O railroad, of vital interest to both of the conflicting sides, sustained more damage than Mannington proper did.

While Confederate forces succeeded in burning several of the railroad bridges at the very beginning of the conflict, reinforcements from the Union insured the integrity of the Mannington section of the line for the remainder of the war.

Although many felt that the area was unfavorable for oil reserves, White persisted and soon gained enough local support to drill.

By 1900, Mannington was a thriving town, complete with its own trolley system, electricity, theaters, schools, fire department, telephones and other amenities.

In 1923, Albert Heck began the formation of the first community radio cable system from Mannington to its outlying areas.

The trolley ceased operation in 1933, factory workers left as demand for products decreased, and the town's population began to decline.

[13] The 1632 series has evolved into a large-scale experiment in collaborative fiction and has attracted considerable interest from other best selling writers, including David Weber and Mercedes Lackey.

[14][15] The premise of the series is that, in about April 2000, irresponsible aliens (accidentally) exchanged a sphere with a radius of about three miles (4.8 km) centered on Grantville with an equally sized chunk of Thuringia from 1631, plunging the town into the midst of the Thirty Years' War.

[16] Mannington continues to be used as a detailed model for the series in order to determine realistically what resources and skill sets the town of Grantville would bring to the past.