West Virginia: Union vs Confederate

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

Is there any accurate count of how many residents of counties that became part of West Virginia served in the Confederate Army? (I would imagine this is difficult since they were in VA regiments, unlike in the Union army.) How does that number compare to the number of WV soldiers in the Union Army?

WV was a rather deeply divided state. Is there a particular reason for this? I would think WV had alot of similarities to many the Unionist regions in the CSA (NW AR, east TN, west NC): far from the seat of state government (literally and figuratively) and very low number of slaves. I would imagine counties close to OH and PA felt more of a connection to the North due to geographic proximity. I would certainly understand Berkeley and Jefferson Counties being pro-South as they are effectively part of the Shenandoah Valley (I would imagine they only became part of WV at all because they were under Union control at the time).

What of the Alleghany Mountain residents of the eastern part of WV? They seem to have been a majority pro-Confederate (but maybe I have gotten the wrong impression). Let us remember that the first Confederate monument was built at Romney in Hampshire County. Was there a particular reason this area was predominately pro-Confederate when similar areas in the South were not?

 

[16thVA]

There is no definite number for either side, but generally the recent estimation runs about 50/50, about 20,000 to each side.
I would suggest looking at "West Virginia and the Civil War" by Mark Snell, who was the head of the George Tyler Moore Center for Civil War Studies at Shepherd University.

Here is a map of county secession votes in southern Appalachia, Virginia and Tennessee are public votes, all the others are votes by county delegates in convention.