The History of Cothelstone Farm
Gene Thompson and his friend Phil Smith purchased 106 acres of land in Terra Alta, WV from a farmer in 1963. An old farmhouse and an outbuilding were already on the property (pictured below) and the first improvements were to put wood culverts and graded dirt along the road. Ten years later, in the summer of 1973, Gene and his wife Nancy built a cabin on the site of the old farmhouse as a vacation spot for their family of three boys.
The Cothelstone Name
The name "Cothestone" comes from a property in England where Nancy Thompson's ancestors first settled. In 1066, William the Conqueror awarded a faithful knight in his army with two farms southwest of London. One was named Cothelstone, the other Stowell. This knight then named both farms "Cothelstone" and took the name of the other as his surname: Stowell, Sir Adam Stowell de Cothelstone. Nancy's maternal grandfather's last name was Stowell, a direct descendant of the Stowell family who came to the America in 1764.
To the right is the Stowell family crest and below is an early English poem about Cothelstone that expresses the beauty of the countryside.
