 Following the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861, Sistersville and Tyler County were divided, but leaned toward the Union (s did their militia group, the "Sistersville Blues").Nonetheless, Confederate sympathizers seized militia equipment at Sistersville, including dozens of rifles and two small cannons, and the Ohio militiamen sent to protect Parkersburg took more than a month to recover them.Judge Abraham Soper, a New York lawyer and New Jersey judge who had moved to Sisterville in 1847, became Tyler County's representative to the Wheeling Convention and the West Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1862–1863.