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The African Methodist Episcopal Church sent missionaries to aid slaves in Western Virginia immediately following John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. Throughout the Civil War, additional workers moved south on the heels of Union soldiers. Between 1870 and 1926, numerous A.M.E. churches were organized throughout West Virginia.

Socially and politically active, Socially active, the denomination rapidly gained membership in the South following the Civil War. When the Wheeling District of the Pittsburgh Conference assembled in Charleston in May 1907, Rev. S. B. West, presiding elder of the Wheeling District, asked for a separate West Virginia Conference in his annual address. The process moved forward the next year when, in May 1908, West presented a bill calling for a separate West Virginia Conference to the General Conference held at Nawfolk, Virginia. The bill, with a single amendment that left Jefferson County attached to the Virginia Conference, was adopted, making West Virginia a separate conference attached to the Third Episcopal District. When the conference was organized in October 1908, members appointed Rev. W. R. Derrick as presiding bishop, S. B. West as secretary, and W. R. Derrick, J. Harris, and H. E. Tyler as presiding elders.

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