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Sistersville was named because two sisters, Sarah Wells McCoy and Delilah Wells Grier, inherited the land underlying the town from their father, pioneer Charles Wells, in 1815 and laid out the town. Wells had settled on the sandy bottomland with his second wife, Elizabeth Prather and many of his 22 children (Sarah and Delilah were the 12th and 17th; his first wife Michal Owings had died in 1783 after giving birth to 10 children). The site was called Wells Landing, Wella having previously founded Wellsville and Wellsburg along the Ohio River and having served in the Virginia legislature from Brooke County in 1793. The Virginia General Assembly created Tyler County in 1814, weeks before Wells' death, and a court session was held at Wells' house in Sistersville ("Welkin") in 1815 (the plat having included lots for a courthouse and lawyers' offices), but in 1816 voters selected Middlebourne, on Middle Island Creek about halfway between Pennsylvania and the Kanawha salt springs (and which incorporated in 1813) as the county seat. The Virginia General Assembly chartered Sistersville in 1839.