Blennerhassett Island, an island on the Ohio River below the mouth of the Little Kanawha River, is located near Parkersburg in Wood County, West Virginia, USA. Historically, Blennerhassett Island was occupied by American Indians. Nemacolin, chief of the Delaware Nation made it his last home, dying in 1767. European Americans knew it as Backus Island, naming it for Elijah Backus who purchased it in 1792 in the wave of westward settlement following the American Revolutionary War.