History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and incidentially historical collection pertaining to border warfare and the early settlement of the adjacent portion of the Ohio Valley, Part 5

Author: Caldwell, J. A. (John Alexander) 1n; Newton, J. H., ed; Ohio Genealogical Society. 1n
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Wheeling, W. Va. : Historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 728

USA > Ohio > Jefferson County > History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and incidentially historical collection pertaining to border warfare and the early settlement of the adjacent portion of the Ohio Valley > Part 5
USA > Ohio > Belmont County > History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and incidentially historical collection pertaining to border warfare and the early settlement of the adjacent portion of the Ohio Valley > Part 5

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Banishing visions of gold and silver mines, in the pursuit of which so many of the early American colonies were unsuccess- ful, Raleigh now determined to found an agricultural state, and in April, 1587, sent out a considerable body of emigrants with their wives and families to make a settlement on Chesa- peake bay. He granted them a charter of incorporation, and appointed a municipal government for "the city of Raleigh," intrusting the administration to John White, with eleven assistants. They founded their city not on the bay, but on the site of the former settlement at Roanoke Island, and when the ship returned they sent White back to expedite reinforcements. But the reinforcements never came, and two ships which Raleigh dispatched fell into the hands of a French man-of-war in search for prizes.

Raleigh's financial condition now became somewhat preca- rious-he had expended 40,000 pounds in his attempts at colo- nization-The English public were engrossed in other matters -the colonists all perished in some manner that has always remained a mystery-and in 1589 he formed under his patent a company of "merchants and adventurers" to continue his enterprises. In the meantime he had been engaged in assist- ing the preparations for resisting the threatened Spanish inva- sion, and when the great armada appeared in the channel, he rigorously attacked the rcar in a vessel of his own, annoying it by quick and unexpected movements, in which he displayed valor and genius. During the same year he was in Drake's expedition to restore Dom Antonio to the throne of Portugal, and before his return captured some Spanish vessels intended for a fresh invasion of England.

When he returned to Elizabeth's court, he was again loaded with favors. With a desire for shattering the power of Spain in the West Indies, and inflicting another blow at that nation, he collected, mostly at his own expense, a fleet of thirteen ves- sels, with which he sailed and succeeded in capturing, with the assistance of Frobisher, the largest Spanish prize that had ever been brought into an English port.

Soon after this, in 1591, he gave great offence to the queen by his connection with and marriage of one of her maids of honor, and was imprisoned for two months and banished from her court in disgrace.

Raleigh then planned an expedition to Guiana in the hope of discovering the golden region of El Dorado. He set sail in 1595 with five ships, and returned the same year, after cxplor- ing a considerable extent of country about the Orinoco and des- troying the Spanish settlement of San Jose. In the following year he co-operated in the English expedition for the capture of Cadiz and was wounded. His only reward was a restoration to the queen's favor.

In 1597 he sailed under Essex against the Azores, quarreled with his commander, and returned to find the partial failure of

HISTORY OF BELMONT AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES, OHIO.

the expedition ascribed by the public to his misconduet. The eourt; however, judged differently. He had obtained a grant of the manor of Sherborne in Dorsetshire, which he magnifi- cently embelished, was sent with Lord Cabham on a joint embassay to the Netherlands in 1600, and on his return was made governor of Jersey.

In the execution of Essex, which occurred soon after, Raleigh was generally accused of having an ageney. This added greatly to the public odium with which he was regarded, and the death of Elizabeth in 1603 proved a final blow to his for- tunes.

On the accession of James, Elizabeth's successor to the throne, Raleigh was stripped of his preferments, forbidden the royal presence, and subsequently arrested on a charge of con- spiring to place Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne. In this emergency he made an attempt, said by some historians to be a feigned one, to commit suicide, declaring his belief that he was doomed to fall a victim to the designs of his enemies. He was convicted on the slightest evidence, but was reprieved and sent to the tower, and his estates were taken from him.

He passed thirteen years in confinement, during which time he wrote his "History of the World," from the creation of the world to the fall of the Macedonian empire, a work that is now conceded to be superior in style and matter to the English his- torical publications that had preceded it.

At last a change in the English ministry afforded Raleigh an opportunity to contrive a plan for his release, and he was accordingly liberated in March, 1615, but not pardoned. As he had made known his intention of another voyage to Guiana, it has been supposed that the king had an eye to the possible profits.

Obtaining from James a commission as admiral of the fleet, with the remnant of his own and his wife's property he man- aged to fit out a fleet of fourteen ships. He set sail and reached Guiana with the loss of two vessels in November 1617. An expedition of 250 men in boats was sent up the Orinoco and landed at the Spanish settlement of St. Thomas, and in defiance of the king's peaceable instructions, killed the governor and set fire to the town. Raleigh's eldest son was killed in the action. Unable either to advance or maintain their position, they retreated in haste to the ships, a Spanish fleet hovering near them, which had been informed of their intended movements. The leader of this unfortunate party committed suicide; many of the sailors mutinied; the ships scattered; and Raleigh returned to England and landed at Plymouth in July, 1618, completely broken in fortune and reputation.

He was immediately arrested, and failing in an attempt to escape to France, was committed to the tower. The Spanish embassador demanded his punishment and the king was not reluctant to grant it. The judges deciding that, being still under judgment of death pronounced in 1603, he could not be tried again, it was resolved to execute the former sentence.

From the moment that his fate became certain, the fortitude which had failed him on his arrest returned. When he stepped upon the scaffold he asked for the axe, and feeling the edge observed with a smile: "This is sharp medicine, but it is a cure for all diseases."

Raleigh was a man of imposing person, dauntless courage, extensive knowledge, and varied accomplishments.

FIRST COLONY OF VIRGINIA-CHARTERED RIGHTS OF THE COLONISTS.

The chartered rights of the people of this region of the Ohio Valley are deduced from charters granted by the reigning King of England, to the colony of Virginia. We have seen in the foregoing sketch of Sir Walter Raleigh, that in 1584 he obtained letters patent for discovering unknown countries, by virtue of which he took possession of that part of America which received the name of Virginia, in honor of England's virgin queen, and that the attempts of 1584, 1585, 1586, 1587, 1588 and 1590 to found and protect a colony had all met with reverses.

We will procced to give a brief outline of the history of the colony of Virginia from the first successful attempt at settle- ment.

The accession of James I. to the erown of England threw out of employment many of the brave spirits who had served under Elizabeth, and left them the choice of transplanting their energies in the new world as the only means of acquiring wealth and distinction. Bartholomew Gosnold was one of these. He solicited aid for many years and at length drew around him in an enterprise the famous Capt. Smith and others.

After mueh exertion to eulist the interest of men of wealth

and distinction, Sir Ferdinand Gorges, Sir John Popham, lord chief-justice of England, and Richard Haeklyt, one of the assignees of Raleigh, to join in a new scheme for American colonization. The efforts of these distinguished individuals speedily raised a company and procured a charter from King James, which was issued in 1606. By virtue of his prerogative, the king divided the colony of Virginia into two districts ; the southern district being called the London company, and the northern, the Plymouth company. The charter to the London company, represented by the gentlemen named, and others embraced all the lands in Virginia from Point Comfort, along the sea-coast, to the northward two hundred miles, and from the same point, along the sea-coast, to the southward two hundred miles, and all the space from this precinet on the sea-coast up into the land, west and northwest, from sea to sea, and the islands within one hundred miles of it.

On the 19th of December, 1606, one hundred and nine years subsequent to the discovery of the North American continent by Cabot, three small vessels whose joint tonnage amounted to only one hundred and sixty tons burden, sailed for the coast of Virginia with a colony of one hundred and five men, under the command of Capt. Newport. After a long and perilous voyage, they arrived in the Chesapeake, April 26th, 1607.

They finally reached the mouth of a large and beautiful river, which they named after their sovereign, James, and fifty miles from its mouth they selected a spot for a settlement which they called Jamestown.

History has recorded the invaluable services of Captain John Smith, in the management of this little colony, and the trials and difficulties he surmounted.

There could not, perhaps, be a company more unfitted for the duty which it had to perform, than that which now commenced the foundation of the British empire in America. The colonists were in a wilderness, surrounded by savages, without a fortifi- cation to repel their incursions, possessed of a scanty supply of provisions, without means of planting, and without a habita- tion to protect them from the weather, save such as they might themselves erect ; yet in the whole company there were but four carpenters and twelve laborers, to fifty-four gentlemen.

After a stay of six weeks, Newport prepared to depart, and sailed on the 15th of June, leaving one hundred men in Virginia.

The condition of the men thus left was the most melancholy that can well be imagined. They consisted, for the most part, of men entirely unused to labor or hardship, who were doomed to encounter every kind of difficulty, in the midst of summer, in a hot and sickly climate. In ten days from the departure of Newport, scarce ten men could stand, from sickness and weakness.

The control of affairs soon fell to Smith, who, by his example and his skill in managing men, speedily reduced affairs to order, induced the men to work, and provided comfortable habitations.

Newport, soon after his return, was again dispatched, in company with another vessel, commanded by Francis Nelson, furnished with all things necessary for the colonists. Before the arrival of this supply, Smith had established a regular intercourse with the Indians and bought their provisions at moderate prices. These with the aid of the abundance of wild fowl, fish and game, had enabled the little colony to subsist comfortably.

The greater part of the summer of 1606, Smith spent in exploring the Chesapeake and its tributary waters,

He returned to Jamestown in September to find that but little had been done by the colony during his absence and a whole sum- mer, which was a season of plenty, had been wasted in idleness. The company had been forced to depose the President for out- rageous conduet. Smith was now elected to that position and his energetic conduet speedily brought affairs into good order. Soon after his election, Newport again arrived from England, and after a short stay, returned with a cargo of pitch, tar, boards, ashes, and such other articles as the colonists, under the exertions of Smith, had been enabled to procure.

From the departure of the ship until the next arrival, in 1609, the men were only preserved from perishing by the most active and unremitting exertions of Captain Smith. the detail of whose couduet in his intercourse with the savages, and his management of the ill-assorted, disorderly, turbulant spirits under his control, is one of the most interesting stories in history, and proves him to have been a man of extraordinary abilities.

Although the fond anticipations of the Virginia company had been cutirely disappointed, a spirit seems to have prevailed which was rather disposed to surmount all difficulties by

HISTORY OF BELMONT AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES, OHIO.

increased exertion, than to succumb to the accumulated misfortunes which had already been encountered.

The company seemed to have perceived their error in expect- ing a sudden acquisition of wealth from their American possessions, and the defects in the government established by their charter. To remedy these evils, a new charter was ob- tained May 23, 1609, in which many individuals and corporate bodies were included, of great wealth, power and reputation.

By the new charter, the power which had been reserved by the king, was now transferred to the company itself, which was to have the power of choosing the supreme council in England and of legislating in all cases for the colony. The powers of the governor were enlarged from those of a mere president of the council, to supreme and absolute civil and military control, the instructions and regulations of the supreme council being his only guide or check.

Lord Delaware received the appointment of governor for life under the new charter. The condition of the public mind favored colonization; swarms of people desired to be transported, and the adventurers with cheerful alacrity contributed free-will offerings. The widely diffused enthusiasm soon enabled the company to dispatch a fleet of nine vessels, containing more than five hundred emigrants. Newport was made admiral, and was joint commissioner with Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers to administer the affairs of the colony until the arrival of the governor.

When near the coast of Virginia they encountered a violent storm which destroyed one small vessel and drove the Sea Venture, in which were the commissioners, so far to sea that she stranded on the rocks of the Bermudas. Seven ships arrived in safety.

Soon after this, Smith, who had been disabled by a wound, and seeing that there was not sufficient surgical skill in the colony to restore him, determined to depart for England.

When Smith returned to England, he left a colony of about five hundred persons well supplied with arms, provisions, and goods for traffic with the Indians and provided with a fort, church, storehouse, sixty dwellings and a good stock of domestic animals. The savages were in a good state of subjection, and readily yielded at a reasonable price whatever they could spare. All things were in such a condition that prudent management might have ensured the most brilliant success, but the wildest confusion and anarchy prevailed. The new president was so ill that he could not attend to business, and twenty others en- deavored to hold the reins of government. When the savages found that Smith was gone, they speedily attacked and broke up the establishments at Powhatan and Nansemond, driving in the remnant of men their butcheries left, to subsist upon the rapidly wasting provisions of Jamestown. Ratcliffe with a vessel and thirty men attempting to trade with Powhatan, was by his carelessness cut off, and he himself with all his com- pany perished except two, who were saved by the humanity of Pocahontas. West, with a crew of thirty, escaped in a ship to become pirates. The miserable company now left without control or authority, and composed with a few exceptions of "gentlemen, tradesmen, serving-men, libertines, and such like, ten times more fit to spoil a commonwealth, than to begin one, or but help to maintain one," now gave free rein to all their evil dispositions. Each one sought only to gratify his passions or preserve his own life, without regard to the wants or suffer- ings of the rest. There was no union, no concert, no harmony. Vice stalked abroad in her naked deformity, and her hand- maids, misery and famine, followed in her train. The savages attacked and slew the whites upon every occasion, and forming a systematic plan to starve the remainder, they would supply no further provisions; after they had bought every disposable article at the fort, even to most of their arms, at sueh a price as they chose to exact. The corn was speedily consumed; next followed the domestic animals, poultry, hogs, goats, sheep, and finally the horses; all were consumed, even to their skins. The only resource was in roots, acorns, berries, and such other un- wholesome stuff as could be found; nay, so pinching was the hunger, that savages who had been slain and buried were disinterred to be consumed, and even some of the whites who had perished were used to preserve life by the rest. Of nearly five hundred that Smith left, in six months only sixty emaciated beings remained alive; and these were without the possibility of support for longer than ten days.

This terrible state of affairs and misery of the colonists was the natural result of their misconduct. But it was not the destiny of human affairs that the efforts to promote and estab- lish civilization in the new world should be entirely abandoned, and so much labor and suffering be useless to mankind. Human endurance, skill and energy at times seems to be equal to all emergencies.

GROWTH OF THE COLONIES AND ADVANCE OF CIVILIZATION WESTWARD.

It is not our purpose to prolong the details of the many trials and difficulties encountered by the first colonists of Virginia. In 1610, at a very critical period of its existence, Lord Delaware arrived with three ships, having on board a number of new settlers and everything requisite for defence or cultivation. Being fully competent to his station, he at once took charge of affairs, and by careful and tender nursing once more restored the colony to vigor and gave it a promising appearance. For a long period the colonists of Virginia had undergone this varied experience of misery and suffering, but at length, becoming stronger by degrees, their foothold on the soil of the new world became permanent. Soon thereafter they began to increase in numbers, wealth and prosperity. Their success induced the formation of other colonies, and soon drew the attention of all Europe. New England, New York, and Mary- land became permanently settled, and eventually William Penn obtained his charter (1681) and laid the foundation for a powerful and wealthy commonwealth.

The tobacco trade, which had so suddenly developed through- out the world, at once created a demand for the article, and its production attracted the attention and energies of the early colonists of Virginia. This proved a means of amassing wealth to a degree alinost hitherto unknown, and soon it had the effect to rapidly increase the strength and importance of the colony. Competence promptly followed industry ; a feeble colony grew to a great and powerful agricultural province; along with pros- perity advanced the principles of republican liberty, the inhab- itants became proverbial for hospitality, and where once had been misery and suffering, ensucd scenes of human happiness and welfare.

On the 24th of July, 1621, the colony of Virginia established a form of government, subject to the approval of the "General Quarter Court of the Company in England." To this was added the proviso that no order of the Council in England should bind the colony unless ratified in the General Assembly of Vir- ginia. Thus early in our country's history was introduced those principles of republicanism, which eventually secured to us our present form of government.

The king and the Company, however, quarreled, and he sus- pended their powers by the proclamation of July 15, 1624. King James I. having died on the 27th March, 1625, Charles I. took the government into his own hands. He made extensive grants of plantations in a high state of cultivation, and also woodlands, in the colony of Virginia, to his particular friends, Lord Baltimore and Lord Fairfax, to the former of whom he even granted the separate and sole right of jurisdiction and government. Charles I. having been deposed by Oliver Crom- well in 1650, and assuming the title of Protector, he considered himself as standing in the place of the deposed king, and as having succeeded to all the kingly powers, without as well as within the realm, and therefore assumed control over the American colonies. Virginia, however, had expressed herself as opposed to Cromwell and his parliament, and invited Charles II. (the son of the deceased king), who was then an exile in Breda, Flanders, to come into Virginia and become their king, but on the eve of embarking, in 1660, he was recalled to the throne of England, on the 29th of May, of the same year. After Charles II. had ascended the throne, and desirous of giving a substantial proof of the profound respect he entertained for the loyalty of Virginia, he caused her coat-of-arms to be quartered with those of England, Ireland and Scotland, as an independent member of the empire. Hence the origin of the term Old Dominion. It also derived this term from the faet that it was the first of the English settlements in the limits of the British colonies.

As the first colonists gained their permanent foothold, the march of civilization westward steadily advanced step by step. The growth, necessarily slow in the beginning, became more rapid as numbers increased; and the second generation, being a race of hardy pioneers, made the power of the colony felt in all directions. Gradually they penetrated the quiet wilderness, established military posts at important points, and steadily pressed forward with actual settlements farther into the depths of the interior. The beautiful forests, abounding with game and fowl, disappeared before the encroachments of advancing civilization at a rate without a parallel in the world's history, and the existence of the once proud race who flourished in all the splendor and pomp of their original state, eventually beeame a theme of the misty past.

HISTORY OF BELMONT AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES, OHIO.

Within the lapse of a century and a half from the time of the establishment of the first English eolony in Virginia, the first whites had penetrated the Ohio valley, and were making preparation for the settlement of the region, whose history is about to be recorded in these pages.

In the fresh paths of moccasined feet trod the brogans of the pioneers, and hardly was the sky elear from the smoke of the wigwam, ere it was clouded again by the chimney of the settler's eabin. As the weird ehant and savage war whoop of the red man died away amid the magnificent forest, the sound of the axe and the peaceful voiee of busy husbandry arose in the air. Hunting grounds beeame fruitful farms, and soon villages, schools, churches, and colleges sprang up along the streams and hill sides, so long saered to the original tribes.

CHAPTER II.

THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE-INDIAN NATIONS-THE IROQUOIS SUPRE- MACY-RAPID DECLINE OF THE TRIBES IN VIRGINIA-NATIONS IDENTIFIED WITH THE OHIO VALLEY-SUMMARY.

"HEN Columbus first discovered land, on his great experi- mental voyage westward, he believed that it belonged to India. He therefore ealled the inhabitants "Indians," and the same name was given to those who were subsequently found upon the continent. When the first Europeans set foot upon the soil of North America, the original people were found throughout all that vast region south of Labrador and between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi river. Though they were divided and-subdivided into many tribes, and speaking a variety of dialects, the traditions of all the nations oeeupying that portion of the country as far south as the Roanoke and Ohio rivers, traeed their origin baek to two great primitive branches, known as the Lenni Lenape and Mengwe. These two great groups of nations were called by the Europeans, the Delawares and the Iroquois. The Lenni Lenape, or Lenape, received the name of Delawares from the English, and the Mengwe were given the appellation of Iroquois by the Freneh. Among their derivative nations, the Lenape were also known as the Wapanachki, and this name was variously corrupted by Europeans into Openaki, Openagi, Abenaquis, Apenakis, and Abe- naskis. The Mengwe were also called Mingoes; this last corrup- tion, orginating among ignorant white men, was from them adopted by Delawares, who applied it as a reproach to their Mengwe neighbors, between whom and themselves ill feeling, and sometimes great animoisty existed.

By some writers, and particularly Mr. Baneroft, nearly all the nations ineluded under the heads of Mengwe and Lenape, or Iroquois and Delawares, are called the Algonquin nations.

The powerful confederaey which the English found in Vir- ginia, under the able and potent leadership of the famous Pow- hatan, spoke the Algonquin language, and were doubtless a branch of the Lenape. Having raised himself from the rank of a chieftain to the command of thirty tribes, the power of this Indian eonfederaey may rightly be attributed to the great native talent and ambition of the monarch who held imperial sway over it. The dominion of Powhatan had the tribes of the eastern shore as its dependencies, and included all the villages west of the Chesapeake, from the most southern tributaries of James river to the Patuxent. But after his death, in 1618, the power of the little empire began to decline, and in the days of his brother Opechancanough, was entirely broken. After what is known as the insurrection of Bacon, the confederacy disappears from history.

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History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio, and incidentially historical collection pertaining to border warfare and the early settlement of the adjacent portion of the Ohio Valley, Part 5

Author: Caldwell, J. A. (John Alexander) 1n; Newton, J. H., ed; Ohio Genealogical Society. 1n Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Wheeling, W. Va. : Historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 728

Author: Caldwell, J. A. (John Alexander) 1n; Newton, J. H., ed; Ohio Genealogical Society. 1n
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Wheeling, W. Va. : Historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 728