USA > Virginia > Highland County > Highland County > A history of Highland County, Virginia > Part 8
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the visitors grunted their approval and took the tallow but left the fish.
William Lucas, a chief, used to pass Forks of Waters on his visits to Washington. If on being invited to a test of marksman- ship, one of the party shot off a rooster's head, the fowl was claim- ed in accordance with Indian custom.
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CHAPTER IX
HIGHLAND UNDER THE BRITISH CROWN
Settlers After the Indian War - Pioneer Homes - Manner of Life - Farming Customs - Roads - Mills and Taverns - Church and School Interests - Organization of Augusta - County Courts - Punishments - Lawsuits - Wills - Deeds - Surveys - White Servants - Game - Money.
T might seem as though the troublous years of 1754-58 would
- have worked an entire suspension in the buying and selling of land. Yet transactions in this line took place, and when a time of comparative safety returned they increased in number. When the War for Independence broke out, there was a considerable popu- lation in these valleys. Favored localities after the Indian war were the heads of the Cowpasture and Bullpasture rivers, the Crabbottom, and the vicinity of Vanderpool Gap.
James Burnside lived a number of years on the Bodkin home- stead. Andrew Lockridge in 1774 purchased a large "boundary" of land in Bullpasture Valley just above the Bath line. Dawson Wade lived near the mouth of Davis Run, but sold to William Steuart and went to Botetourt. Edward Hines was on Crab Run in 1768. At Doe Hill, Abraham Hempenstall became a neighbor to the Wilsons. Tully Davitt lived in the same neighbor- hood, but at the close of 1775 he sold to John Hiner. John McCoy was another neighbor by 1773. It is said that in coming through Panther Gap most of McCoy's seed potatoes fell into the river.
On the Cowpasture, George Benson purchased in 1776 at the run which bears his name. In the near vicinity we find at the same time mention of William Renick and of William and Fran- cis Jackson. Higher up the river was Henry Erwin in 1772.
The limestone soils of Bullpasture Mountain caused this up- land to be thought the only one much worthy of being reduced to private ownership. The first entry we find here was that of William Price as early as 1754. In 1772, Thomas Wright appears
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to have been living on the mountain and he was soon followed by others, especially in the section above the turnpike.
Turning to the Middle Valley, we find that George Nicholas came to the Forks of the Waters in 1770. The first entry on Straight Creek proper seems that of David Bell in 1771. The Bell's were for some time considerable landholders in Highland, and at an early day appear to have lived here. A little over the Monterey divide was David Frame in 1767, and "Frame's Cabbin" is spoken of as a well-known landmark. His neighbors about Vanderpool Gap were Robert and John Dinwiddie, William Given, and James Morrow. Robert Dinwiddie was a man of some edu- cation and property, but the notion that he was the same as Governor Robert Dinwiddie is entirely wrong. The latter had no sons and after his term of office went back to England and died there. But that the pioneer was a relative is very possible. Down the river at the mouth of Dry Branch was Robert Wiley in 1773.
Peter Hull sold his farm in the Valley of Virginia and became a heavy purchaser in the center of Crabbottom in 1765. Below him were Bernard Lantz about this time, Michael Arbogast and John Gum in 1766, Palsor Naigley in 1768, and Peter Zickafoose in 1772.
At the time of the raid on the Wilsons one half of Highland was still an unbroken forest, yet there were more than fifty house- holds scattered along the river bottoms of the other half. Already this region had begun to take on the semblance of a stable commu- nity. It was not with Highland as with the remote regions of the Appalachians. The distance to the seaboard was not so prohibi- tive, and the people did not mean to lie outside the pale of civiliza- tion.
At the outset the usual type of Highland dwelling was the round-log cabin, with a single door, a "stick-and-daub" chimney and one or two little openings closed by shutters. The building was small, low and hastily constructed. Nothing else could read- ily be thrown up. It was the offspring of necessity, just as was the sod house with the settlers on the far Western prairies. Whether the single-roomed house were neatly or slovenly kept depended on the habits of the inmates.
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We are told of a Highland family of twelve persons living in a cabin with only an earth floor and with no other beds than bear- skins laid before the fire when needed. When the house had a floor, the space beneath was sometimes a sheep pen at night, be- cause of the wolves. The cattle pastured on the mountain side soon grew accustomed to staying within a limited range. On his return from salting his cattle, the pioneer very likely brought back a deer, the victim of his rifle or of a sharp stake set for this object at a "jumping over" place.
But in no long time, as we have seen in the case of the Wilsons, a more substantial type of dwelling appeared. The settler who wished to live, and not merely exist, put up a well-built structure of hewn logs, and supplied it with a massive chimney of hewn stone. It could now better accommodate the parents and the eight, ten, or fifteen children who shared the house with them. Nails had to be made by the blacksmith and were sparingly used, wooden pins being a substitute. Window panes were not only small but few, since it was tedious and expensive to bring glass from "the seaports, where alone the glass could be had. Neither were many boards used, since they had to be made by the slow, toilsome process of whipsawing. On the roof, clapboards held down by weight poles took the place of shingles.
This type of dwelling in a modified form is yet by no means in disuse. The clapboards gave place at length to shingles, the walls were weatherboarded, the windows became larger, and the rooms were ceiled. Finally, the yawning fireplace was closed up and a stove set in front of it. Houses of brick or stone are even yet rare, especially of the latter material. But after steam sawmills came into vogue no more log houses were built. Those still in use are relics of a past age.
Returning from our short digression we find that even in the better homes of the pioneer period the simple life was in full force. It was in fact the rule among all classes. All people wore homespun and lived on cornbread and wild meat. Spoons were of pewter or wood. Furniture was handmade. In the report of a public sale for this period, even from a well-to-do home, we are struck by the commonness of nearly all the articles, and find the selling price in a majority of instances to be within the dollar
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mark. Things which now would go into the rubbish pile had then a positive value because not easy to replace.
The barns and stables were very primitive and were not much needed for the housing of farm implements. But the livestock, especially the smaller animals, had to be strongly penned to keep off wolves, panthers, and bears. The tilled area was very small. The pioneer grew no more than what his family and his livestock could consume. Even the pasture lands were small, and trees were cut down for the farm animals to browse upon the twigs. The abundance of game 'and fish solved the meat question. Yet the idea that the livestock industry is a recent development is not correct. The pioneer farm was well supplied with cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs. Animals could walk to market, and were then as now the chief agricultural resource. Sheep were even more necessary than now, because the only woolen goods, and in fact the only cloths of any kind, were those made on the hand loom in the farmhouse. Thus the flax patch was as necessary as the corn patch. A sowing of a half-bushel of flax was considered good for fifty to seventy-five yards of cloth. In the later colonial era there was a bounty on hemp, paid out of the public treasury. In 1767 we find the following certifications among others : John Graham, 961 pounds, John Estill, 902, William McClung, 730, Robert Carlile, 478, and Wallace Estill, 259, while Peter Wallace produced the very unusual amount of 3,039 pounds.
There was much care to provide fruit trees, especially the apple. The young plants were brought long distances and on horseback. The orchards thus set out have been very long-lived. Decrepit trees, older than any people now living, are still in bear- ing. A spitzenberg apple set out in 1765 by William Wilson on Jackson's River bore in 1909, twenty-five bushels of fruit. Hun- dreds of grafts have been taken from this tree. But the still- house was in every neighborhood, and the apple was no more esteemed for eating than for its convertibility into brandy. The sugar maple orchard was the only available source of sugar and syrup. The honey bee, it is claimed, was not here before the white man came.
The soil was fresh and good, and so long as a new field of equal strength could be cleared, the manure heap was disregarded.
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The farming method was crude, as were also the handmade tools. A farm wagon was a great rarity, and had block wheels when it did appear. The plow was a clumsy concern with wooden mould- board; occasionally it was only a walnut root. The harrow was either a thornbush with cross-sticks tied on with hickory bark, or else a frame with teeth of seasoned hardwood. The hayfork was cut out from a forked dogwood. The scythe had a straight handle. The pioneer cut his grain and also his fingers with a sickle. His threshing machine was a flail with a capacity of about fifteen bushels a day. Hickory bark as a material to tie with was almost indispensable.
Since the pioneer had to live so much within himself, he needed to be resourceful. If he was that handy person known as the jack-at-all-trades, so much the better for him. Resourcefulness was quite as necessary on the part of the wife. The etymology of her title then held true, for she was a weaver by necessity. The blacksmith was a highly important person in the community for he made tools as well as mended them. He forged nails, and if skilful at his trade he made bells, so necessary in keeping track of the livestock. The gristmill was in every neighborhood. It was a miniature building with little stones quarried not far away. The wheel was undershot if the current were swift ; otherwise, it was overshot. Yet the miller was not quite so indispensable as the blacksmith. By dint of elbow and backbone movement a bushel of meal in a day could be ground on a handmill.
The pioneers of the Bullpasture must very speedily have had a bridle-path along the river bottom, but a direct way to the court- house soon became a necessity. So Wallace Estill was directed, May 29, 1751, to clear a road from his mill to a road already opened to the head of the Calfpasture. The settlers appointed by the court to help him were Loftus Pullin, Richard Bodkin, Samuel Ferguson, Matthew Harper, John Miller, William Price, James Anglen, James Hall, Philip Phegan, John Shaw, Hackland Wilson, two John Carliles, and Robert and William Carlile. By petition of May 18, 1753, this road was extended from Estill's mill to William Wilson's mill on Bolar Run. Stephen Wilson and Hugh Hicklin were overseers for this section, and to work under them were John Miller, William and John Wilson, Samuel and Robert
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Gay, Robert and John Carlile, John and Thomas Hicklin, and Loftus Pullin.
This thoroughfare, some 32 miles long, was the first public road in Highland. It could have been no more than a narrow lane through the woods, to be traveled by horses with packsaddles. According to law, posts of direction were to be set up at necessary points. The neglected wagon path up the west face of Jack Mountain from Bolar appears to be the course of this old road, and would have been followed by John Wilson eleven years later when he rode over for help against the Indians. From the top of the mountain it would have followed a fairly direct course toward the Bullpasture at W. P. B. Lockridge's, thence up the bottom to Estill's mill. From this point it seems to have reached the mouth of Shaw's Fork nearly with the course of the present road. Its further course would have been up the Fork to the run at Head- waters, and thence was doubtless the foundation of the first state road over Shenandoah Mountain, climbing the elevation by a more direct course and much sharper grade than the present turnpike.
There appears to have been some dissatisfaction with this road, for Matthew Harper and Wallace Estill were appointed not long afterward to view a course. They reported the existing route as the most convenient one. In 1762 the surveyor speaks of a point on Back Creek, "where an old road crosseth to Greenbrier opposite Stephen Wilson's." But this must have been an Indian trail.
The earliest mention of a road in Bath is in 1749, when Will- iam Jackson was directed to mark and lay off a way from Jack- son's River to Colonel Johnson's on the Cowpasture.
The road orders above named prove there was a mill at Estill's by 1751, and at Wilson's by 1753. As permission for a mill had to be secured from the county court, there should be a record to this effect, although none appears to have been entered on the order book. Andrew Lockridge secured a license in 1753, but whether at the "double fords" above Williamsville or on the Calf- pasture we do not know. The pioneer mill in Bath seems to have been that of Adam Dickinson, licensed in 1746.
The house of public entertainment was then called an ordinary, and the prices it might charge for its services were regulated by the county court with great minuteness. This care was not so
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needless as it would seem. Taverns were too few for competition alone to keep down the rates. It was as needful to protect the public in this respect as it is now with reference to railway rates. Principles endure although their application changes. Peter Wright took out a tavern license in 1764, Wallace and Benjamin Estill being his sureties. William Wilson had already taken a license in 1762.
We have now said about all there is to relate, previous to the Revolution, concerning phases of collective effort among the Highland pioneers. Until after that event there was no church organization here, and the nearest "meetinghouses" were those at Deerfield on the Calfpasture and at Windy Cove, a few miles above Dickenson's Fort. Even the people most religiously in- clined must have attended but rarely.
All Protestants who were not of the church of England were known as Dissenters. Their houses of worship had to be licensed and registered by the county court. In the Valley they were not fined for not attending the parish church, but they were taxed for its support. Their preachers had to take various oaths and until 1781 they were not permitted to perform the marriage ceremony. It was not until after the Revolution was under way that all such discriminations were brushed aside and religion in Virginia made free. In 1738 the Presbyterian Synod in Ireland had thus ad- dressed Governor Gooch :
May it please your Honor, we take leave to address you in behalf of a considerable number of our brethren, who are meditating a settlement in the remote parts of your Government and are of the same persuasion as the Church of Scotland. We thought it our duty to acquaint your Honor with this design, and to ask your favor in allowing them the liberty of their con- sciences and of worshiping God in a way agreeable to the principles of their Education. Your Honor is sensible that those of our profession in Europe have been remarkable for their inviolable attachment to the house of Hanover, and have upon all occasions manifested an unspotted fidelity to our gracious Sovereign, King George, and we doubt not that but these our brethren will carry the same loyal principles to the most distant settlements, where their lot may be cast, which will ever influence them to the most dutiful submis- sion to the Government which is placed over them. This we trust will recommend them to your Honor's countenance and protection, and merit the free enjoyment of their civil and religious liberties. We pray for the divine blessings upon your persons and Government and beg leave to sub- scribe ourselves your Honor's most humble and obedient servants.
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The Governor made the following response :
As I have always been inclined to favor the people who have lately removed from other provinces to settle on the western side of our great mountains; so you may be assured that no interruption shall be given to any minister of your profession, who shall come among them, so as they conform themselves to the rules prescribed by the Act of Toleration in England, by taking the oaths enjoined thereby, and registering the place of their meeting, and behave themselves peaceably toward the government.
If the schoolmaster were "abroad in the land," he was almost totally unable to get into the public records. The Scotch-Irish set great store on schooling, but pioneer life in a thinly-peopled wil- derness was not favorable to effort in this direction. The more alert of those who could read and write would give their children some rudimentary training. Occasionally, a person appeared in the settlements who was competent to act as a tutor, and doubtless was so employed to a limited extent. The first classical school west of the Blue Ridge was opened by Robert Alexander in 1749 near Greenville. It continued until the Revolution, when Liberty Academy, finally to become Washington and Lee University, arose at Lexington. But as a matter of fact there was a marked ebb for many years in educational acquirements. A significant instance lies in the fact that an early constable of the Bullpasture, who of necessity was able to read and write, reared an illiterate family. A signature by means of a mark was very common, although the illiterate person sometimes used the initial letter of his surname or even the initials of both names.
The settlement of the Highland area and the organizing of separate county government in Augusta took place at almost the same time. The first court met Dec. 9, 1745, but the only member for the district west of Shenandoah Mountain was Adam Dicken- son. The courthouse was of hewed logs and was eighteen by thirty-eight feet in size. There were two little windows unpro- vided with glass or shutters, but light also came in through un- chinked spaces between the logs, some of these openings being several feet long and several inches wide. The jail was smaller and not well constructed. The county seat was not known as Staunton until 1748, in which year it was laid out as a town.
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Such was the center of local government for a territory covering a section of the Valley of Virginia 240 miles long.
Until 1776 a county court was opened by the reading of the royal commission to the justices : "Be it remembered, (date here given) his majesty's commission directed to (names of commis- sioned justices here given), to hear and determine all treasons, petit treasons, or misprisons thereof, felonies, murders, and all other offenses and crimes, was openly read." The court had gen- eral police and probate jurisdiction, with control of levies, roads, actions at law, and suits in chancery. A single justice had juris- diction in matters not exceeding the value of one pound ($3.33). There was no particular limit as to the number of members, and at least twenty were usually in commission at the same time.
A jail in those days was most numerously occupied by delin- quent debtors. Imprisonment for debt was not put aside until within the memory of people still living. Consequently in the order book we often find this form : "Thereupon came - - , and undertook for the said defendant, in case he be cast in this suit, he shall pay and satisfy the condemnation of the court, or render his body to prison in execution for the same, or that he, the said - - , will do it for him."
A courthouse yard was supposed to be equipped with whip- ping-post, pillory, stocks, and perhaps also a ducking stool. The whipping-post was sometimes a tree. Whipping, up to the num- ber of thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, was much in vogue, was administered promptly and without regard to sex. The female thief or the mother of a bastard child was often thus punished. Sometimes the culprit unable to pay a fine prayed for corporal punishment, and seems always to have received what he asked. The essential feature of the pillory was a pair of short planks, each with a large notch in one edge so that a person's neck might be fitted into the opening. The stocks differed from the pillory in confining the wrists or ankles, or both, and in not compelling the culprit to stand. Neither position could be very agreeable, especially if the flies were numerous and the spectators inclined as in England to throw mud, sticks, eggs of venerable quality, and epithets as vile as the eggs. The ducking stool was a long plank, pivoted in the center and furnished at one end with a
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seat to which the culprit was lashed. The design of the apparatus was to give the person an involuntary bath in a mill-pond or river. It was a favorite punishment for a scolding woman.
Another punishment was branding on the hand with a hot iron and in open court, the criminal being made to say the words, "God save the commonwealth." For swearing or getting drunk, the penalty was five shillings for each offense or the choice of ten lashes. For working on Sunday the penalty was twice as great. Not a few crimes were punishable with death, and if the offense were regarded as particularly flagant, it was supposed to make the penalty more impressive by decreeing death without benefit of clergy.
In 1763 a negro named Tom mortally wounded John Harrison by shooting him in the back. He confessed in court and was ordered to be hanged ten days later. His head was then to be taken off and set on pole on the top of a hill near the courthouse. In Orange a negro was hanged for stealing fine linen of the value of $2.50.
With relatively small crimes punishable by death, with the nailing of ears to the pillory and cutting them loose, with im- prisonment for debt, and with whipping in liberal measure, it might seem as though there should have been enough terror in the law to keep people in the path of rectitude. Yet the laws seem to have been violated more often than they are now. The spirit of the times was harsh and coarse, as is seen in the severity of the laws and the frequency with which even these laws were broken. The beholding of public punishment dulled the sensibilities of people and did not reform the law-breaker. Men swore and otherwise misbehaved in open court, even to abusing the justices.
The ears of criminals were often cropped. In the records of 1746 we read that Philip Jones, losing a part of his right ear in a fight, had this fact certified, so that he might not be apprehended as a runaway convict.
It was not unusual for a person to make oath that he stood in fear of bodily hurt.
About 1750 an Augusta man was indicted for beating another in a meetinghouse yard at the time of a burial.
The path of the constable was not one of roses, and he was
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sometimes prevented by fist or club from removing goods. In 1750 a constable made the return, "Not executed by reason the Def't with a loaded Gun or Rifle stood in the Door of his House and threatened to shoot me or any one that offered to lay hands on any part of his estate. Neither would he suffer me to enter into the House."
The offenses most numerously before the court were in addi- tion to debt, assault, trespass, slander, bastardy, drinking, swear- ing, neglect of road supervision, disturbing public worship, and delinquency in paying head tax. The list will enable us to form some estimate of the nature of the times.
It is often alleged that although the use of liquor was once well-nigh universal, actual drunkenness was rare. This delusion is an effect of the distance in time. Court records prove that alcohol was the same curse in pioneer days that it is now. That the voice of decency was occasionally heard is shown in the will of John Dickenson of Bath in 1808, whereby he forbids the use of liquor at his interment.
The Augusta people were much given to litigation, and the suits, complaints, and indictments are almost innumerable. The settlers on the Bullpasture got into court quite frequently. Burn- side and some others were contentious, especially in the matter of trespass. The Millers were quarrelsome toward the Bodkins, and several combats between them are recorded. One slander suit brought out a good share of the settlement and the plaintiff gained a verdict of two pounds ($6.67). Two other men misbehaved in court and were given a few hours in jail. Still two other men were fined each 400 pounds of tobacco in 1763, for non-attendance as jurors.
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