USA > Virginia > Tazewell County > Tazewell County > History of Tazewell county and southwest Virginia, 1748-1920 > Part 23
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ment and extension of a refined civilization-an invigorating climate, a fruitful soil, and a sublime aspect of nature.
When writing about the first settlers, I shall make no great effort to disclose their antecedents, except for the purpose of show- ing from whence they came. This will be done as briefly as possible ; and then I will strive to show what manner of men and women they were by narrating what they accomplished after they came to the Clineh Valley and other sections of the county. While doing this, equally as mueh consideration shall be given the first generation born here, quite a number of whom I knew; and from whom I learned much that has inspired me to execute the pleasant task of writing this history. They are truly worthy to be classed with the pioneers, as many of them were co-workers with their fathers and mothers in the excellent preparation that was made for the organization of the civie community which bears the name of Taze- well County.
A number of men with their families had collected in the New River Valley, and in sections of Augusta County east of the Alle- ghany Mountains, eagerly awaiting an opportunity to locate in the Clinch Valley. And immediately following the assurance that they could take up lands unincumbered by claims of the Indians or the Loyal Company, the pioneers began to move in and settle on the waters of the Clinch. There has been much conjecture and many opinions expressed as to the time of the entrance of the pioneers into Tazewell. Dr. Geo. W. L. Bickley, in his History of Tazewell County, published in 1852, places the first permanent settlement here in the spring of 1771. Writing of this event, Bickley says:
"1771.) In the spring of this year Thomas Witten and John Greenup moved out and settled at Crab Orchard, which Witten purchased of Butler. Absalom Looney settled in a beautiful valley now known as Abb's Valley. Mathias Harman and his brothers, Jacob and Henry, settled at Carr's place (on one of the head branches of the Clinch river, two miles east of the present town of Jeffersonville). John Craven settled in the Cove, Joseph Martin, John Henry and James King settled in Thompson Valley, and John Bradshaw in the valley two miles west of Jeffersonville. The set- tlers, this year, found little annoyance from the Indians, who were living peaceably at their homes in the west and south. The conse- quence was the settlers erected substantial homes and opened lands to put in corn, from which they reaped a plentiful supply, in the fall.
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"1772.) The following persons moved out, this year, and set- tled at the several places named. Capt. James Moore and John Pogue, in Abb's Valley; William Wynn, at the Locust Hill, (the place that Carr settled) which he purchased from Harman. John Taylor, on the north fork of Clinch, and Jesse Evans, near him. Thomas Maxwell, Benjamin Joslin, James Ogleton, Peter and Jacob Harman, and Samuel Ferguson, on Bluestone creek. William But- ler, on the south branch of the north fork of Clinch, a short distance
The small white flag in the centre of the above picture is at the spot where Thomas Witten built his cabin in 1767 on the Crab Orchard tract. On the right is the new Pisgah Methodist Church.
above Wynn's plantation; William Webb, about three miles east of Jeffersonville ; Elisha Clary, near Butler; John Ridgel, on the clear fork of Wolf Creek; Rees Bowen, at Maiden Spring; David Ward, in the Cove, and William Garrison at the foot of Morris' Knob.
"1773.) Thomas, John, and William Peery, settled where the town of Jeffersonville now stands; John Peery, Jr., at the fork of Clinch, one mile and a half east of the county seat; Captain Maffit and Benjamin Thomas, settled about a mile above, and Chrisley Hensley, near them. Samuel Marrs settled in Thompson's Valley; Thomas English (Ingles) in Burke's Garden; James and Charles Seaggs, Richard Pemberton, and Johnson, settled in Baptist Valley, five miles from where Jeffersonville now stands. Thomas Maston, William Patterson, and John Deskins, settled in the same valley,
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but further west; Hines, Richard Oney and Obadiah Paine, settled in the Deskins Valley, in the western part of the county.
"1774-76.) The settlers who came in during the years of '74-'5 and '6, generally pitched their tents near the one or other of the locations already mentioned. Even yet there is a preference mani- fested for the older settlements. This may be accounted for, from the fact that the first settlers generally chose the most desirable locations ; the lands being now better improved, and society more advanced, still render these places more attractive than other parts of the county settled at a later period."
Dr. Bickley in the preface of his history very truly says: "Writ- ing history from tradition is a very different thing from reducing to order a heterogeneous mass of recorded facts. While the one is a sure guide to the historian, and from which he cannot depart; the other is full of uncertainty and apt to betray a writer into error and misrepresentation. *
* * The simple statement of hav- ing collected the facts, and written the following pages in the short space of seven weeks, will, I hope, be a sufficient apology for its many imperfections."
In the second chapter of his history, Bickley says: "What little I have gleaned from the obscured pages of the book of the past, has now become little more than mere tradition. For, situated as I am, in an isolated region, the advantages of a public library are denied me; and from a large private library little is to found, throwing any light on this uncertain part of my work. The information here em- bodied, was received from the grandsons, sons, and even from the men themselves who were the principal actors in the drama to be recorded. Memory cannot survive the decay of the physical system, unimpaired; and hence, caution is necessary, in recording an event told us, even by the chief actors therein. With this fact before me, I have placed more reliance on an incident related to me by a son of a pioneer, than if related by the pioneer himself."
After the Tazewell Historical Society engaged my services to write a history of the county, I received a letter from my friend and kinsman, Judge Samuel Cecil Graham, who was then wintering at City Point, Fla., in which he said:
"Much of the history of our country has become tradition. So were "The Tales of a Grandfather" by Scott, but they bore the stamp of accuracy and are now history.
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"Truth as best it can be found; a judicial mind to solve conflicts and get at what human beings might have done-even if they did not do it-will at least satisfy conviction when the real facts are obliterated or beclouded. Fortunately in your undertaking, you know the truth or can get it."
Tazewell's first historian did a wonderful work, in view of the fact that he was only occupied seven weeks in gathering data and writing his interesting and valuable book. The statistics, and other invaluable data he used, were furnished him largely by Dr. Fielding Peery, who at that time was, possibly, the most learned and scientific man in Tazewell County. But for this assistance, Dr. Bickley would have been compelled to occupy as many months as he did weeks in the execution of his task. That he made some mistakes is very evident; and that many valuable facts and interesting incidents con- nected with the early history of the county were overlooked, or not obtained, is certain. In his preface, Dr. Bickley says he knew he would commit errors. It is to be regretted that he performed his work with so much haste, as it is now very difficult to supply his omissions. This, however, I shall try to do as effectively as I can. He failed to mention some of the earliest settlers, among them the Thompsons, the Cecils, and others, who were closely identified with the pioneer settlement of the county. I am satisfied he was mis- taken in the date he gave of the first permanent settlements made here-that is in 1771 and 1772. And he was clearly in error when fixing the date of the first hunting party that came to the Clinch Valley, that is in 1766.
The Loyal Company was not only disputing the claims of the Indians to the territory west of New River, but Dr. Walker, the shrewd and diligent agent of the company, was actively at work all the while to induce settlements on the numerous tracts of land he had surveyed and sold to various purchasers. Colonel John Buchanan and the heirs and representatives of Colonel James Patton were also urging settlers to move in and occupy the tracts that had been sur- veyed under the grant of 120,000 acres to Colonel Patton. The Virginians who, as officers and soldiers, had served in the French and Indian War felt at liberty to make locations in this section under the grants that had been given them for military service and were making locations. Consequently settlers had been moving into the country, to the Holston Valley and other localities, for several years preceding 1771.
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In the year 1765, David Campbell purchased from Colonel John Buchanan a tract of land containing 740 acres, called "Royal Oak," situated on the Middle Fork of the Holston River, just east of the present town of Marion. This boundary of land had been surveyed by Colonel Buchanan in 1748. In the year 1766 Arthur and John Campbell, sons of David Campbell, moved from their homes in what is now Rockbridge County, to the Holston Valley. Arthur built his
The above picture shows the house that Arthur Campbell built at Royal Oak. He surrounded it with a stockade and made it a fort when the Indians began to attack the Holston settlements.
house on the tract his father had purchased from Colonel Buchanan, and turned his home into a stockaded fort in 1773, when trouble with the Indians began. This was afterwards known as Campbell's or "Royal Oak Fort," and will be frequently mentioned in connection with the Clinch Valley, for reasons that will be apparent. Arthur Campbell built a mill near his home, on the Middle Fork of Holston River in 1770, the first mill that was erected on the waters of the Holston. Fortunately I have a picture of the old Campbell home, built in 1766. The house was, unfortunately, torn down a few years ago; and the picture is shown above. Summers, in his History of Southwest Virginia, says:
"Among the settlers that came this year (1768) was Joseph
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Martin a daring and enterprising backwoodsman. He was accom- panied by a band of from twenty to thirty men, and led them to Powell's Valley, now in Lee county, Virginia, where they erected a fort upon the north side of a creek, near two fine springs of water, which fort and creek were thereafter called Martin's Fort and Martin's Creek. * There were some five or six cabins built about twenty feet apart, with strong stockades between, and in the stockades there were port-holes. Here they clcared the land and planted corn and other vegetables. In the latter part of the summer of this year the Indians broke them up, and the settlers returned to the waters of the Holston. Martin's Fort was not occupied after the Revolutionary War."
Reuben Gold Thwaites, in his "Documentary History of Dun- more's War," says that Captain William Russell moved from Cul- peper County to Clinch River in 1770, if not earlier.
Thomas Witten, who was, beyond dispute, the first white man to bring his family to Tazewell County and make permanent settle- ment here, had been living on Walker's Creek, in the present Giles County, Virginia, for a year or more prior to his settlement at the Crab Orchard on the Clinch. He had boldly disregarded the claims of the Indians to the territory west of New River, and had defiantly ignored the royal proclamation of 1763, which forbade British sub- jects settling in the disputed region. If his intended destination was the Clinch Valley, why should he linger on Walker's Creek until 1771? From well authenticated tradition, which I will in a future chapter set forth, he must have settled in the Clinch Valley as early as 1767, as he was living at the Crab Orchard when the battle between the Shawnees and Cherokees was fought on the top of Rich Mountain, just west of Plum Creek Gap, in 1768.
Though it is stated by Bickley that Rees Bowen settled at Maiden Spring in 1772, it is a tradition with the Bowen family that he located there several years earlier. Lyman C. Draper, in his "King's Mountain and Its Heroes," says: "Rees Bowen was born in Maryland about 1742. He first emigrated to what is now Rock- bridge county, Virginia, and, in 1769, to the waters of Clinch, in what is now Tazewell County." The question of when the first settlers came to the Clinch Valley, and also the earliest known visits of hunting parties will be discussed more fully in subsequent pages of this volume.
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The route used by the pioneers as they journeyed from New River to the Clinch Valley is well defined. It was the same trail that was made by herds of buffalo as they traveled to and from the regions east of the Alleghanies; and had, no doubt, been trodden many times by hunting and war parties of Indians. Coming from the east, the first settlers erossed New River at a ford opposite Ripplemead, a station of the Norfolk & Western Railway, about one mile below where Walker's Creek empties into New River. A ferry was established just above the ford by the Snidows in the pioneer days; and the log dwelling of Colonel Christian Snidow, built in 1793, is still standing on the east side of the river, opposite Ripple- mead. A splendid steel bridge now spans the stream at the ford our ancestors used when they crossed the river. From thencc they followed the Walker's Creek Valley to where the Kimberling branch of that creek joins the main stream in the present Bland County. Then they followed Kimberling Creek to its source, erossed over the divide into what has since been known as the "Wilderness," and through that forest to Roeky Gap. Passing through the Gap they came up the Clear Fork of Wolf Creek to the divide, six miles east of the present town of Tazewell; and traveling on one mile came to the head spring of the south fork of the historie Clinch. Tradition, uniformly, tells us that this was the route traveled by the pioneers when they came here.
It is a very reasonable supposition that most of the first set- tlers eamc on tours of inspection and investigation before they moved their families out. Thomas Witten had been living with his large family for a year, or more, within fifty miles of the place where he ultimately located; and it is almost certain that he and his oldest sons made trips of exploration to the Clineh before they moved here. His selection of the "Crabapple Orchard" traet for his home, the choicest bit of land on the Clinch, that had been sur- veyed by Colonel John Buchanan for John Shelton in 1750, and where Biekley says a hunter had built a cabin and cleared a path for corn, is very strong proof that Thomas Witten knew precisely where he was going when he started out from his temporary home on Walker's Creek. The very judicious selection of land made by the other first settlers shows that they had been on the ground before, or had received reports from some person pretty familiar with the country. Absalom Looney told James Moore of the splendid land he could find in Abb's Valley, and the route he should follow to get there; and Moore abandoned his home in Rockbridge County, then
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Augusta, and took up his residence where, a few years later, he met a tragic death at the hands of the Shawnee Indians.
It required wonderful fortitude, perseverance and physical vigor for women and children to make the journey from the former homes of the emigrants to the Clinch Valley. From New River to the points where they located on the Clinch the route was through an unbroken wilderness, and so rugged that it was difficult to travel on foot or horseback. Most of the early settlers seem to have been pretty well supplied with horses; and it is likely that the women and children rode on horseback, and that the few necessary household articles were transported on pack-horses. The men and boys walked, with their rifles on their shoulders, ready for instant use if an enemy, man or beast, appeared. It is probable that some of the settlers brought cows along with their families, as they knew of the rich herbage that was found in the Clinch Valley. The wild pea vine then grew abundantly in the forests; and in places where the forest was free from brush, and in the open places along the streams, the native bluegrass grew in sufficient abundance to furnish good pas- turage for horses and kine .. Bickley, in writing of the hunters who frequented the Clinch Valley before the advent of the pioneer set- tlers, and who brought with them a number of pack-horses to take home their peltry, says: "Pasturage for their horses was to be found everywhere; and game in such abundance, that plenty and good cheer were their companions from the time they left their homes, till their return."
Owing to the very meagre transportation facilities they pos- sessed, each and every family had to exercise great care in selecting the amount and the character of the baggage they brought with them to their backwoods homes. The supply of bedding and clothing was reduced to a minimum-barely sufficient for protection from the cold and to keep their persons comfortably and decently clad-these articles being of the plainest and most inexpensive kind. A modern housewife would be shocked and disgusted if she were called upon to begin housekeeping with the few and simple things the pioneer mothers brought with them in the way of house and kitchen furnish- ings. These consisted of iron kettles, frying pans, pewter spoons and, maybe, a few pewter platters, and in some instances a few steel knives and forks; but the tableware was mostly made of wood, hand-made and home-made, such things as bowls, trenchers, platters and noggins. Crockery and chinaware did not make their appear-
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ance on the Clinch until some years after the pioneers had estab- lished their homes in Tazewell.
The man who was the head of a family had to assume and exer- cise a triune personality, that of farmer, of mechanic, and of hun- ter; and on occasion a fourth was added, that of warrior. Every acre, yes, every foot of land he wished to prepare for use had to be cleared of giant forest trees and thick undergrowth. This was done with an axe, wielded by his brawney arms, and the land was culti- vated by him and his family with hoes and such other crude imple- ments as he could improvise. In the role of mechanic he had to be a "Jack-of-all-trades", making wooden vessels for domestic use, rough besteads, cupboards, tables, stools, a loom, shoes and moc- casins from buckskins and other animal hides, sometimes the raw hide. His list of tools was very limited-a drawing knife, broadaxe, tomahawk, a tool to rive clapboards to cover his cabin and corn- crib and stable, and possibly an auger and a handsaw. With these tools he accomplished wonders as a carpenter. With awl, needle and waxed thread he, or his wife, made the moccasins for himself and family from buckskin he had dressed in the Indian style.
As a hunter the pioneer settler had great responsibility upon him, for his wife and children were dependent upon his skill and success for their supply of meat, generally venison and bear's flesh; and frequently for a substitute for bread. The grain would some- times give out before the new crop was ready for food, and the breasts of pheasants and wild turkeys were used as substitutes for bread. The pioneer virtually made conquest of this great country with the backwoodsman's axe and his trusty rifle. Men, boys, women, and even girls could and did use, effectively, when occasion demanded, these indispensible weapons of the pioneer.
The pioneers brought with them good supplies of salt, but they soon found that this mineral, so essential to the health and com- fort of both man and beast, could be made at the Salt Lick on the North Fork of the Holston River; and from the time they obtained this knowledge until the Saltworks was acquired by the Mathieson Alkali Company, the people of the Clinch Valley got ample supplies from that place. There was another article of food, now considered a great luxury, that the pioneers did not have to bring from the east, but could make at home-that was sugar. In every valley, and in the mountain hollows, the Tazewell pioneers found magnificent groves of sugar maple. Every settler had his "sugar orchard"; and in the late winter or early spring he would tap his "sugar trees"
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and make an abundant supply of sugar and "tree molasses" for his family needs for the ensuing year.
Seed corn was brought out by the fathers and seeds of different kinds of vegetables-beans, potatoes, squash, turnip, cabbage and others seeds-by the provident mothers, who in those days took most interest in the garden or "truck patch." The settlers moved their families to their new homes in the early spring season. No doubt the trees had been belted in the winter time so as to keep the sap from rising when spring came, and thus prevent the trees from leafing. The clearings were made by chopping down the large trees about the sites of the houses to be erected and using the logs for the buildings. On the adjacent ground the large trees were belted, the saplings cut down and the brush grubbed out; the brush and saplings were then burned or removed, and the loose rich soil was easily prepared for seeding.
After the pioneer had planted his first crop of corn and vege- tables there had to be endured by him and his family weeks and months of anxious expectancy as to what the harvest would be. They had several reasons for apprehending that the most important crop, the corn, might be a failure. Bears and other wild beasts might destroy or materially injure it; a hot dry season might come and cause the blades to fire and the shoots to parch and not mature; and, then, "Jack Frost" in those days made early visits and got in his work of destruction. The supplies of corn brought from the eastern settlements, by early summer, were generally exhausted, and the corn pone, though always a necessity, became a luxury. If the season proved favorable, when the early vegetables came in much relief was given; and when the corn reached the "roasting ear" stage the event was welcomed with shouts of joy by the children and the grown-up folks alike. This condition of scarcity, or threat- ened scarcity, of bread continued for several years after the first settlers arrived, a notable instance occurring in the Clinch Valley while Dunmore's War was in progress, in 1774.
The first settlers usually came in groups, or located in groups after they arrived; and fixed their homes in such immediate nearness as would enable them to be of service to each other in times of stress. This established a community of interest in a social and economic sense; and was of the utmost importance as a means of protection against the attacks of hostile Indians. The home of a settler, cen- T.H .- 16
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trally located, was selected in each neighborhood, where all the families in the vicinity could flee for protection when the Indians made hostile incursions into the country. At these central points forts were built, where safety was assured all who got there before the Indians made surprise attacks on their cabin homes. The first forts built in the Upper Clinch Valley were, Thomas Witten's fort at the Crab Orchard, near Pisgah; Recs Bowen's fort at Maiden Spring; and William Wynne's fort, at Locust Hill. The latter was
The flag in centre of picture shows where Thomas Witten built his fort when the hostile Indians began to invade the Clinch Valley settle- ments.
.
located on the point just west of Mr. George A. Martin's residence, one and a half miles east of Tazewell. These three were community forts and were very similar in form and construction. Indeed they were like all such places of refuge and defence as were at that time, or afterwards, erected on the frontiers of the English colonies. Roosevelt, who carefully investigated all that was written by the earliest writers about the old frontier forts, gives a description of them in his "Winning of the West." He says, they were: "A square palisade of upright logs, loop-holed, with strong block houses as bastions at the corners. One side at least was generally formed by the back of the cabins themselves, all standing in a row; and there was a great door or gate, that could be strongly barred in case of need. Often no iron whatever was employed in any of the build-
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