USA > West Virginia > Harrison County > History of Harrison County, West Virginia : from the early days of Northwestern Virginia to the present > Part 1
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History
Harrison County of
by Henry Haymond
Gc 975.401 H24h 1759899
M. L
REYNOLDG HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
-
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00826 8861
Fourth Court House, Built in 1888.
HISTORY
OF
HARRISON COUNTY
WEST VIRGINIA
BY HENRY HAYMOND
From the Early Days of Northwestern Virginia to the Present.
ILLUSTRATED
ACME PUBLISHING COMPANY MORGANTOWN, W. VA.
OURTRIORTED BY HENRY HAYMOND 1910
REPRINTED BY McCLAIN PRINTING COMPANY PARSONS, WEST VIRGINIA 1973
1759899
COL. HENRY HAYMOND BY JACK SANDY ANDERSON
Col. Henry Haymond was born at Clarksburg, Harrison County, Virginia, now West Virginia, on January 6, 1837, a son of Luther and Delia Ann (Moore) Haymond, both of whom belonged to families prominent in the settlement and early development of the West Fork Valley. He was educated at the Northwestern Virginia Academy and the Loudoun Ag- ricultural Institute. He studied law with and was in the office of Judge John S. Hoffman until 1861 when President Lincoln appointed him captain in the Eighteenth Regiment, U. S. In- fantry. During the Civil War he took part in the campaigns of the Army of the Cumberland and participated in the battles of Perryville, Stone River, Chickamauga, Hoover's Gap, Chat- tanooga, Missionary Ridge, Corinth, Buzzard's Roost, and various skirmishes and expeditions. He was wounded at Stone River on December 31, 1862, and was brevetted major and
lieutenant colonel for bravery in the battles of Stone River and Chickamauga. He remained in the army until 1870 and served in several Indian expeditions on the plains of Wyo- ming, Dakota, and Nebraska.
In the years following his retirement from military life, he held many important positions of trust and responsibility: member of the board of visitors to the United States Military Academy at West Point; member of the state legislature; pres- ident of the board of education; deputy collector of internal revenue; clerk of the circuit court of Harrison County; and recorder of the city of Clarksburg. In 1896 he was a Republi- can presidential elector, and was made chairman of the elec- toral college.
Colonel Haymond was an active member of Custer Post No. 8 of the Grand Army of the Republic and served as its commander. He was also active in the West Virginia Society of the Sons of the Revolution, an organization in which he was charter member number seven. He was its first secretary, serving from 1894 to 1897, and in 1904 was honored by being elected its fifth president. From 1905 to 1908 he served as its historian, a position to which he was again elected in 1916 and which he held at the time of his death.
From childhood he had a deep interest in the history of the West Fork Valley and the role played by his forebears, an interest that in time led him to become one of the area's most eminent historians. Through the years he wrote nu- merous historical articles for newspapers, and in 1910 pub- lished his excellent History of Harrison County.
On December 12, 1867, he married Mary (1847-1938), daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William H. Garrard, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. To them was born one child, Delia, who mar- ried Benjamin Rathbone Blackford and resided in Parkers- burg.
Although he lived to an advanced age, Col. Henry Hay- mond remained in good health until a few days before his death. He died at his home, 529 West Main Street, Clarks- burg, at 5:29 in the afternoon of Saturday, July 31, 1920, and was buried in the I.O.O.F. Cemetery at Clarksburg.
PREFACE
The period between 1900 and 1910 in Harrison County was similar to the 1970's for rapid change. Population grew from 27690 to 48381. Clarksburg started the decade a quiet rural town and ended the decade a booming industrial center. Older people living in such a time are motivated to save in the printed word a world that is slipping away. Fortunately, Henry Haymond was the man who took up his pen circa 1905 to preserve the early history of the county.
Mr. Haymond with the realistic, logical, discriminating mind of the lawyer researched records in county courthouses and the archives of the states of Virginia and West Virginia. Other researchers could yet today collect the same material from legal records, but no one could flesh out the skeleton of historic fact as did Mr. Haymond.
A member of a family of first settlers in the Monongahela Valley, he from early childhood had heard the traditions of the area. Alive when he wrote were historians Lucullus V. McWhorter, Virgil Lewis, Hu Maxwell-men with whom he conferred. He need travel only a few doors away to talk with his father, Col. Luther Haymond, who had lived the history of the county since the first decade of the 1800's. He had accessible the private papers of the Haymond family.
Henry Haymond orients today's researchers. For example, when the court record says in describing the site of the sec- ond courthouse, "at the corner a brick house is built six poles from the intended Court House," a researcher can go to Henry Haymond who adds, "The brick house referred to was the famous Hewes Tavern which stood. ... " Henry Haymond at the age of twenty-four had watched the citizens wave good-byes to Clarksburg boys marching east on Pike Street to join Confederate troops in Grafton and knew the boys who
caught a train to go to Wheeling to join Union forces, local scenes he-but no other historian-has described. His work is both a primary and a secondary source book.
The general reader finds Mr. Haymond's lean, terse style pleasing. The first edition of Haymond was not indexed. This handicapped the reader. A reprinted issue of Haymond with a name index is welcomed.
Dorothy Davis
Dedication.
TO THOSE BRAVE MEN AND STOUT HEARTED WOMEN WHO CROSSED THE ALMOST IMPASSABLE BARRIER OF THE ALLEGHENY MOUNTAINS AND CHEERFULLY FACED THE DANGERS AND DEPRIVATIONS OF FRONTIER LIFE AND THE HORROWS OF A SAVAGE WARFARE; HEWED OUT HOMES FOR THEMSELVES IN THE GREAT WOODS AND MADE THE WILDERNESS BLOSSOM AS THE ROSE, THIS WORK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.
PREFACE
In preparing a history of Harrison County, West Virginia, no literary merit is claimed as it is only a collection of events gathered from many sources, such as the records of the Courts, old letters and newspapers, books of a historical nature, and traditions that have been handed down from early times.
When Harrison County was created by an act of the Virginia As- sembly in 1784, it extended over that vast territory reaching from the Maryland line to the Ohio River, with a front of sixty miles on that stream and including the upper waters of the Monongahela River, all of the Little Kanawha and portions of the waters of the Big Kanawha.
To give an account of the efforts and trials of the early settlers, to establish homes for themselves, and organize a stable government in this vast wilderness, is an undertaking of patient research and great labor. and the writer is painfully conscious of his inability to perform it ad- equately.
It has been the object of the writer to preserve all he could obtain, as to the early settlement of the County, and the customs and manners of the settlers, their food, furniture, clothing, houses, diseases and amuse- ments before the records are destroyed and before the traditions pass from the minds of men.
This has been deemed more important than recent events as they can be established by more and better records than those of an earlier date.
The writer is indebted to the following works for valuable informa- tion in the preparation of this volume: V. A. Lewis' Reports as State Historian, Withers Border Warfare, DeHass' Indian Wars, Doddridges' Notes, History of Randolph County by Hu Maxwell and of Upshur Coun- ty by W. B. Cutright, the history of Monongalia County by Wiley the rending of Virginia by Hall, and Thwaites Edition of the Border War- fare.
It is the writer's pleasure to acknowledge aid and assistance from Hon. Hu. Maxwell, Virgil A. Lewis, L. V. Mc Whorter, Hon. B. F. Shuttle- worth, John Bassel and Luther Haymond.
If in this work the writer has succeeded in making the events sur- rounding the early history of his native County of interest to the reader he will feel that his labors have not been in vain.
HENRY HAYMOND.
Clarksburg, West Va., 1909.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Early Discoveries
1
The Aboriginees
3
Settlement of Virginia.
6
The French and Indian Wars
9
Early Settlements West of the
Mountains
16
Indian Tribes
54
Early Indian Troubles and Dun-
more's War
55
Indian Wars.
58
Incidents Connected With Indian
Wars
140
The Revolution
146
Formation of Counties
157
Land Laws
162
Cession of the North West Ter-
ritory
163
The Mason and Dixon Line
164
The Great Woods
166
Native Animals and Birds
168
Life of the Settlers, Houses, Wed-
dings, Amusements and Dis-
eases
171
Climate and Natural Phenomena. . 184
Courts
188
United States Courts
192
County Courts.
193
The Board of Supervisors.
233
Criminal Court
234
PAGE
Court Houses
235
Jails
242
Constitutions
244
Conventions
and Legislatures
.248
Roads
251
Clarksburg
254
Census of the County
274
County Districts and Townships .. 278
Churches
.279
Schools
286
Newspapers
295
Slavery
302
The War of 1812.
306
The Mexican War
312
Civil War
315
The Spanish War
331
New State
332
Incorporated Towns
340
Governors and Officials.
349
William Haymond's Letters
352
Sketches of Pioneers.
369
Indian Cave.
396
Fourth of July Celebration
399
Banks
403
Whiskey Insurrection
406
Elections
409
Adjutant General's Report
413
Miscellaneous
426
Early Discoveries.
There has always been in the human race an instinct which has drawn it westward. The cradle of mankind is said to have been in Asia, and since then men have moved steadily toward the setting sun to occupy the virgin lands which lay in that direction. From the mysterious bee hive of the Orient races moved on to Greece, Rome, the German Countries, to France, Spain and then to England, where for centuries the stormy Atlantic checked their onward march.
After the discoveries made by Columbus the movement again began across the Ocean to Mexico, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, and South America, and after that the phrase "Go West young man" is but a mani- festation of the principle that for many centuries has controlled the minds of men.
When Columbus from the deck of his little ship the Santa Maria on that October night, in the year 1492, saw a light in the hut of a savage on the island of San Salvador, one of the West India group, the entire con- tinent of North America had for countless centuries been wrapped in the gloom of a savage night.
No monuments or inscriptions have been left to enlighten the world as to the history of the human race who occupied it. Nothing is known as to what was accomplished or what problems in the destiny of mankind had been worked out on its lonely shores. The curtain upon this broad theatre of human action has been rung down upon the scenes enacted upon its stage, and what there transpired must ever remain enfolded in mystery.
The earthern mounds of the race known as Mound Builders and the shadowy traditions of the red men are all that are known of the races inhabiting the continent previous to the coming of the white man.
In 1497 John and Sebastian Cabot sailing under a commission from King Henry the Seventh of England, reached the main land as far North as Labrador and sailed down the coast as far South as North Carolina, and took possession of the country so explored in the name of that Mon- arch, and this was the foundation of the English title, priority of actual landing and possession.
For nearly a century after the voyage of the Cabots, England neglected to exercise any control over this newly found land, but stepped aside and permitted France and Spain to struggle for possession of the continent.
In 1512 Ponce DeLeon took possession of Florida, in 1521 Cortez in- vaded Mexico, both in the interest of Spain.
In 1534 Jacques Cartier discovered the mouth of the St. Lawrence, sailed up that river and took possession of all the territory drained by that mighty stream in the name of France.
In 1541 Fernando De Sota marched from Florida to the Mississippi River reaching it at a point just below where Memphis now stands, and claimed the country for Spain.
2
HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY
In 1562 a colony of French Huguenots established themselves at St. Augustine in Florida, which was broken up and dispersed by the Span- iards in 1565.
In 1669 La Salle, a French explorer starting from Canada passed down the Allegheny and descended the Ohio River as far as the falls, now Louisville.
In 1673 Father Marquette, a French Missionary and Joliette an In- dian trader, discovered the Mississippi at the mouth of the Wisconsin. In 1682 La Salle descended the Mississippi River to its mouth.
From these explorations and discoveries France laid claim to that vast region watered by the Mississippi and St. Lawrence rivers, and ex- tending from the Allegheny to the Rocky Mountains and from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
Thus the continent of North America became a bone of contention between France and Spain without regard to the claims of England.
England at last became aroused as to the importance of asserting her claims to the New World and during the latter part of the 16th Century she sent out expeditions to explore the land, which had been discovered by the Cabots.
These voyagers, upon their return gave a glowing description of the new land, as to its climate, trees, fruits, flowers, birds of gorgeous plum- age, graceful animals, gentle inhabitants and productive soil, as seen from the green shores of the sea.
The interior they said was a realm of majestic forests, blue moun- tains filled with gold and jewels and rivers flowing over golden sands, and somewhere far off in the direction of the South sea was the famous foun- tain of youth, in which the old had only to bathe, to grow young again.
These reports excited great interest in Europe and conveyed the im- pression that a paradise had at last been found on earth.
Elizabeth who was then Queen gave it the name of Virginia or the Virgin land.
In 1585 under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh a colony was lo- cated on Roanoke Island in Albermarle Sound, but it was soon abandoned and the settlers returned to England.
In 1587 a second one was founded in this same locality and when the Governor, White, returned from England where he had gone for sup- plies, no trace of the colonists numbering one hundred and seventeen souls could be found, and ever since their fate has remained a mystery. It was in this colony that the first English child was born in America, Virginia Dare.
MOUND BUILDERS.
An artificial Mound stands on an elevation overlooking the river about two miles from Clarksburg near the Milford road.
It is supposed to be the work of that extinct race the mound builders. The land on which it stands belongs to the Goff family and is known as the "Mound Farm."
The mounds built by this mysterious race were for defense, religious rites and burial purposes.
3
HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY
The Aboriginees.
The Indians of North America lived in the hunter state, and depended for subsistance on hunting, fishing and the spontaneous fruits of the earth. Where climate permitted some tribes cultivated corn, long pota- toes, pumpkins and squashes. They did not know the use of metals, and all their weapons and tools were made of wood and stone. They also made a rude kind of earthern vessels and their clothing was the skins of wild beasts. They had no flocks, herds or domestic animals of any kind, the horse and the ox being natives of Europe and not found in America.
Their government was a kind of patriarchal Confederacy. The small villages or families had a chief who ruled or controlled it, and their sev- eral bands composing a nation had a chief who presided over the whole.
The Powhatan Confederacy in Tide Water, Virginia, South of the Potomac, was composed of thirty tribes or villages numbering a popula- tion of about 8000 being one to the square mile, and capable of putting 2400 warriors in the field.
The tribes on the head waters of the James, Potomac and Rappahon- nock North of the falls of these rivers were hostile to the Powhatans and were attached to the Mannahoacs.
Jefferson says "Westward of all these tribes, beyond the mountains and extending to the great lakes were the Massawamees a most powerful confederacy, who harrassed unremittingly the Powhatans and Manna- hoacs. These were probably the ancestors of tribes known at present by the name of the Six Nations.
At the time the Territory of West Virginia was first known to the whites all sources of information agree that there were no permanent towns within its boundaries, that it was a kind of a "No man's land."
There were probably at all times small parties and families living in rude wigwams scattered along all the principal rivers of the State en- gaged in hunting, who had their permanent homes west of the Ohio.
Their camping places were known by the first settlers as "Fort Fields," and to this day arrow heads, stone hatchets, bones and mussel shells, charcoal and pottery are still turned up by the plow.
The burying places were often on high hills and the burial seems to have been made by covering the body with a heap of stones.
Unless the old fields of Hardy County were planted by the Indians, it is supposed that no crops were raised in West Virginia. This is owing probably to the dense forest which at that time covered the Country and to the great labor necessary to clear off the timber, as the Indians were never known to engage in anything requiring regular and prolonged hard work.
4
HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY
The flint out of which their weapons and tools were made is found in Ritchie, Randolph and Pocahontas Counties.
While they constructed no roads they had regular routes of travel, which were beaten into well defined paths by the passing feet of many generations of pedestrians, which were as plain to the Indian as a turn- pike to the White Man.
As they had no beasts of burden the labor of moving where all their effects had to be carried on their persons must have been considerable, but this work fell to the lot of the squaws.
On some of the streams canoes were used when the depth of the water permitted.
The Catawba War Path or Warriors Road as it was sometimes called, led from Western New York by way of Fayette County, Pa., crossing the Cheat at the mouth of Grassy Run, through the Tygart's valley to the Holston River. Over this route the Six Nations traveled in their wars against the Southern Indians.
A branch of this trail bore South West from McFarland's on Cheat to the Monongahela, down Fish Creek to the Ohio River, thence through Southern Ohio to Kentucky.
An Eastern trail was up Fish Creek from the Ohio down Indian and up White Day Creeks and on to the South Branch Valley. Other trails ran East from the Tygart's Valley to the South Branch, that known as the Seneca being the principal one.
A trail ran up the Big Kanwaha and reached into North Carolina, and one ran up the Little Kanawha thence to the waters of the West Fork, up Hacker's Creek, through the Buckhannon country to the Tygart's Valley.
The settlements that were made on and near these trails by the whites were subject to repeated raids from the Indians beyond the Ohio and suf- fered severely from them.
The trails leading from the Ohio East were well known to the early settlers, and scouts were posted on them near the Ohio to give the alarm to the settlers of the approach of war parties.
Whatever tribes said to have been the Hurons, occupied or claimed West Virginia, were conquered and driven out by the Six Nations, who had their seat of Government in Western New York, and the territory held by right of conquest.
The six nations were composed of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagoes, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras, the Tuscaroras being admitted to the Confederacy in 1712, before that time they were known as the Five Na- tions.
The conquered and claimed territory reaching from Massachusetts to the Lakes and South to the Tenessee.
At a treaty held by Sir William Johnson with them at Fort Stan- wix, now Rome, New York, in 1768, they relinquished title to the King of all territory lying East of a line commencing at the mouth of the Ten- nessee up the Ohio and Allegheny rivers to Kittanning Creek, thence N. E. to the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers.
The Shawnees, Delawares, Mingoes and other small tribes living on
5
HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY
and West of the Ohio laid claim to some of this territory, and continued to dispute its possession with the whites until the treaty of Greenville by Wayne in 1795.
The occupation of Fort Duquesne by the English followed by the treaty of Fort Stanwix extinguishing the Indian title to West Virginia, emigration set in and continued until the occupation of the State, not- withstanding the hostilities of the Ohio Indians and the War of the Revo- lution.
Whether the race known as Mound Builders, whose work is scattered over the State, were the ancestors of the Indians, or whether the latter destroyed them, must always remain in doubt.
Whoever they were and what part they played on the stage of human events will never be known. The record of their lives has been closed, never to be opened again.
It is but little that can be said of the early Indian of West Virginia. As a child of the forest he worked out the problem of his simple life.
He left no written record of the history of his race, no monument commemorating the deeds of his great men, no ruined palaces no works or buildings of a public nature. He simply lived out his miserable existence in the dreary forest to the end with no higher ambition in life than to tri- umph over his enemies, and leaving nothing to show to others that he had ever lived save a few stone weapons and the ashes of his fires.
The coming of the white man was an evil day for the red one, and even in his untutored mind he saw the dawn of a new era which was for- eign to his nature, and which he could not understand and would not ac- cept and therein he read the doom of his race.
The dark night of barbarism that for untold centuries had brooded over the green hills and along the fair rivers of West Virginia has been dispelled by the bright light of a new civilization, and the courage and en- ergy of the pioneer has made the once savage wilderness blossem as the rose.
6
HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY
Settlement of Virginia.
The territory of Virginia granted by King James the First to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers and others afterwards incorporated as "The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the first Colony in Virginia," by three separate charters, dated respectively April 10, 1606, May 23, 1609 and March 12, 1611, was very extensive.
The first Charter authorized the Company to plant a colony in that part of America, commonly called Virginia, in some fit and convenient place between the thirty-fourth and forty-first degrees of North latitude, and granted for that purpose all the lands extending from the first seat of the plantation fifty miles towards the East and North East, along the sea coast as it lyeth, and running back into the interior one hundred miles, together with all of the islands within one hundred miles directly over against the said sea coast.
The second charter granted to the company all of those lands lying in that part of America called Virginia, from the point of land called Cape or Point Comfort, all along the sea coast to the Northward two hun- dred miles, and from the said point of Cape Comfort all along the sea coast to the Southward two hundred miles, and all the space and circuit of land lying from the sea coast of the precinct aforesaid up into the land, through from sea to sea West and North West; and also all the islands lying within one hundred miles along the coast of both seas of the pre- cinct aforesaid.
The third charter granted to the company all of the islands situated in the Ocean seas bordering upon the coast of our first colony in Virginia, and being within three hundred leagues of any of the parts heretofore granted to the said Company in the said former letters patent as aforesaid. By these several grants the London Company became possessed of a front on the Atlantic Ocean of four hundred miles, taking Old Point Comfort as a center, and extending across the Continent to the Pacific Ocean, with the same front on that coast, and all of the islands in both seas lying with- in three hundred leagues off of and opposite the boundary above described.
The vast territory granted to the Company by these charters was re- duced before the war of the Revolution by grants to other colonies, and by the treaty of 1763, between Great Britain and France, and by the cession of Virginia to the United States of the North West Territory in 1781 and the erection of Kentucky into a separate State in 1792.
The government of the colony was to be entrusted to a local council composed of thirteen members and was to conform to the laws of Eng-
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