USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 23
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Applying these evident truths, we may in some degree determine whither Preston county is moving. In making this effort, one is not justified in allowing a free imagination to make entire use of rose-color in painting the picture.
The posterity of the pioneers will continue to people these hills. It will not yield quietly to the alien, as is sometimes observed in the agricultural counties of the Middle West. The volume of immigration of a permanent sort will be very small. The volume of emigration to other counties and other states will be larger. Any American county with a large agricultural interest and a small city and town population, is a nursery ground for the replenishing of the centers of population. But because of its local industries, the outflow from Preston will be smaller than from a county purely agricultural. And as a further result of this very condition, the proportion of persons engaged in one or another form of agriculture will decline belw the present ratio.
The foreign labor we have with us now will remain largely a floating element. It will assimilate with the resident population only in a very minor degree, because it does not come into close contact with the current of local life. Should a new policy on the part of corporations allow it to be displaced by domestic labor, there will ensue a distinc. gain to the community. The mining village with houses as alike as peas from the same pod, and rented to men who care little for the condition of their homes and house lots, and have little inducement to cultivate a civic spirit, is a wretched travesty on the type of town which true Americanism requires.
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The day will come, though not at all soon, when 100,000 people will inhabit our hills. Meanwhile the mileage of steam railroad will somewhat increase, and primarily for the extension of coal mining. But there will be a few electric lines, running east and west as well as north and south. These will accommodate a larger share of the local travel and the light freight. Gradually the more important wagon roads will be rebuilt in a scientific manner. Preston abounds in good road- building material. The method of patching the public highways once a year, and in a manner that never makes them really good, is one of the things that are behind the spirit of the age. The improved highways will be much used by motor vehicles, though not so exclusively as they are now for the business trip or the joy ride. The automobile dray will be considerably in evidence.
An increasing share of the Prestonians of tomorrow will dwell in the towns. In the struggle for supremacy among the latter, there will at length appear an undoubted metropolis for the county. It will some day be a city of respectable size among the larger places of West Virginia.
But what as to the support of the increased population that is destined to live here? The answer is to be found in the minerals, the tillage ground, the forests, the water power, the factory, and the scenic and climatic attractions.
Of the treasures under the surface, coal easily ranks first. Unless the per capita consumption of coal in America shall increase, our own field of 300,000 acres could supply the entire American demand for a third of the average lifetime of a person. For many years to come, the exploitation of our coal and coke will of itself support a large population. Much the greater share of the output will go abroad. Yet the portion used in turning factory wheels will be more appreciable than hitherto. But after all, it cannot be blinked that in course of time our coal beds will be exhausted, leaving as perhaps the most dependable fuel the alcohol to be extracted from products of the soil.
Our cement rock, glass sand, limestones, and clays will be brought much further into request, and will add quite materially to. the wealth of the county. The iron ores will in time be again utilized, as the deposits now more easily worked decline in yield.
The yearly value of farm produce in the United States is about $85 to each person. By growing crops to the extent of $2,000,000, Preston is contributing its proportion. Also, its yields to the acre do
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not suffer in comparison with those of the Mississippi valley. And yet the county has by no means reached its high-water mark in the capacity of its tillage land. It is true enough that the soil is not of the best, that the surface is rough, and that much of that surface cannot advantage- ously be reduced to cultivation. But it is also true that while the general farming of former years was the only kind possible, it is now less a necessity, since there is an improving market at our very doors. A specilization in American agriculture, varying with local conditions of soil, climate, and access to market, is becoming the order of the day. This specilization leals as a logical result to intensive methods. A boy of South Carolina recently grew 223 bushels of corn on one acre, whereas the prevailing slipshod methods of that state afford an average of only about 10 bushels. This cannot be mentioned as a result ordinarily within reach, and yet it is an earnest of what the farm lands of America can produce under more intelligent treatment. The supply of tillage land cannot be increased, except by the reclaiming of ground not readily or cheaply subdued. But there is no longer any plausible excuse for continuing methods which cannot result in the yields that are practicable.
Little wheat or corn will be grown on Preston soil in the future, yet the producing of hay, buckwheat and potatoes will persist. The grazing and dairying interest will easily hold its ground, and the output of poultry and vegetables will grow in importance. Furthermore, Preston is by nature a fruit-growing district. With proper care in supplying needed elements in the soil, in selecting standard plants, and in combat- ting insect and fungous pests, the capacity of the Preston hills with respect to both large and small fruits, will be found a matter of much importance.
All in all, therefore, we may look for agricultural yields of more value than those which now are garnered. The promise would be the greater but for the effect of coke smoke on plants exposed to its influence, the drying of the soil where mining is carried on at a small depth, and the uneven sinking of the surface after a vein is worked out. American haste will be slow to adopt the French method of plugging an exhausted coal vein with sand.
Between forest fires and reckless lumbering, a vast amount of the timber supply of America has gone to utter waste. As a result of such carelessness, a timber famine is within very measureable distance. And yet Germany, with a population incomparably more dense than ours, supplies her own lumber demand and exports a yearly surplus
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worth $80,000,000. Japan, with a population even more dense, has been supplying her own needs from time immemorial. But those countries dc not deem it a virtue to use six times as much timber per capita as the extravagant American. Sheer necessity will compel America to follow France and Germany in resorting to scientific forestry.
The future of our own Preston depends in no small degree upon the adoption of such a policy. Probably not more than 60 percent of our area can advantageously be left in open ground. The remaining space, if cared for like the German forests, would yield an annual output of not less than $400,000. Under intelligent forestry it is not enough to keep out the fires, which impoverish the soil and greatly injure the timber that survives. Some trees are of the nature of weeds and should not be permitted to cumber the ground. As soon as a tree is mature, it is to be felled and another put to growing in its place. By these means the yield of forest land becomes three times what it is in a state of nature, and the quality of the timber is very greatly improved.
A subsidiary value of woodland is as a cover for the game, and especially the birds, that Americans have been slaughtering without restraint. Our thoughtlessness in this respect is now bearing fruit in the toll of $500,000,000 which insects levy each year on the farms of America.
Preston streams have a rapid fall, and those of the Highland are fairly regular in volume. And since they may be harnessed to supply electric force worth $50 per horsepower, the energy latent even in our smaller water courses will some day be made available.
With a comprehensive care of our natural resources, the way will be open for the indefinite maintenance of a manufacturing industry of much local importance.
As the population of America expands, particularly in the cities, the summer playground increases in commercial importance. The Highland of Preston will remain quite free from the dust, smoke, and noise of the industrial region. Its scenic upland, and its pure air and water will continue to appeal to the summer visitor.
A few words might be added on the educational and social aspects of the coming era.
The unattractive country schoolhouse with an attendance too small to inspire interest is little else than a relic of a past age. The present tendency of population to mass in towns and villages, is hastening the
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general adoption of the centralized school with its better equipment and its more stable attendance. As a secondary result there will be a iessening of the number of fledgling teachers, illy trained and illy informed. School work in America has been too much on a par with its road-work; too much a field for very amateur practice. The inade- quate results are painfully apparent in the superficial training of the average citizen. The men and women of tomorrow will touch life at more angles than has hitherto been the case. Their teachers will neel to be broad enough for their proper work. In course of time teaching will become a profession in fact and not in theory alone.
We are occasionally told what a wonderful creature the "coming man" will be, and what wonderful things he will easily perform. But the coming man will be of the same general pattern as the man of today. The difference will be a question of outward environment and not of inherent capacity. We may therefore expect the social customs, the methods of work, and the activities of church, school, and business to remain much the same as now, save for the influence upon them of tendencies now in progress. The life of the country-side will continue to fall away from an isolation already diminished. There may be likewise a falling away from the hospitality and the spontaneity of inanner inherited from the pioneer time. Yet there may be a compen- sating gain in the breadth of the life that will eventually be lived.
The years the new century has already brought are a time of transition to the indefinite period opening before us. It is thus a time of ferment and unrest. It is likewise a time of crisis, and unusual responsibility lies upon the leaders of opinion. True progress lies in the transformation one by one of beneficent possibilities into beneficent realities.
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CHAPTER XXVII
PRESTON AS SEEN IN A DESCRIPTIVE TOUR.
To fulfill the conditions imposed by the heading of this chapter, a long and very circuitous trip is necessary. To be strictly up with the times, the reader may imagine himself with his guide in an aeroplane which cleaves the atmosphere just above the treetops. It is also to be understood that the machine is entirely comfortable, is proof against accident, can pass almost instantaneously from point to point, and like a bird has the power to hover any desired length of time over a given spot.
From historical considerations it is most fitting that we start in the north of the county. For the sake therefore of a comprehensive prelimi- nary view, we station ourselves on the Collins Knob, two miles north- west of Bruceton and very near the geographic center of Grant district.
The knob itself is round, not overly steep, and is covered with grass. There is nothing to obstruct the view in any direction. The summit rises about 3500 feet above the waters of the Sandy in the middle of the district. Scarcely more than a hundred yards below on the southern slope is the white farmhouse of J. Marshall Collins.
Rather less than two miles east is the upper course of the Big Sandy, crossing the district very nearly from north to south until Bruceton is reached, five miles from the northern border and one from the southern. The stream itself is not in view. It flows in a depression, which though deep is much too gradual to be styled a canyon. On a summer morning the course of the depression may be traced by the fog-bank with which it is often filled. Eastward from the Sandy the ground rises at the rate of about 80 feet to the mile, until it strikes the foot of a mountain ridge that is relatively very low. Seemingly, though not in reality, the ridge and much of the rising plain in front is covered with hardwood forest. But we are viewing the landscape edgewise, and a narrow border of wood may screen much open land beyond. A little over the level skyline is the Maryland boundary, ten miles away and for near six miles the boundary of Grant also.
Looking westward, we find on the horizon a mountain wall appar- ently somewhat higher and certainly more imposing. It is much more truly a forest than the range to the east, and includes a large block of
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woodland held in non-resident ownership. For almost eight miles the mountain summit is the border of the district. In this direction the ground is more broken than east of the Sandy. The upward slope toward the mountain is interrupted by the valley of Hazel Run. This stream heads near the state line and flows southward. Two miles beyond is the parallel course of Laurel Run, which rises in Pennsyl- vania and becomes a sizable stream at its confluence with the Sandy above Rockville.
Northward, the field of vision reaches far up the broad Ligonier valley into Pennsylvania and rests upon Sugar Loaf Mountain near Ohiopyle. Southwestward, we look beyond the chasm of the Cheat into the glades of Valley district. Southward, we may look up the Cheat toward Rowlesburg for a distance of full twenty miles. Twelve miles southeast, rising above a lower ridge in front, is the dome-shaped summit of Pineswamp Knob.
But without attempting to gaze beyond the confines of Grant, it 15 not enough to say the landscape is pleasing. On a bright summer day it is not often surpassed for quiet pastoral beauty. Within the basin between the mountains are rounded hills and oblong ridges, sometimes wooded and sometimes grassy; tracts of fairly level land, sometimes skirting the watercourses and sometimes lifted well above them ; pastures, meadows, and tillage fields of every imaginable outline ; and dotting the wavy expanse are white frame houses with their shade trees, their orchards, their gardens within the paling fence, and their barns, often of good size. The prospect is that of a staid and rather substantial farming community, considerably retired from the centers of industry. For more than thirty years it has had a stationary popula- tion, in consequence of the steady movement of the younger people into the industrial towns lying to the northwest beyond the mountain: wall.
The air is no longer so clear as when the settler came. The position of the Connellsville coke ovens is indicated by a dingy smoke-cloud peering in the northwest above Chestnut Ridge. The landscape photog- rapher finds the smoke in evidence even here, and under the propulsion of a strong wind it rolls over the mountain and fills this basin with a very manifest haze. In the near future the atmosphere may carry a still heavier burden of coke-fog. The basin of the Sandy is a coal field, the coal has been purchased, and soon or late these fair hills will be scarred by mining operations.
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Around us, but especially to the southward and eastward, is a large expanse of farmland, one of the choicest in Preston, and largely held by the Collins connection. A half mile south among the smooth fields are the Hopewell church and schoolhouse, the former used by the Methodists. Here we reach the pike that was built to connect Bruceton with Morgantown by way of Ice's Ferry. Two miles eastward and out of sight beyond rising ground is Bruceton, where Big Sandy turns southward and in two miles is joined by the Little Sandy at the district line. The united streams exchange a comparatively placid course for a tempestuous plunge of a hundred feet to the mile down a narrow, winding gorge, the steep bordering hills steadily rising higher and higher above the leaping waves.
Two miles westward from Hopewell, across an undulating divide and past a number of houses, brings us to a narrow bottom on the farther margin of which are the evergreen-shaded waters of Laurel Run spanned by a steel bridge. Here we find another schoolhouse and a Methodist church. But there was formerly a Union church here, though it was used mostly by a now extinct Presbyterian congregation. It was a comfortable log building with plastered walls. The present schoolhouse had also a log predecessor, and John King operated a saw and grist mill near by.
The pike, now little used, follows a narrow, lonely valley extending toward the mountain ridge. We follow a nearly parallel road which mounts by a heavy grade to a broad, open spur of the mountain, and passing on this hogback a succession of attractive homes, fields, and chestnut groves, we arrive in two miles at the little modern village of Pisgah, 2060 feet above sea level. The outlook from the knob at the eastern approach to the village is very interesting. Toward the Cheat and the lower Big Sandy, two or three miles distant, the ground falls rapidly downward in rounded swells and deep ravines to the brink of the river hill, whence the descent is abrupt enough to tax the skill of the agile goat. Consequently the view, which embraces little more than the southeast quadrant of possible observation, is far reaching and is that of a more than billowy expanse.
Until 1872 the site of Pisgah was known as Flat Rock. The only dwelling was the log house of Jesse Cale. About this time the Methodist church was built, to be followed by the two up-to-date stores which now exist, a very modern schoolhouse, and a number of good dwellings. Altogether, the locality is pleasant as well as sightly. Except to the west, and especially toward the river-hill, the vicinage is thickly
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peopled, the lands being good even though in some degree very broken. Here came at an early day the Gribbles, Kings, and Wallses, besides a number of families now extinct in the male line, and whose names are a fast-fading memory. One of these was John Seaport, who lived near the river-hill. Like not a few other Preston men he was drowned in the Cheat. He reared John Christopher, who inherited his farm. Another was John Stafford, who lived and was buried on the J. T. Gribble farm and gave his name to the little stream known as Stafford's Run. He is remembered as a jealous watcher of his beloved apple trees. Four dwellings of log preceded the substantial stone house built on the Gribble farm about 1844. Until of late the children of the Pisgah "corner" all went to school at Pleasant Hill, a mile south of the village. But on Stafford Run was once a thoroughly primitive schoolhouse. It was cold because the logs had been cut while green, and the crevices let in an excess of air, in spite of the attempts to keep it out with sheets of greased paper. The floor puncheons were often pried up to get at the pencils which had fallen through the crannies. Near Pisgah lived Absalom Brandon, the bachelor schoolmaster. He was fond of singing and whistling, had a considerable library, and taught much in the three decades before the civil war. In those times the neighbors formed themselves into a postal club, any member going to Bruceton bringing the mail for the whole settlement.
Four miles south in almost the deepest part of the Cheat canyon is the tolerably quiet pool known as the Beaver Hole. Until 1877, there was only a path from Pisgah to the "Jimmy fish-pot" near by. There is now a wagon road, although the ferry is little used. The hillsides tower to a height of about 800 feet, and on a June day the sun falls with vertical and therefore tropic power upon the south ward-falling slope. A little distance below the ferry is the Monongalia line. Above, on the northern side and at the brink of the river-hill are the Cooper Rocks, a spot of local repute for picnicking. They were named for Frederick Cooper, who came in the year of American independence. Here are some huge rock masses that look as though in unstable equilibrium. To outward appearance a not very strong force would pitch them into the chasm below, These rocks are the subject of a very clever newspaper hoax perpetrated by the late Henry C. Hyde. It stated that some men and boys succeeded in dislodging by levers one of the larger rocks, which took a mad plunge down the river-hill. snapping trees like pipestems and falling with terrific force into the middle of the channel. The effect was to open a crevice in the rock-bed
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through which the waters disappeared into a cavern. It further stated that the people near by were leaving their homes, fearing that the whole monntain was hollow. The Pittsburg dailies were victimized by this cock-and-bull story, and one of them dispatched a member of its staff provided with a camera. When he had arrived near enough to learn the truth, he vented his chagrin in language that had a strong odor of sulphur.
Four miles southeast of Pisgah, over a road well peopled and surprisingly level until we reach the creek gorge, is the hamlet of Rockville on the Big Sandy. Here we find a mill, store, bridge, and three or four dwellings. Because of the rocky slopes, the place is well-named. A few steps beyond the bridge is the Hanging Rock. During a gentle rain at least fifty persons might stand in dryness under the horizontally projecting ledge.
On Laurel Run about two miles above the church we have mentioned is where once was the iron furnace of Greenville. It was put up almost a century ago by a pioneer boomer with a very limited amount of very unsubstantial capital. It passed into stronger hands, but was torn down about seventy years ago. The most conspicuous relic is the ruinous wall of the store building. It rises in quiet loneliness near a bridge, a token of a long silent industry. Going toward the mountain slope we find traces of the former wooden tramroad, and on the uplands are holes from which ore was dug. In this direction is the Ryan settlement the only one on Chestnut Ridge within the district. The schoolhouse stands almost on the county line. Northward, on the ridge and also on the county line, are the ashes of a house, the spot being known as the Sand Spring. Here was a round-log tavern as early as 1808. At this point passes the more southern of the roads by which the people of Grant go to Uniontown and Fairchance. The other road is beyond the Pennsylvania line. By these thoroughfares many a person goes "over the mountain" to seek work, to carry produce to market, or to bring home for a visit or a more permanent stay a member of the family. This northwestern corner of the county is associated with suspicious persons and suspicious doings; with burnings, petty stealing, and the rifling of mail pouches. A state line is a convenient thing to pass over in the case of the refugee from justice. Otherwise, this nook of the county after a person is once in it, is far less prepossessing than the broader prospect from the Collins and Pisgah knobs. The country is rugged and heavily wooded, it looks very sparsely peopled, and the buildings are of an inferior class.
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Near the state line and west of Laurel Run is Valley Furnace, built about 1837. It is yet standing, but has been silent about as long as the Greenville. Wells have been drilled here to test the rock structure for cil, but seemingly without success.
From the deep, narrow valley of Laurel Run, running eastward four miles to the neighborhood of the Big Sandy and southward more than two miles from the state line is a plateau, one of the most level in Preston, although interrupted by the upper course of Hazel Run. It is crossed by two roads a mile apart and running northwest. On the lower is Hazel Run Baptist church, a weatherbeaten structure built about 1852. On the upper is St. Peter's, a Lutheran church, built in 1870. The most open, level, and inviting portion of the tableland lies about Kantner's Crossroads, a point three miles north of Bruceton and two miles west of Clifton. A mile southward is the extensive Lucian Smith farm with its unusually good buildings. Close by the latter was the boyhood home of the late James C. McGrew. This locality, so unusually level for Preston, is perhaps Wilson's Glade, where Martin Judy settled in 1773. The Judys patented 2360 acres in this vicinity, but sold all their holdings a century ago and went to Ohio. Near the Lucian Smith house is a chalybeate spring.
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