USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 26
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From Caddell we climb a wooded hillside and come into the large upland terrace known as the Whetsell Settlement. Its formation is somewhat like that of Elliot's Ridge, but it is hemispherical in shape, the river-hill closing in upon it at Caddell and toward Rowlesburg. From the river bluff the half moon rises in bold indulations to the base of Briery Mountain and is drained by streams issuing therefrom. It is an exceptionally pleasant and inviting portion of the county, and contains some of its best farms. It is the earliest point of settlement for the county, the Butlers coming in 1766. Until about ten years ago the postal facilities were singularly inconvenient. But the quietness of the attrac- tive rural neighborhood is likely to be disturbed, for under the surface are veins of coal.
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On the river, where it flows alongside the settlement, is a railroad bridge that has the effect of doing away with the ferry long maintained by Jesse and Thomas J. Trowbridge. From the upland a road brings us into the old state road from Caddell to Terra Alta. The latter route was once a quite well-built highway and was piked in places. Briery Mountain proves here to have a double summit. In the saddle between are a few farms, and the old house once standing where Wesley Garner now lives was locally known as the Rag Tavern, the name being unfavor- ably suggestive of the manner in which the hostelry was kept.
From Terra Alta we take a road opened about 1854 and leading south- ward about eight miles to Amboy. It follows by quite easy grades the eastern brow of Dry Ridge. Eastward at a little distance and running parallel, are the higher, steeper, and more wooded elevations of Brushy Ridge. In the shallow depression between us and the neighboring heights are frequent farmhouses. It looks as though there should be one continuous watercourse in this hollow and also one continuous road. In fact there was such a road prior to the opening of the so-called pike, and it is sometimes used when the newer road is blockaded with snow.
Eastward of Brushy Ridge and extending from the Baltimore and Ohio railroad southward nearly to Aurora is the largest body of timbered land in the county. It was in this wilderness that Frederick Saucer lost his way, and eventually his life from the effects of exposure and starvation. Since then the Crellin Lumber Company of Garrett have felled the merchantable timber, conveying it to their mill by temporary railroad tracks. Just westward from the nearby crown of Dry Ridge the ground falls away into the maze of steep hills and ridges that one observes from the Eleven Mile grade.
Amboy, formerly Painter's Mills, is little else than a hamlet of a half-dozen farm houses and a saw and grist mill. From this point a road branches off to Rowlesburg. It follows the crest of Lantz and Goff ridges, keeping the general course of an Indian trail. The whole distance is a continuous succession of farms, often with very cozy homes. Along the road are two Lutheran churches and a Methodist. On the right the view opens out into the Salt Lick basin and on the left beyond the deep, narrow cleft of Big Run is a second hogback. From Goff Ridge one may look down quite about abruptly upon Rowlesburg. From the house of George S. Deakins to the river is a stony path which the late John A. Peters told the author it took him only one quarter of an hour to descend but three quarters to ascend. The highway over- comes the declivity by a very serpentine route.
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From Amboy, where one has a glimpse of the Wolf Creek gorge to the southward, the main highway describes a semicircle around the base of a huge, grassy knob, a cattle shed appearing on the dome-like summit. Along the foot of the big hill is an occasional sinkhole indicating the presence of a very thick bed of limestone. Caverns exist. within the hill, yet little has been done toward their exploration. When we come nearly opposite Amboy, we pass the home of the late Major David Stemple, who at his death a few years since was perhaps the last grandson of the early settlers of Carmel. It is related of his mother that while milking one day she found a bear in the act of seizing a pig. She at once picked up an axe and brained the bear, thus depriving him of a meal. Continuing up the double S in the road we pass the Startzman house built in 1794 by Jacob Dietrick, and presently find ourselves on the high spot where lies the village of Carmel.
In 1787 came the four German families led by the Rev. John Stough, who established the settlement of Salem. Jacob Wagoner was the only one of these pioneers to remain permanently. Stough lived and preached here a number of years and then went West. Dietrick and Hogmire also moved away. A year later came the Stemples, Ridenours, Rineharts, Wotrings, Harshes, and others, thus making the settlement of very respectable size. A Lutheran congregation was organized tbe same year the first settlers arrived, and it worshiped in a log building, which was succeeded in time by the present church. By 1790 August Christian Whitehair was teaching at Carmel, and in that very year Stough built a mill on Wolf Creek, the water being conveyed to the wheel by a spout set under a waterfall. The capacity of the stones was three bushels of corn a day. By 1790 the settlement was so ambitious that Deakins and Hogmire laid out the town of Carmel, intending it to be the seat of government of a new county.
But Carmel itself is yet a very small place, though it possesses church, store, postoffice, and wheelwright shop. "Old Town," as it is sometimes styled, has been overshadowed since the building of the Northwestern Pike by the much larger place which arose along the great highway. However, the two villages are so close that they fairly touch, and are connected by a plank walk. The larger village was laid out in 1840 under the designation of West Union, but in 1875 was renamed Aurora. It lies on higher and more sightly ground than Carmel, and extends a considerable distance along the pike, which in the central part of the village is beautified with shade trees. In the twin centers
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are about fifty houses. Aurora has a Methodist church, a three-roomed school building, two stores, and several hotels. In becoming a summer resort Aurora has not retrograded since the decay of the pike. The fine landscape setting, the attractive appearance of the village street, the pure highland air, the pure cool water, and the inducements for pleasure riding are such as to attract numbers of people every summer. Especially for their accommodation are two large hotels, one conducted by John A. Lantz, and the other built in 1872 by James H. Shaffer. The village site is quite exempt from fog and hay fever. Besides the cold freestone waters of the gravel springs, there are sulphur and chalybeate waters in the vicinity.
A little more than a mile east of Aurora is Brookside, purely a summer village, the cottages standing vacant through the long cold season. Midway between the places is the rustic freight depot, which for several years was maintained by the Crellin Lumber Company.
From Brookside we pass over a low ridge and enter a glade-like basin where the well-kept farms and comfortable homes show an agricultural thrift and prosperity unsurpassed elsewhere in Preston. Eglon, four miles in this direction, was formerly called Maple Run, and as it dates only from 1881 it has a very modern air. It comprises about twenty dwellings, and is a brisk commercial point.
From Eglon the Maryland line is only two miles east. The historic Fairfax Stone is eight miles southeast. In this direction, where lies the basin of the upper Youghiogheny, the surface of the country is more broken and more forested, and large lumbering operations were formerly conducted. The proportion of woodland in Union is unusually large, and in favorable years the chestnut crop becomes a matter of importance. Toward the corner of the county settlement becomes sparse, yet the Western Maryland railroad lies just beyond the Back- bone Range and some of the people of Union have made money by working in the coal and lumbering towns along that line. In the east of Union the German Baptist element is numerous.
From Aurora a highway leads nearly southward into Tucker. It follows the line of Stemple Ridge, and though it is sometimes at an altitude of about 2800 feet, there is here as on Lantz Ridge a constant succession of farms, and the region presents a good appearance. East- ward the surface sinks into the rugged hollows along Horseshoe Run, which lies between us and the Youghiogheny. Westward at the distance of about ten miles in the crest line of Laurel Hill in Reno.
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Southward, in Tucker county, is the massive and very high prominence of Limestone Mountain.
Again returning to Aurora we take the Northwestern Pike and follow it two miles across a level, well-peopled expanse to the postoffice of Denver, where the descent to the Cheat begins. A half mile from Aurora are traces of the burned Rising Sun tavern kept in the noon-day of the pike by Major Stemple. It derived its name from the figure of a rising sun painted on the sign. At the eastern end of Brookside is a stone house, formerly another tavern. As we continue to Denver we find that several of the houses are summer cottages. With the excep- tion of Terra Alta itself, Union is the only district which as yet draws a noticeable number of summer tourists.
From Dayton to the lower end of Wolf Creek valley at Hardest- ville, the distance is three miles by a grade of five degrees. The road is sinuous, shady, and lonely, yet the outlook is pleasing. The waters of the Wolf are generally far below by an abrupt descent, while the hillside above reaches skyward at an angle almost equally acute.
In the heyday of its prosperity, the road was constantly looked after by workmen, after the manner of a section gang on a railroad. But the through travel once destroyed by its iron-railed competitor, the pike sank steadily and surely to the condition of a county road of the better class. In going down this grade when the road was icy, a log was often attached to the wagon to serve as a brake.
Hardestyville is scarcely even a hamlet. The immediate valley of the Cheat is narrow, even when bottoms occur, yet the river-bluff is not so high as in Grant or Pleasant. Its face is fluted by shallow ravines. The mouth of Wolf Creek has been successively the home of the Carrico, Bolyard, Ford, and Pulliam families. A few miles southward by the bends of the river, and just without the Tucker line, is where James Goff settled in 1783. He usually had money to loan, and his bank was a sack of coin hidden in the earth-floor of his cabin. All the family ate mush from the same big dish. One of his visitors fought shy for a while of taking supper in this promiscuous mode, but hunger brought him to time, Goff merely remarking, "I reckoned you'd come to your fodder at last."
Two miles below the mouth of Wolf we come to the covered bridge by which the turnpike enters Reno district. The structure is of wood and strongly built. Above this point there is no continuous road along the western shore of the Cheat and the hills crowd upon the river. The pike follows the stream two more miles to the mouth of the Buffalo,
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where there is a very small group of houses known as Macomber. Three miles farther, around a bend of the Cheat, is the town of Rowles- burg occupying a tongue of river bottom in a corner of Reno. Opposite is the mouth of Salt Lick, this tributary having a very narrow fringe of lowland, the mountainous wall of river-hill rising sharply on either side. In the rear of the town is a corresponding mountain wall. Below the peninsula on which the town stands, the huge bluff presses the river so closely as to compel costly trestling and side-cutting to enable the railroad to gain a foothold. Such is the topographical setting of Rowlesburg.
In 1775, the year that the Massachusetts farmers fired at Lexington and Concord "the shot heard round the world," one Hezekiah Frazer made a clearing on this tongue of land. He and the Wheelers and Goffs, his successors in ownership, seem to have lived here in isolation the next three-fourths of a century, for until the railroad construction drew near, there was only one house. The rails were laid this far by the close of 1851, and the town, which now began to assume form, is therefore a creation of the steam locomotive. It was named for Thomas Rowle, an engineer, and was incorporated in 1858. The first store was opened in 1850 by one Offutt. In twenty more years the place had attained a population of 258.
Hitherto Rowlesburg has owed its importance to the railroad itself, the forests of the upper Cheat, and the bluestone quarry at the east end of the railroad bridge. The heavy grades of either side of the Cheat have made necessary a number of helper engines to supplement the pulling capacity of the road locomotives. Consequently the town has derived its support in no small degree from the railroad employees stationed here. Two steam sawmills have been kept busy working up the logs floated down the Cheat and impounded by a boom. The bluestone from the quarry is of so fine a grain as to make a. good whetstone. It is highly esteemed for building and flagging purposes, and large quantities have been shipped.
But as a center of country trade, Rowlesburg has until within a few years been handicapped by the fact that it was accessible by wagon in only one direction ; by the road up the Cheat. The people beyond the river had to hitch their teams on that side and lug their supplies and purchases across the railroad bridge, a plankway being laid on the ties for their accommodation. One of these folks observed to the writer that a wagon bridge would enable them to live more years. Such a bridge was finally put up, yet dangerous grade crossings remain.
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The number of inhabitants, which had steadily increased since 1870, took a leap between 1900 and 1910 of 42 percent. The population is now about 1000, making Rowlesburg the second town in the county. This is largely a result of the coming of the Morgantown and Kingwood road to the east end of the bridge. Its extension up the Cheat to the Western Maryland at Parsons will make Rowlesburg the only town in Preston with intersecting lines of railroad. It may thus before long become the metropolis. Yet nature has been niggard with respect to an ample supply of good building ground. Climatically, also, it yields the palm to the upland towns. Though relieved by currents of air drawing through the river gorge, the humidity makes the summer days sultry at times, and the clouds of smoke from the numerous locomotives give the houses a dingy appearance.
Manheim, two miles down the Cheat on the east side, is practically a suburb of the larger place. It owes its existence solely to its cement works. The plant, owned by Philadelphia capitalists, is an extensive one, and the supply of cement rock in the hillside above is enormous. Nearly opposite Manheim is a plant for the crushing of rock for ballast.
Etam is five miles up the Buffalo from Macomber. For most of the way the immediate valley is thinly peopled and is walled by closely approaching bluffs of great height. Near Etam it becomes broader and shallower. This point is a very small village, yet a center of trade for a considerable radius. East of the Buffalo is the squarish area of upland known as the Red Rock Settlement. A road leads into Tucker, striking the Cheat at Hannahsville.
During the 40's there were free mulattoes in the south of Reno, but they all moved away. One of these men was Thomas Cook who had a farm near Etam. He is said to have given aid to John Brown of Harper's Ferry fame, and a knowledge of the circumstance leaking out, he found it advisable to sell his farm and go to Ohio. It is related that Cook sheltered Brown a while, the noted abolitionist being in such straits that he was glad to gather the scraps thrown away by the children at the schoolhouse near by.
Etam is also where Jesse M. and D. Boardman Purinton and David Call settled some years previous to the civil war. They purposed to establish a colony of Baptist people, but the plan was given up, and no congregation of that faith is now existent. Doctor Daniel B. Purinton, for about ten years president of the University of West Virginia, is a son of the Rev. Jesse M. and was born at Etam.
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Southward from the village, Laurel Hill appears heavily wooded. But northward, along the three miles of hogback to the crossing of the mountain by the Northwestern Pike is a chain of farms and a num -. erous settlement. From Friend's Gap, as this point on the pike is called, it is four miles in a direct course to Tunnelton, and it is about half that distance eastward to the four-mile grade which climbs the river-hill below Rowlesburg. This rectangular space is occupied by the forks of Laurel Hill and is one of the most uneven localities in the county. Yet many families are tucked about in its hollows, although the tourist pass- ing over the four-mile grade might suppose the heights beyond the sky line to be untenanted.
The zigzag ascent of the pike from Macomber is through almost primeval wood. But the descent from the summit to Fellowsville is more direct and gradual, and is lined with houses, one of the first being the hostelry known as the "Drover's Rest" in the busy days of the road. From the westward fall of Laurel Hill no corresponding height may be discerned as we look toward the place of sunset. The country below is a tangle of ridges and knobs, their summits preserving a somewhat general level, which declines imperceptibly toward the Valley River in Barbour, and does not rise appreciably in the region beyond. The horizon is very far in the distance. It has the sawtooth appearance so characteristic of the great Hill Region of West Virginia and so unlike the dead level horizon of the far West. This Hill Region is what geologists call a deeply dissected plain. Its innumerable watercourses, large and small, permanent and temporary, have worn an equal number of great hollows in the former level, and have left only the summits and knobs to indicate the position of the original surface. From this side of Laurel Hill, therefore, the streams flow directly westward, gath- ering volume with the tributaries they collect, and quite steadily widen- ing the ribbon of bottom which begins at the base of the mountain.
Fellowsville is twenty miles by the pike from Aurora and is six miles from Tunnelton. It is the southern terminus of a road built to connect by way of Brandonville and Kingwood, the National Road with the Northwestern and to be traversed by a line of stages. The position of Fellowsville was like that of a railroad junction and was consequently important. The place was laid out in the spring of 1848 by Sylvanus Heermans, who named it for his uncle, Joseph Fellows. The new town was the seat of a colony of men from Pennsylvania and New York, who undertook to build up an industrial and commercial town. For a while it grew rapidly, some industries were put under way, and even
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two newspapers were published. But the ruin of the turnpike brought a collapse, and the village is now very small, although as the vicinage is thickly peopled, it commands a good country trade.
A mile southeast of Fellowsville on a divide with a width somewhat unusual for this region is Israel church, in the cemetery of which very many of the older residents of this part of Reno are buried. Near by is the rustic sanitarium, conducted formerly by Dr. Longstreth, an herbalist. Running southward, parallel with the mountain we have left, is a road leading to Sinclair and Colebank. About midway in the distance from Fellowsville to Sinclair is a stream from Laurel Hill, Fellowsville lying on one still larger. Here located Abraham Hershman, perhaps the first settler in this portion of Reno. Another climb is followed to the south by what a resident calls a "powerful long hill," and we come into a third valley wherein is the Sinclair store with its postoffice. Thus far the country lies quite open, and despite the intermi- nable hills and hollows we observe that the region is well peopled and well farmed, except that the face of the mountain itself is to all appear- ance a forest. But in the two mile stretch between Sinclair and the hamlet of Colebank, we cannot see around us very well. We are nearing the mountain and are skirting its foothills. Yet plenty of people are stowed away among these recesses with their frequent belts of wood- land.
At Colebank we are no more than two miles in an airline from the top of Laurel Hill. The source of the stream we here meet, the third we have found since leaving Fellowsville, is a corner of Reno. The creek is the Preston-Barbour line, and the hamlet lies on both sides, though chiefly on the Preston border. A road would take us down the stream, causing us to follow Preston soil here and Barbour soil there. From Sinclair to Marquess the distance is three miles, largely along a valley basin. The country grows a little more open as we recede from the mountain wall. There are good farms and good farmers all along the way. Were these bold hills situated in the far South, where little grass is seen, the gullying action of heavy rains would give them a desolate appearance. But thanks to the firmer nature of Preston soil and its strong tendency to clothe itself with sod, the destructive effect of storms is but slightly in evidence.
Marquess, only a mile from the Barbour line, is a very small hamlet gathered about a mill and store. As in the cases of Brandonville Fellowsville, and Amblersburg, it commemorates a name that has passed from the county. Three miles to the north,-and in general we
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are measuring distances by the bird's course,-we arrive at Evansville, three miles below Fellowsville and on the same stream. This village is the oldest center in Reno, having been laid out 'by James Evans in 1831. Incorporation took effect in 1833. So long as the great pike was unmenaced by its ironclad rival, the village was a busy and important place. Since then the inevitable has happened. Like Brandonville it has fallen very greatly behind its former estate. Its artisans and its industries have vanished, its woolen mill with the help of a disastrous. flood being the last to succumb. Unlike many small places, Evansville is not "all long and no wide," but is squarish in form, the village site sloping upward and showing houses behind houses. Some of the build- ings are quite weather-beaten and out of repair. By the mere number of them there should be a considerable population, and yet one teacher presides over its school. In the rear of the church at the lower end of the village is buried Hugh Evans, the centenarian founder of Evansville.
Northward, it is but a little distance to the boundary of what its citizens sometimes term the "independent state of Reno." They take a very pardonable pride in asserting that it does not yield precedence to any other district of Preston. It is in all seriousness a goodly land, the western side being somewhat like the Whetsell Settlement, though on a much larger scale. It is well peopled, and well tilled, and many of its homes are very inviting. Reno deserves notice for active efforts to provide facilities for mental improvement. So far back as 1847, the "Evansville Literary Society" was incorporated by act of the legisla- ture, and 30 years later the "Preston Institute and Library Association" was organized at Fellowsville, gradually collected a library, and is still in existence.
The southern boundary of Lyon scarcely coincides with the dividing line between the waters of the Raccoon and those of the northern prong of the Sandy. From the viewpoint of the agriculturist and the lover of unsullied nature, the southern slope is the more attractive. But the west of Reno is a coal field, and paper railroads have already been marked into its valleys. One of them has even been able to cross Laurel Hill without resort to a tunnel. Some day the paper will become steel, and the twin villages in the valley behind us may change into coal mining towns.
Sand Ridge, which we are crossing, broadens against the line of Taylor county into quite a plateau, and the place owned by William H. Burgoyne appeals to the farmer's eye. On his premises we may see
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houses of varying age lying side by side, illustrative of as many phases in the development of this region.
In coming to the head of York Run, which meets the Sandy midway between Fellowsville and Evansville, the uninitiated person might wonder whether he is not happening upon a volcanic area. Smoke is issuing from the ground here and there, and spots aggregating yards upon yards are naught but sere and reddened earth. Vestiges of former habitations and piles of mine refuse meet the eye. We are now upon Scotch Hill, from whose very limited coal field nearly 5,000,000 tons of the black diamonds were sent down an incline to the cars at Newburg. But the vein was nearly exhausted, the works were closed, and such of the miners as had no previous homes in the vicinity went away. The coal yet unmined took fire, some say through a lightning bolt, and subterraneous flames have ever since been smouldering.
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