USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 27
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Before us is the Raccoon valley, which extends from the Kingwood tunnel to a little beyond the Taylor line, a distance of seven miles. It is a land of rumbling trains, clouds of coal and coke smoke, coal cinders, and begrimed houses.
West End, as the name indicates, is at the west end of the Kingwood tunnel. It is almost entirely a mining village, though right here the industry is not so active as formerly. Austin, about two miles down the railroad grade, was named for a doctor. Mining was begun at this point in 1864 and sems to have been carried on with less vicissitude than anywhere else in the county. A village of about 300 people has grown up around the mine and the coke ovens.
The railroad skirts the face of the valley wall, the Raccoon itself coursing through its narrow bottom at a considerably lower level. In the valley and beginning a little below West End, we observe coal openings of recent date reached by a railroad spur from Newburg. These are the Hiorra mines, and their passenger station is on the main track. Hiorra is an original name and was devised by Mrs. Ellen B. Orr. The component letters are taken from the names of the three men who were most instrumental in opening the mine. Before reaching New- burg the railroad makes a potbail loop around the side of an immense cone-shaped knob with a small tree on its apex. This is the Brain curve, so well known to the railroad employees.
Until the shrieks of the locomotive began to echo through its hollows, the Raccoon valley had been slow of settlement and thinly peopled. The first house on the site of Newburg was built in 1835 by Washington M. Paul. Until the railroad was figuratively within sight,
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there were still not more than two dwellings on the spot, one of which yet remains. But Simpson's Water Station soon grew into the town of Newburg. Why the railroad managers gave it this name is not known. Incorporation came in 1868. For something like fifty years, the place enjoyed the distinction of being the largest town in the county. But although it has never ceased to grow, the recent census has shown that Terra Alta and Rowlesburg are in the lead.
Between here and the east end of the Kingwood Tunnel the railroad ascends 604 feet. As at Rowlesburg, a number of helper engines are employed, and railroad interests have always been very prominent in the support of the town. Yet Newburg is an industrial and commercial point as well. It draws much country trade from its own district and from Reno, and until the disastrous mine explosion in 1886, a great amount of coal was shipped. For about a dozen years thereafter, the mining industry slumbered. In topographical position and in form, Newburg has some resemblance to Evansville. From the railroad track the rows of houses rise tier above tier toward the north.
Independence is one mile west of Newburg. Only a log cabin and a water mill were to be seen when the railroad arrived. A village began to develop, and it was named by John Howard in honor of Independence Day. Incorporation was effected in 1859. Independence is much smaller than Newburg, and unlike the other railroad towns of the district it has no mine in its immediate vicinity. It secures a large country patronage, the roads leading into it being lighter in grade than those entering Newburg. The firm of Hartley and Gustkey observes a "watermelon day" at the close of every summer. Slices of the juicy fruit are then dealt out to the gathered throng of patrons.
Two miles northwest of Independence and beyond a heavy ridge is the point formerly known as Irondale but now as Victoria. It lies mainly in a narrow bottom on Three Fork Creek, which stream is spanned by a stone bridge. The county line is close by, and beyond the stream is a network of mountainous elevations. The writer well remembers walking up the abandoned spur railway from Hardman's Switch, two miles below. The grade was no better than an ugly foot- path, being encroached upon by brush and weeds. Nearing Irondale, cheap frame tenements were passed. Doors and windows were open. and the hastily constructed shacks were sinking into decrepitude. Over the coke ovens vegetation was gaining a foothold wherever possible. The day was drizzly and dreary, and the towering chimney of the iron furnace seemed to be frowning upon the scene of solitude and desolation.
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Only one person had he met by the time he reached the bridge. In every direction were huge piles of refuse from the openings in the hillsides. Not long after this visit the works, which had been put up at an expense of $350,000, were dismantled and removed, and the empty buildings were torn down. Colonel De Nemegyei, the former owner, had clung with a pathetic attachment to the now silent and partially deserted valley, as though unwilling to leave the scene which had brought him into financial trial.
But since that day, the place has assumed a new name and taken on a new lease of life. The track has been restored as far as the two new coal mines, and but a few yards from where the furnace stood is an establishment for bottling the waters of the Irondale Mineral Spring. It is said that this spring did not appear until mining operations had begun. It would seem to be a seepage through the heap of mine refuse on the hillside above. The waters are in considerable repute as a tonic and in affections of the digestive and urinary organs.
From north of Tunnelton a spur of Laurel Hill extends to the vicinity of Independence, thus walling in the Raccoon valley on that side. Beyond this ridge, the remainder of Lyon and a section of Kingwood are drained by the Three Fork, so named from the three fan-like branches which unite to form the lower stream. This basin comprises some of the most broken ground in the county. The land is literally stacked up, the knobs and ridges crowding directly upon one another. Lyon is the smallest of the districts, but if it were rolled out flat, and then compared with the others as they are, the contract would be startling. Yet the basin is quite well-peopled, houses and fields occurring at every possible elevation. In the east of this basin, and running northward from near the five forks at Concord schoolhouse, is the straight valley of Bird's Creek, so named from a pioneer otherwise forgotten.
Six miles north of Independence and at a much higher altitude is the village of Gladesville in the middle of an attractive glade-like country. The locality in fact lies just outside the Hill Region which covers so much of Reno and Lyon. The ground is not here heavily undulating, and the altitude is such that the mountain border along the nearby county line is hardly observable. Around Gladesville are good farms and farm-homes. The village itself has near a score of modern, painted houses and is a commercial point of some con- sequence. It possesses a Baptist church with a large membership.
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Iron smelting was once carried on, and here and there may be seen holes from which ore was dug.
A quite-comprehensive idea of Valley district may be gained from Kirk's Knob at the western end of Masontown. Two miles west- ward is the Preston-Monongalia line pursuing a straight course along the broad, flat-topped summit of Chestnut Ridge. The face of this elevation is woodland, or rather brushland, the merchantable timber having recently been converted into lumber and mine props. Three miles to the eastward is the northern arm of Laurel Hill pur- suing its course until lost in a promontory at the mouth of Bull Run. Its flank is diversified with woodland and field, a house coming into view now and then. As in the case of the Collins Knob, which we may see eleven miles to the northeast, the northward and southward views are the more extensive. A little east of south and six miles distant is Mount Phoebe, the culminating point of the western Laurel Hill. The pair of chestnut trees on the summit is a conspicuous landmark.
The basin between the two mountain ridges maintains in its lower levels a quite uniform altitude of slightly more than 1,800 feet. It extends into the Gladesville region, eight miles south, and to the brink of the Cheat canyon, four miles north. Knobs, like the one from which we are looking, rise a hundred feet above the general level. These stand out like islands from the level borders of glade and the comparatively level tracts of semi-glade. The general contour of the basin is very much more even than the hill region of Reno, and is the largest approach to an ideal farming district that is to be found in Preston. Its soils are among Preston's best in tillage and grazing capacity, and commanded good prices, even before the advent of the railroad. In the glades themselves the soil is of prairie blackness, but until the basin had become generally cleared, it was damp and frosty, and not highly esteemed. The glades are still liable to earlier frosts than the upland, yet not so much as to interfere with good crops of corn.
The central and larger portion of this basin is drained by Decker's Creek and its tributaries. The main stream is unique in that it describes an ox-bow curve from its source in Chestnut Ridge, a very little south of the line of the Morgantown and Kingwood pike, to its exit from the county through a watergap in the same ridge. This gap begins to open out a mile west of Masontown. It is similar in its character to the Cheat gorge at the Beaver Hole only four miles away, and its scenery is of almost equal interest. However, it is not nearly
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so deep. Decker's Creek in its upper course is also peculiar in having a muddy and not a stony bed and in having a dark, sluggish current. The southern portion of the basin is drained by the northern arm of the Three Fork. The northern section, beginning immediately beyond Masontown, is drained by Bull Run, which empties into the Cheat. As we have seen, the general level of the entire basin is main- tained to the very edge of the river canyon. But Bull Run and its tributaries have excavated such deep channels that from the sources of Bull Run to the mouth there is a fall of 1200 feet in an airline dis- tance of less than five miles. The northern section of the basin is therefore much cut up by deep gorges, yet even along the summit of the river-hill to the west of Bull Run there is an expanse of fairly smooth tableland, known as the "Friendship Country," from the name of its older school house. It is also worthy of remark that the four-mile section of Chestnut Ridge between the canyons of Decker's Creek and the Cheat is chiefly in farms rather than forest.
It has often been supposed that the central portion of the basin was once a lake, but this opinion is controverted by Dr. I. C. White, the State geologist. A lake is not likely to have escaped where a nearly complete and well-defined marginal rim is lacking.
In the early days of settlement this basin was known as the Monon- galia Glades. Its early pioneers were the Watsons, the Cobuns, the Menears, the Fields, the McMillens, the Zinns, the Martins, and the Pattons. Unlike what is ordinarily true in the early stages of the set- tlement of a region, a large share of these first-comers remained on the ground and their posterity likewise. A little later, the "ground-floor" settlers were joined in the northern and middle portions of the glades by the Hartley, Taylor, Mckinney, Kirk, Ashburn, and Radabaugh families, and in the south by the Fairfaxes, Browns, Reeds, and Pells. From across the Cheat gorge came branches of the Cale, Graham, Greathouse, Everly, Gibson, and other families to help people the river- hill border. In all these instances, there has usually been a strong inclination to cling to the spot. The family reunions of the Browns and Taylors are largely attended, and although the Smiths and the Rigglemans are comparatively late comers, their connections are already numerous.
Just over the brow of Laurel Hill and extending eastward to the Cheat lies a considerable portion of Valley District. Its more thickly settled part, from Herring postoffice southward, is known as Long Hollow and also as Hacklebarney. The latter name originated in a quite
T
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accidental manner. Elihu Horton, a deputy-sheriff, stopped for dinner about 1805 at what is now the Titchnell farm. When he went back to the stable, he found that numerous deerflies had settled on his nag Barney, and had been taking dinner as well as himself. His sympa- thetic exclamation, "Oh, how the flies do hackle Barney," resulted in the unpremeditated name.
About 1815 a number of families settled in this locality and cleared some land. But learning afterawhile that there seemed to be a flaw in the title to their places, they abandoned them quite abruptly and moved away. It is said that this was needless, their fears not being well-founded. It is related that one of the men left corn in his crib. By 1830 their cabins had sunk into ruin and fawns gamboled amid the logs and brush in the deserted clearings. One of these men, named Lankford, set out some apple trees which continued to thrive, the fruit being known as the "Lankford Sweets." Others of these settlers were Toler, King, Sypolt, Dewees, Grim, Green, and Moses Menear. Toler lived where now is the Herring church, Grim was at I. B. Fields', Menear at Titchnell's, Green at J. E. Forman's, Sypolt at the Watson place, and King over the hill eastward from Herring. Other settlers were on the Strahin and Jacob Spiker places.
Until after 1830 by far the greater part of Valley District was still in the primeval forest. Between the Pleasant Valley church and Reedsville was a solid woodland without even a road. Soon after the above-named date, an unpainted frame church for union purposes was built a little east of the residence of Sanford Watson. Until the fall of 1855, the site of Masontown was a clearing, known as the "Hartley Green." In the fall of that year William Mason built the store with hewn frame where E. M. Hartley afterward carried on a mercantile business and where the brick hotel now stands. A small village site was laid out in 1856, the lots were sold at auction at $5 to $7 each, and thus Masontown had a beginning.
Forty years later it was a place of twenty households, two churches and two stores; a quiet, countryside farm village, whose citi- zens prided themselves on the intelligence, sobriety, and good order of their community. The coming, soon afterward, of the Morgantown and Kingwood railroad, developed first a lumber and then a coal and coke interest, and thus led to such a rapid growth in population that Mason- town is now one of the larger places of the county.
A half-mile west of Masontown, in a loop of Decker's Creek, is Oak Park, laid out as a picnic resort at an expense of $50,000. Excursion
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trains bring crowds of people, even from well beyond the Pennsylvania line, and the throng is augmented by the dwellers in Valley District itself.
A mile southwest of Masontown is Bretz, purely a mining village, the houses being owned by the coal company. Two miles yet south- ward is Reedsville, the railroad a great part of this distance pursuing an airline through the meadows of Decker's Creek. For a few years prior to 1856, the latter point was known simply as Decker's Creek Postoffice. In that year a store was built and a village begun, its name being given in honor of James Reed, a large landowner close by By 1896 about a dozen houses had gathered around the store, the posi- tion on the pike to Morgantown being of considerable importance. Since then, the town has grown rapidly, and has very greatly improved, although it is not so large a place as Masontown. Both points are in- corporated and are cities in miniature.
Rohr, on the Monongalia line north of Masontown, is but a hamlet. Three miles east of the latter place G. A. Herring opened a store, and in the 80's the name of Fieldsville struggled for recognition, but no village arose.
The southeastern border of Valley contains some broken and in- ferior land. But between Reedsville and Brown's mill, three miles south- ward, were the early estates of the Fairfaxes, Browns, and Pells, all of whom were slaveowners, as was likewise William B. Zinn, who mar- ried a Fairfax. Their selections were made with excellent judgment from the viewpoint of a planter. But the Fairfax estate lapsed into a neglected condition, though it finally passed into the hands of R. M. Arthur of Pennsylvania, who has replaced the ruinous plantation house with a modern villa called "Arthurdale."
Until 1900, Valley stood at the foot of the list among the districts in point of population. Its interest was wholly that of the farm, stock growing receiving much attention. There was no good nearby market for the minor products, which accordingly sold at low prices. Thou- saands of bushels of fine apples sometimes went to waste. But since that date, Valley has passed Grant, Pleasant and Union, and is nearly abreast with Lyon. There is a ready demand for labor, in conse- quence of the new industrial development, and a ready market for all products of the field, garden, and dairy.
On a clear day in summer, the prospect from the Kirk Knob is not surpassed by that from the Collins Knob, and is seldom rivaled outside of the county. The grassy glades, the pointed knobs, the wooded
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background, the distant ridges, the cozy farm-houses, and the fields whose irregularity in form is in harmony with the contour of the ground, all combine to produce a very pleasing effect. It must be added, however, that the coming of the coal mine has not increased the beauty of the picture, the clearness of the air, or the good order of the community.
Another point of scenic interest is the summit of the promontory at the mouth of Bull Run. The observer may look down a bluff so abrupt that it is not much more than possible to bring into view the narrow ribbon of shimmering water, the murmuring of which is borne upward through the intervening altitude of 900 feet. Beyond the winding river, and entering at a right angle, is the mouth of the Big Sandy. For about a mile up the narrow gorge of the latter stream one may view the silvery current rushing tempestuously toward the embouchure.
Back of Herring, in the side of the river-hill, is the Cornwell cave, containing stalatites of much beauty. It is occasionally visited, not- withstanding its inconvenient position. Northwest from Reedsville on Chestnut Ridge is the Sandstone cave, a picnicking spot. It is a low crevice under a sandstone ledge and has a broad, crescent-shaped entrance.
The geography of Kingwood district has been given in a preceding chapter. The town of Kingwood with its immediate vicinity has been described in still another. From the mouth of Morgan's Run or from Caddell the distance to the county seat is two miles, the road in either instance rising most of the way through a deep ravine. But the road from Albright passes diagonally up the river-bluff, soon bringing one to open ground. From the ravine near the pike on our left to Laurel Run down the river toward the Valley line is a high rolling plateau known as the Dale Settlement. It comprises the best farms in the district, and was a favored spot of early settlement. Yet the pioneer names have not perseverd here as in Valley.
A long mile from Albright and two miles below Kingwood, we find to the left of the road and on a commanding site a large stone house whose massive walls look as though they ought to stand for cen- turies to come. This is the Fairfax manor, built by Colonel Fairfax, in 1818, at a cost for the stonework of only $700. After 1838 and even after the antebellum days of Virginia had come to an end, the mansion was the home of his maiden daughter, Elizabeth, more familiarly known as Betsy Fairfax. She was a lady of the old Virginia type and of queenly demeanor. Her home was much visited by the young people
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of her acquaintance. She was the mistress of forty slaves, who occu- pied back seats at church and were given religious instruction by ladies in the town. These servants had signs innumerable. It was signifi- cant if a person entered and left a room by different doors. It was a bad token to sneeze, or for a bird to fly into the house. The slaves would also see spirits of a sort not corked into bottles. They had their quarters in a row of huts and their burial ground was east of the manor.
Parties were often given by the lady of Fairfax manor. Invitations neatly written and in phraseology unlike the present mode were sent out by slave messengers and brought people on horseback, and perhaps to the number of thirty, from as far as Morgantown and Uniontown. The servants put away the horses and the wraps of the visitors, but there was a white friend at the door to receive the guests. In the parlor, lighted by a half-dozen candles, was a fire of crackling logs. The mistress appeared in a silk plaid dress with much lace and with a headdress of the same material. Music was provided by a negro fiddler from the Valley glades. He played "Peeling the Willow," and other melodies. The games were "forfeit," "drop the handkerchief," "fine or superfine?" "possum in the garden," and "ring around the rosy." Cake, jam, preserves, rich cream, and blackberry wine were served at a table in the middle parlor. At the parting, the guests would sing :
"Arise, my true love, and present me your hand, And away we will go to some far distant land."
But Miss Fairfax was industrious as well as hospitable. Candles for the whole year were made in the fall. From 200 to 300 sugar trees were tapped, the sap trough being twenty feet long and the sap gourd holding a gallon. The big double cellar was well stored with eatables, and the smokehouse was full of meat. There was plenty of milk and butter. Sometimes ten cheeses were curing at the same time. Cam- phene-which was not kept in the village store-was burned in the brass lamps.
We have dwelt on this picture of the old regime because it calls up a phase of American life forever gone and quite foreign to the thought of the young West Virginian of today.
To the right of the pike is Green's Run where David Trowbridge plied his trade of miller for half a century. Some distance beyond the mill is the spot, scarcely identifiable now, where lived the family of John Green, broken up by Indians in 1788. The railroad from Albright
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skirts the ravine of Green's Run, but leaves it a while to make a long loop up a tributary in order to reach the county seat. Near where the loop begins, the Rev. John J. Dolliver lived in a log house and there was born his talented son, the late Jonathan P. Dolliver, senator from Iowa. When Green came here the stream was known as Buffalo Run.
The Morgantown pike in leaving Kingwood, follows the high divide between the valleys of Green's and Morgan's runs, and in three miles crosses by a bridge the railroad going to the same destination. Here also is the summit level of the western Laurel Hill. Southward to Howesville, four miles away, the upland is peopled largely by the descendants of the German Catholic colonists who began coming three- quarters of a century ago, and were much annoyed by saucy, half-wild hogs. Coal is in all these hills, and a mile out from Kingwood we see in the hollow to our right a new coal tipple and rows of corporation tenements.
From Kingwood there is a choice of three roads to Tunnelton. One may drop down Morgan's Run, follow the Cheat a couple of miles, and then wind up the hills into the valley of Pringle's Run, passing the new mining village of Atlantic. But this is one of the least interesting roads to be found in Preston. A middle road, through the Snider settlement, does better, though one is constantly going up or down hills that are none of the lightest. The third road is the longest, but has a decided advantage in the matter of grade. It is ali the way a close neighbor to the West Virginia Northern railroad.
On an upper arm of Morgan's Run we go through Irona, a coal mining town which was one of the first manifestations of the present industrial era. Midway in the eleven-mile distance to Tunnelton is Howesville, named for James D. Howe, of Maine, who in 1868 estab- lished a shook shop at this point. A farming and trading village grew up, similar in size to what Masontown used to be, and like that place it is now an important coal mining point. A mile north is a Catholic church, whose spire owing to its commanding position, may be seen for miles along the divide. When within two miles of Tunnelton, and still following the divide, we enter the Ice's Ferry pike, which comes by way of Masontown, Reedsville, and Brown's mill. We enter Tunnelton by descending Tunnel Hill, the local name for the Laurel Hill range. On the height a fork of the road leads into Reno by pass- ing directly over the tunnel.
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