USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 29
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Of all these classes, the Cavaliers, the English Catholics, the High- landers, and the Celtic Irish were upholders of kingly privilege, al- though it made all the difference in the world whether the king were Protestant or Catholic. The Celtic Irish were Catholic, as were also of course the English Catholics. The Cavaliers and the Saxon Irish were of the Church of England, known in America as the Episcopalians. The Germans and Hollanders were chiefly of the Lutheran and Reformed churches. The other elements, excepting the Quakers, were Calvinistic Protestants, and aside from the Puritans they were Presbyterians. The native Scotch, the Ulster-Scotch, the Welsh, the Germans, and the Celtic Irish were tillers of the soil, hardy and thrifty, but generally poor. The other elements came with more worldly substances. The mass of the Huguenots mingled with the Puritans.
As may be supposed, the nobility of Europe were scarcely repre- sented at all among the actual immigrants.
There were two special classes of immigrants that remain to be noticed. These were the redemptioners and the convicts. The redemptioners, many of whom were Germans, were bound out to servitude in return for the cost of passage. Small children, however, were transported without charge. On arrival they were sold out, usually at the rate of $80 for an adult and $40 for a half-grown child. Many of them died during the passage, because of the crowded, ill- ventilated ships, and the bad water and food. After serving out their time they became free, but if there were an unsuccessful attempt at escape, the term was extended.
Included with the riff-raff from the British jails were persons kid- napped in the towns, and also ne'er-do-wells and other derelicts, sent
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here to be out of sight if not out of mind. Sometimes, though not generally, such persons after serving their time became useful citizens. After the independence of America, England began to dump her trash upon Australia.
The immigrants destined to servitude came almost wholly to the Middle and Southern Colonies because of their greater demand for farm labor. The larger share of the convicts appears to have been unloaded in Virginia and Maryland.
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CHAPTER II AMERICA AND VIRGINIA IN 1766.
The settlement of Preston began in 1766. The colonies which ten years later took the name of the United States of America were not at all the country into which they have since developed. As between themselves, they were thirteen independent, English-speaking nations, except that Pennsylvania and Delaware had the same governor. They were considerably individualized, one from another, and were somewhat like a family of contentious brothers. The bond between them lay in the similarity of the institutions they had derived from England, in their acknowledging the king of England as their own ruler, and in their acknowledging also, that the British Parliament had a certain authority over them, outside of their purely domestic concerns. But they were not true monarchies before 1776. They were in fact republics, just as much as they were republics immediately after that event.
Virginia, the oldest colony, was now 159 years old. Georgia, the youngest, was only 33 years old. The settled area stretched 1100 miles along the coast, from the Kennebec river to the Altamaha. In New England, New York, and Georgia, it reached inland hardly more than 150 miles. In Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, it extended into the Appalachians, and a very few thousand people had settled beyond the dividing range.
The population, which was doubling every twenty-three years, was rather less than 2,000,000, or about one-half more than the present number of people in West Virginia. Only one-twentieth of the Amer- icans lived in towns. Philadelphia and Boston were the largest cities, and neither was much more populous than the capital of this State. Only the lowland country near the sea could be called well populated. Virginia was the largest and best populated colony, yet Williamsburg, its capital, was but a village, and Norfolk, its only place of import- ance, was only one-fourth the size of Morgantown.
The roads were usually very bad, those of Pennsylvania being the best. The streams were seldom bridged, and travel went by water whenever it could. It took a stage coach three days to flounder through the ninety miles of mud-holes between New York and Philadelphia.
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There was an active commerce with England and the West Indies, but it was against British policy for the Americans to trade directly with foreign countries. The Central and South American countries were therefore unvisited, and the Caribbean Sea was infected with pirate ships. The great Pacific was much less known than is the Arctic today. Africa was known only along its coast, and for the purpose of taking slaves therefrom. The lands east of Russia or beyond our own Mis- sissippi were little else than a blank space on the map, and the maps of that day were crude and inaccurate.
In the few cities and towns, and along the navigable waters, those Americans who were thought well-to-do lived in as good homes as were to be found in Europe, outside the castles and chateaus of the European nobility. These houses were very plain in their architecture, yet roomy and comfortable. Inside they would have seemed rather bare if con- trasted with the better furnished though less substantially built homes which are now to be found in almost any town or village. Inland, the log house or cabin was almost universal.
Farming was the general occupation, and it was carried on a crude, wasteful, and laborious manner. Manufacturing was discouraged by the laws of Parliament, British workshops wishing to monopolize the colonial market for their own benefit. But commerce and fishing were active industries, and were carried on almost wholly by the Northern colonies. It took several weeks for the sailing vessels of that age to make the voyage to Europe.
Religion was comparatively free in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Elsewhere a state church was supported at public expense. In Vir- ginia this church was the Episcopalian. People could be fined for not attending a certain number of times each year and no marriage was valid in the eye of the law unless performed by one of the established clergy.
There was a handful of unpretentious colleges, but outside of New England there was no scheme of general education and many people were illiterate. The colleges graduated boys (no girls attending them) when sixteen to eighteen years of age. Their training was chiefly in Latin and Greek, with some mathematics and history, scientific branches being neglected. In all the colonies were not a few persons who were well versed in the higher education of that age. Very many of them were ministers and lawyers. When we consider that their training was largely classical, it becomes easy to see why it was pon-
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derous and stilted, and full of quotations from the Greek and Latin authors. The square-toed worthies of that age would have been shocked at the crisp, breezy phraseology of the present time.
The daily newspaper was yet to come, and the very few weeklies were in size somewhat like our Sunday School papers. The mails were few, slow and irregular, and the frontier settlement did well to get a mail once a month. In 1692, Virginia had provided for one postoffice in each county. For a letter of one sheet the postage was four cents for a distance of eighty miles, and six cents for a greater distance. For two sheets, the rates were seven and twelve and one-half cents. Envelopes and postage stamps were unknown, and the sheet was held together by tucking or with a wafer.
Despite a popular opinion to the contrary, our Revolutionary sires were not so democratic in matters of society and government as we are ourselves. Social lines were more or less in evidence, and the privilege of casting a ballot was very much restricted. Even when the Federal government went into operation in 1789, less than four percent of the American people were qualified voters. The most aristo- cratic of the colonies were Virginia, New York and South Carolina. The ones least so were Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In New England, the students at Harvard college were not listed alphabetically, but according to social rank.
The profession of law is always very conservative, and since the period of which we speak its methods have undergone no striking change. To us the practice of medicine in the colonial time would seem barbaric. Hospitals, anesthetics, and antiseptic surgery were un- known. Sanitation was little observed, the true nature of many diseases was not understood, and the diseases themselves were treated in a blundering manner. Bleeding was a regular feature of medical prac- tice. Quacks were numerous, and in the South the doctor was not much thought of. Epidemics were destructive, and the faces of a larger share of the adult people were pitted with smallpox scars. As a net result of this condition of things, the death rate was high, especially among infants, although the birth rate was also high.
Taverns were quite plenty, but though abominable in the lowland South, the traveler was sure of a free welcome at the home of a planter. The taverns kept liquor, the use of which was general.
Men wore no beards. They powdered their hair and gathered it behind in a queue. Dame Fashion was mistress of costume then as well
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as now, and the style of the garments in vogue was not at all less elaborate than is the case with us. The costume which men now wear is in fact plainer and more sensible than was the old. Bright and showy colors were about as conspicuous in male attire as in female. But in the new and thinly settled localities there was much more sim- plicity in the matter of clothing than was seen in the centers of popu- lation.
Of the immigrants from Europe, the Cavalier element settled in the lowlands of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Maryland, neigh- boring in South Carolina with Huguenots and in Maryland with English Catholics. The Puritans ocupied New England, many of them settling also in New Jersey, and not a few in the South. The Quakers and a few Swedes settled Pennsylvania and Delaware. The Hol- landers were the first to colonize New York, but were soon joined by many English of a diversity of type. The Scotch, Welsh and native Irish formed a sprinkling in all the colonies and were soon amalga- mated with the more numerous elements. The Huguenots were par- ticularly numerous in New England, where they rapidly fused with the Puritans. The redemptioners were generally brought to the Middle colonies and to Virginia, because of the demand in that section for farm laborers. The same was true of the convicts, a great share of whom were dumped upon Virginia. As for the negroes, a very distinct class because of color, they were rarely free. South of Pennsylvania they were numerous. In New England they were few and in Pennsyl- vania they were still fewer. But in New York there was a considerable number.
By 1725, the immigration from Europe had become small, and with the exception of the Hollanders it was almost exclusively from the British Isles. The colonial population had already come to con- sider itself as quite distinct from that of its mother countries of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.
There now set in a double stream of immigration, relatively as large in volume as that of recent years. These streams were the Ulster-Scotch and the German. Nearly all the newcomers landed at Philadelphia, because of the reputation for liberality of William Penn's colony. But to the people already there, the newcomers appeared new and strange, and were not very welcome. Consequently they pushed through the zone of settlement to what was then the frontier. The Germans occu- pied the interior districts of Pennsylvania, eastward of the main Alle-
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ghany ridge, and overflowed southward into the interior counties of Maryland and into the valleys of the Shenandoah and the South Branch of the Potomac. The Ulster-Scotch being more numerous and more venturesome, they spread throughout the Appalachian region south- ward from the northern line of Pennsylvania. They also occupied the interior counties of the Carolinas and Georgia, and to a less extent, those in Virginia lying at the eastern foot of the Blue Ridge.
Of the three divisions of the colonies, the New England section was very homogeneous in the general character of its population and even more so in its institutions and customs. In nearly the same degree a like remark is true of the lowland South. The highland South was almost another country because of the people who settled it. The Mid- dle colonies of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, by reason of their diversity of make-up were much less homogeneous than either the Northern or Southern, and were therefore less influential in the colonial councils. The city of New York has been cosmopolitan, even from its very beginning.
The differences between the three sections may be outlined in a few words. The man of New England, bcause of an extensive fusion with French and Holland blood, was quite distinct from the man of Old England. As compared with the latter he was less bulky in frame and was darker in physical coloring. He was less somber in disposition, more active in mind, more intense in his affections, more chivalrous to woman, more flexible and hospitable to men and ideas, and more keen and enterprising in matters of business. His theory of government rested on religion, and he sought to make his common- wealths as theocratic as the Land of Israel. The township was the unit of government ,and was a pure democracy, all its general business being done in a public meeting held yearly. County lines were there- fore of little meaning in that section. Each individual church was independent of all others. Pastorates were very long and the pulpit wielded a great influence. The New Englander was not fond of an isolated home, and his country was studded with towns and villages. A lack of fertility in the soil attracted much of his attention to the sea. He was shrewd, practical, ingenious, and industrious. His manners were plain and his home was tidy. He was nearly always able to read and had books around him, although he was narrow in his religious practice and quite set in his opinions.
Coming next to the lowland South, we find that although the
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British family trees of the New Englander and the Virginian spring from a common source, there is nevertheless a marked difference be- tween their sections. In Virginia, which we are considering as typical of the South, society was grouped into classes, at the head of which was the planter element. The planter was aristocratic in feeling and practice. He was looked up to by the rest of the people and was nearly supreme in political power. He therefore ruled the colony, and ruled well, though in a conservative manner. He was dictatorial because accustomed to exercise power. Yet he was also generous, courteous, and honorable. He was a staunch upholder of the church, although there was much of formalism in his religious practice. He was fond of sports and outdoor life, of fine horses, handsome furniture, and elegant table ware. He was content with country life, had little use for towns or villages, and did not wish for near neighbors. Fur- thermore he had a genius for government, was public-spirited, jealous of his rights, and not slow to assert them. He was idealistic and did not like the business details of trade and industry. On a political occasion, the Virginian would make an impassioned speech, relying on his flowery eloquence to carry his point. The New Englander would put less stress on oratory than on the matter-of-fact work of the com- mittee room.
The small planters had few slaves or none, and did not readily gain entrance into the favored clan of large planters. In their ranks were included the tavern-keepers, tradesmen, doctors, and other people of miscellaneous vocations. Next in the scale was the poor white, constitutionally worthless, always lazy, and often troublesome. At the foot of the scale were the indentured white servants and finally the negro slaves. The planters and those who by virtue of birth or pub- lic position stood on a practical equality with them were styled "gentle- men." The small landholder was styled a "yoeman." These distinc- tions were carried into the official records.
The county was the political unit in Virginia as was the township in New England. The local government in each sectwn was of the sort best adapted to the habits of the people.
The Middle colonies were so complex in their population and cus- toms that we shall not attempt to describe them so fully. Their inhab- itants were industrious and thrify, and in a material way their standard of living was the most generous to be found in America. In other words they were the best fed of all the Colonials. They were the best farmers, and they also gave attention to trade and manufacture. The
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Hollanders of New York enjoyed life and were more liberal than the New England people in the matter of games and amusements. In their colony were huge landed estates worked by tenant farmers. The Quakers of Pennsylvania were peaceable, industrious, and of course prosperous. They were opposed to slavery as well as war, and their colony was a land of small farms.
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CHAPTER III
THE OLD FRONTIER AND THE AMERICAN HIGHLANDER
In 1766, the settled area of the thirteen colonies was somewhat like a new moon, the concave side following the Atlantic shore and the convex side penetrating the Appalachian highland. This interior border was the Old Frontier of the later Colonial and Revolutionary times. It plays a highly important part in our national development, although the ordinary books on American history are strangely negli- gent in giving it the attention it properly demands. As Preston was once a part of that border line, we are justified in devoting a chapter to this Old Frontier.
Virginia was now 159 years old and had nearly 500,000 inhabitants. The Fairfax Stone is only 200 miles as the crow flies from the first point of settlement at Jamestown. Nevertheless, no settler had yet come to make a permanent home in Preston. The answer to this slowness in penetrating the interior is told in a few facts of physical geography.
The settlers from Europe came to a lowland country penetrated by bays and navigable rivers. Immediately behind them was the At- lantic ocean, an open highway to the ancestral home. Before them and concealed in a forest belt lay the broad Appalachian barrier reaching a thousand miles from northeast to southwest. The Red Man had well named it the "Endless Mountain." The maritime zone was itself equal in size to France, and for some time it afforded plenty of room for colonial expansion.
When the wave of settlement had begun to beat against the Blue Ridge, it was found that beyond this eastern outlier of the Appalachians there rose range after range until the aggregate of parallel ridges and intervening valleys covered a breadth of 200 miles. Highlands and low- lands were alike clad in dense forests. The gorges were filled with even more dense thickets of rhododendron. The valleys were narrow The streams were rapid, rocky, and hard to cross. The gaps through the ridges were not found to lie opposite one another, but to occur like the joints in a brick wall, thus adding greatly to the practical distance across the mountain belt.
Furthermore, the early settlers found only small and weak tribes of Indians along the seaboard. But at the northern extremity of the
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Appalachians, toward the shores of Lake Erie, lay the powerful league of the Six Nations, while among the Southern Appalachians were the formidable tribes of the Cherokees and the Catawbas. In the boundless plains beyond the mountains were other fierce and warlike natives.
But while the colonial charters called for the Pacific as their western boundary, France was the first to explore the land beyond the moun- tains. She colonized Canada and Louisiana and her pathfinders made trails from one to the other. By stretching a chain of fortified posts between her widely separated colonies, France thought to strangle a westward movement of the British colonials and to preempt the Mississippi valley for her own people.
To the colonists the most threatening of these forts was Duquesne, because it commanded the natural route across the mounains by way of the Potomac and the Youghiogheny. Hence the armed remonstrance made by Virginia in 1754, and in which Washington was to win his first spurs. This appeal to arms was an opening episode in a long and bitter war. The victory was entirely with the Americans, and their frontier was now carried forward to the Mississippi.
But in the struggle between the two white nations the rights of the red man had been coolly ignored, and the Western Land had to be wrested also from the native in a series of wars continuing with several intermissions for 55 years.
Yet how could a handful of French trappers, traders, and soldiers spangle the West with stockaded villages, and travel without let or hindrance from the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Father of Waters? The answer is found in the differing attitude of the two peoples with respect to the native. The French did not clear the land, but lived among the red men on familiar terms, the trappers usually marrying Indian women. They developed a fur trade and did not wish to see the game destroyed. This trade was considered a good thing by the Indian as well as the Frenchman. But on the other hand the British- American was much more inclined to hold the savage at a disdainful distance, and was correspondingly less inclined to mix his blood with that of the children of the soil. It was instinctive in him to subdue the wild land, and this meant the extirpation of the game as well as the Indian.
So the conquest of French America was at once followed by the war with Pontiac's confederacy ending with the defeat of the natives in 1764. It is true that in the next phase of the war, the British stood
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in the place of the French and were in league with the Indians against the Americans even in time of nominal peace. But they were in the Northwest simply as traders and as emissaries of trouble to the frontiersmen. They paid the Indians for scalps as well as furs, and so the natives were now as tolerant of the British as they had formerly been of the French.
When the march of settlement had come to the Blue Ridge, it en- countered at the extremities of the great mounain wall the obstacles we have already pointed out. In the north were the Six Nations bar- ring until after the Revolution a direct advance on the part of the people of New York and New England. In the rear of the settlements in South Carolina and Georgia were the numerous Cherokees in their highland fastnesses, barring an advance in this quarter until 1820. In the center were no resident tribes, and here, so far as the Indian was concerned, the rampart was more easily penetrated. The Potomac and other natural routes across the plateau were explored, North Carolina and Virginia pouring into Tennessee and Kentucky by way of Cumber- land Gap and the Holston, and Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania emptying by way of the Potomac and Pittsburgh routes into the west of Virginia and Pennsylvania and into Ohio. Thus it came about that the colonies from Pennsylvania to North Carolina inclusive were the ones that led in the settlement of the transmontane region.
What elements of the Colonial population were most interested in this movement into and through the mountains? The planter of the lowland South was an agriculturist on a large scale and a market for his surplus was a necessity. If he migrated toward the southwest, he was still within reach of navigable water and could farm as he had been doing. If he went beyond the mountains he could find rich lands and navigable rivers in Kentucky and Tennessee. He was there- fore not much inclined to halt in the narrow mountain valleys. If he did so at all, he insisted on settling where good soil was most plentiful, and he took his slaves with him, so that he might still follow the plantation method.
As for the New England people they were remote from the Ap- palachian center and had vacant lands of their own to settle. The Hollanders on the Hudson were venturesome and fond of trade, but were not numerous and had a good thing where they were. The Quakers and certain German sects were opposed to war. By putting themselves in the forefront they were certain to have war offered them by the red man.
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