USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 6
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52
PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
This large territory was at the same time subdivided by the same legislative act into the counties of Monongalia, Ohio and Yohogamia. The confines of Monongalia are thus described by the Act of Assembly :
"All that part of the said district lying to the northward of the county of Augusta, to the westward of the meridian of the head fountain of Potowmack, to the southward of the county of Yohogania, and to the eastward of the county of Ohio."
The original boundary of Ohio county was as follows :
"Beginning at the mouth of Cross creek, thence up the same to the head thereof, thence south eastwardly to the nearest part of the ridge which divides the waters of the Ohio from those of the Monongahela, thence along the said ridge to the line which divides the county of Augusta from the said district, thence with the said boundary to the Ohio, thence up the same to the beginning."
The southern line of Yohogania, the "lost county," is thus defined :
"Beginning at the mouth of Cross creek, and running up its several courses to the head thereof, thence south eastwardly to the nearest part of the aforesaid dividing ridge, between the waters of the Monongahela and Ohio, thence along the said ridge to the head of Ten Mile creek, thence east to the road leading from Catfish camp to Redstone old fort, thence along the said road to the Monongahela river, thence crossing the river to the said fort, thence along Dunlap's old road to Braddock's road, and with the same to the meridian of the head fountain of Potomack."
In its original dimensions Monongalia covered not only the whole of its present territory, the whole of Preston and almost all of Tucker, but parts also of Randolph, Barbour, Taylor, Marion and Harrison. Of Pennsylvania it took in the greater portion of Greene and the south- western half of Fayette. By the Act of Assembly, the landholders of Monongalia were required to meet at the house of Jonathan Coburn (Co- bun), December 8, 1776, to elect their representatives to the legislature, and to choose a place for holding their county court. The latter choice fell upon Mifflintown, now a place in Pennsylvania.
It was the intention to give the county the name of the Monongahela river. The actual spelling is said to be due to the poor education of an engrossing clerk. It is unfortunate that the error was permitted to stand. The name in use has no significance in itself, and is disregarded by persons who are careless in their speech.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
The county of Yohogania-another mispelling-lies wholly to the north of the Mason and Dixon line. As a county organization it was lost to Virginia by means of a boundary settlement with Pennsylvania. The only portion retained was the territory now covered by Hancock county and a part of Brooke. This remnant was then annexed to Ohio county.
From 1734 to 1745, the Preston area was nominally under the jurisdic- tion of Orange. When the Eckerlins came to the Dunkard Bottom in 1754, it was a part of Augusta county, and so remained until the forma- tion of Monongalia in 1776.
That the settlement of Preston began on the northern line in 1769 has been the accepted opinion, and is so stated by Wiley in his history. The deed-books of the parent county prove this to be an error. In 1766 Thomas Butler located in the Whetsell settlement. With him were other Butlers, apparently brothers. While it is highly probable that Thomas Butler was the first permanent settler in the Preston area, there is a possibility that some other borderer came a little earlier yet to the upper Youghiogheny or to the Cheat at the Dunkard Bottom. These early comers to the center of the county undoubtedly arrived by the Indian thoroughfare leading to the South Branch. Like the settlers of the middie Shenandoah and upper South Branch, they may have gone outside the Fairfax grant in order to become freeholders and not mere tenants.
By way of the South Branch probably came Thomas Chipps, whom we find settled in the Craborchard in 1770 near the Rodeheaver Chapel. In the same year, Jacob Cozad, undoubtedly from the same quarter, was living on Morgan's Run, probably at its mouth. John Scott is likewise named as being on the Cheat, though perhaps not close to the river. He may have been the same Scott who afterward succeeded to the ownership of a survey by Samuel Worral, Sr., at Glade Farms.
Butler was soon followed by a more numerous immigration to the Pennsylvania border. In 1769 the north end of Preston was marked by a lane cut twenty-four feet wide through the primeval forest by the Mason and Dixon surveying party. Since this work had been done in the summer and fall of 1767, it was not yet choked by sprouts and was used as a road by the oncoming settlers. But beyond the northwest corner of Maryland it was not yet fully recognized as a boundary be- tween Virginia and Pennsylvania. The surveyors had carried the line fifty-four miles beyond their call. Virginia, basing her claim on the lan-
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
guage of her charter and on the right of conquest from the French, main- tained that her boundary was the fortieth parallel of latitude. But Pennsylvania with refreshing logic set up the claim that the fortieth degree begins with the thirty-ninth parallel. This would have carried her own line fourteen miles beyond the Fairfax Stone. Ten years later, commissioners from the two states arranged a settlement that put an end to the dispute. It was scarcely a compromise, because the astute Pennsyl- vanians got all they really claimed. By the terms of its charter, Pennsyl- vania was "bounded on the west as Maryland is." Yet its western boundary was carried from the meridian that coincides with the west boundary of Maryland to the meridian of five degrees west from the southeast starting-point of the Pennsylvania grant. The final ratifica- tions by the legislatures of Virginia and Pennsylvania were not completed until 1784. In the fall of 1782 commissioners marked the line, a guard of militia being present to look out for Indians. We find a petition com- plaining of this line as a pretext for drawing out the militia more effectually. And inasmuch as the original county seat of Monongalia was thrown into Pennsylvania, we find another petition of 1782, writtten on a scrap of paper four by six inches in size, asking an Act of Assembly empowering the justices to appoint a new place for holding court.
A petition of 1776 by the "Inhabiters" westward of the Laurel Hill gives us a vivid idea of the boundary quarrel, although we do not detect any signatures from the Preston area. It states :
"That the contested Boundary between the Governments of Virginia and Pennsylvania have subjected y'r Petitioners to the greatest inconvenience and oppressions. It has created animosities and dissentions among the People, which at any time would be exceedingly disagreeable and productive of bad consequences, but more especially at this alarming crisis, as it tends to disunite the People, and create divisions among them, when the strictest union is so absolutely essential to the preservation of our liberties. That the officers of the respective Govern- ments exercising their respective Offices in the same place, so far from preserving good Order and Regularity, occasion great disorder and tumults, and the while both Governments claim a Jurisdiction in the same place, the Laws of neither can be enforced. We therefore most Humbly pray the Union will take such steps as in your Wisdom shall seem meet in fixing a boundary between the two Govern- ments, so that your Petitioners may know what Laws to pay obedience to and conduct themselves accordingly."
Meanwhile the Preston area was a disputed domain. The early comers seem to have been Pennsylvania people almost wholly, and to all intents and purposes it was first occupied, at least in the north, as a part of the Keystone State.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
The first permanent settlements in this quarter were in 1769. They were by Jacob Judy and David Frazee, the former taking 400 acres and the latter 343. Judy located about three miles from Bruceton on the high,level expanse to the west of the Sandy. Frazee appears to have set- tled on the opposite side of the stream and not far from the county line.
It is the tradition in the McGrew family that James Clark, their ma- ternal ancestor, was one of two settlers who came in 1769. But Clark is not mentioned by the surveyor on his visit in 1774 and the patent for his land states that it was settled upon in 1776. Yet it is possible that he did come in 1769, but without acquiring land until the date specified.
A year later-1770-there is mention of several more settlers. Richard Morris located on the John S. Mitchell farm just south of the Glade Farms postoffice. Samuel Worral, Sr., and Samuel Worral, Jr., were his neighbors to the east, their possessions including the Jesse Spurgeon place. Other near neighbors were Anthony and Joshua Worley. Prob- ably a few other settlers came the same year to the north of the county, but we are not able to identify the time of arrival. It is claimed that Daniel Greathouse was one who then came to Glade Farms, but he does not appear to have entered land.
The names we have mentioned show that the earliest settlers were almost wholly Scotch-Irish and English. Well-nigh the only exception is Judy, which is the altered form of a German name.
There was peace with the red men up to 1774, and settlers came in considerable numbers until the War for Independence was fairly under way. The trouble with the British and Indians then caused for several years a partial check to immigration.
Until 1774 the selections of land were by settlement right. So far at least as the Virginia government was concerned, the newcomers had no other color of title. In May of that year the county of Augusta took no- tice of her new citizens by causing James Trimble, her deputy surveyor, to pay them a visit. In nine days he made surveys for sixteen persons. and noted the number of acres cleared. All these surveys were in Grant district. This man with the compass found Thomas Moore on the Pennsylvania line, the Big Sandy running through his place. The selec- tions of John Hartness and Martin Judy also lay astride the creek. West of the Sandy were Charles Donelson, Arthur Gordon and Noah Rude, the latter a neighbor to Donelson. John Herlin is named as cornering on both Donelson and Gordon. East of the stream were a father and a son who bore the name of Thomas Cushman. The former joined David
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
Frazee. Other settlers in this direction were Ephraim Frazee and Jacob Herlin. In the Glade Farms neighborhood were John and Richard Morris, Joseph Robinett and Anthony and Samuel Worley. On both sides the Little Sandy was James Dinwiddie. These men had already cleared 336 acres, Richard Morris leading with 40.
It will be observed that of the names thus far mentioned, not one is represented by the present families of Preston, excepting James Clark, who has posterity in the female line only. In a new community there is much coming and going. The people are restless to a notorious degree. They have not acquired a deep local attachment, and are ready to go further on the rumor that something better may be found somewhere else. Very few indeed of the early pioneers in the average American com- munity persevere to the end and leave the family homestead to the chil- dren and the children's children.
Nevertheless it will be interesting to learn who had arrived in Preston by 1776, which is not only the year of American independence but also the year of the establishment of Monongalia county.
In the Sandy Creek Glades, as the settlement next the Pennsylvania line was known, we find record of the following additional names: John Archer, Thomas Cheney, James Clark, Thomas Craft, Zebulon Hogue, Martin Judy, Sr., Martin Judy, Jr., John Judy, Nathan Low, William A. Smith, and James Spurgeon.
On Hazel Run, west of the Judys, were the neighbors, James Down- ing and Elias Layton. John Connor was in the forks of Sandy and James Connor apparently near by on the river-hill. A neighbor to the latter was Belshazzar Drago, on the river-hill near Pisgah. Frederick Cooper gave a permanent name to the huge boulders which have since been known as the Cooper Rocks. On Little Sandy were Ephraim Frazee and Joseph Robinett.
On Sovereign's Run in Pleasant were Daniel, Absalom, and Joseph Sovereign and John Morris.
In the Craborchard were Ezekiel Jones, Bartholomew Landon, George Lemon and Amos Roberts.
At or near the Dunkard Bottom were Joseph Butler. Anthony Car- roll and John Dougherty, with Jacob Jones and Hugh Morgan on Mor- gan's Run. On the Copeman farm near by was William Darling, who had come from the South Branch of the Potomac.
Hezekiah Frazee had settled on the site of Rowlesburg and John P. Duval on the first tributary above Pringle's Run.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
On the glades of the upper Youghiogheny and Snowy Creek were George and Levi Beatty, Henry Hawk, John and William Pettijohn. Morgan Powers, and Stephen West, while Isaac Vanmeter, a speculator, had taken a survey.
In the vicinity of Gladesville were James Brann (Brain), Benjamin Field, and Benjamin Jennings.
Around Masontown were Francis and Robert Patton and William Watson. Half way to Reedsville was Abraham Carter on the land after- ward patented by William Menear. At the mouth of Bull Run was Daniel Cameron, and on the river-hill further downstream was Robert Williamson.
These families are enough to account for a population of at least 250 souls in 1776. Yet it is not to be supposed that they were all the settlers. Some others, who patented land during the decade of the 80's, were doubtless already here, although the date of settlement is not recorded in the land-books. And as in other frontier communities of that day, there were unquestionably a few other men in the settlements who were not landholders at all. On the other hand, an occasional survey was taken by a non-resident for the purpose of speculation.
As yet, there was no place west of the Alleghenies worthy of the name of town, and none for many a mile to the eastward. There was no wagon path until the Braddock Road was reached. The Preston hills were threaded only by bridle or footpaths, the Indian trails being used so far as they would serve the purpose.
The homes and the manner of living were primitive in the extreme. The typical house was a small round-log cabin without nails and with little or no glass, greased paper or thin animal tissue being used to let in some light. The windows, if any existed, were too small for an enemy to. crawl in at, and there were also loopholes to shoot from if necessary. A short puncheon with pegs fastened into it served as a chair, and the bed- stead was of rails held up by forked sticks. Plates were generally of wood and rarely of pewter. The washtub was a trough. In fair weather the door was left open to light the room more effectually. By night the illumination was the fireplace, a tallow dip, a pork rind, or a saucer of lard ยท with a twisted rag for a wick. A substitute for the sauver-lamp was a broken teacup, a scooped-out turnip, or a frying-pan with its handle stuck into some chink between the logs. If pine were convenient, its pitchy knots and "fat wood" were sometimes used.
The head of the family wore a fringed hunting shirt, deerskin breeches,
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
and moccasins like those of the Indians. The shoe pack was a moccasin with tongue and sole. In the winter he put on gloves of deerskin bor- dered with mink, and a coonskin cap with the tail falling between his shoulders. It was not then the fashion to wear a beard, yet the razor was used only a few times each year. Cloth being scarce, the women also wore deerskin to some extent.
The frontiersmen were frank, not being given to deceit or flattery. They were jealous of their honor, and were quick to use their fists by way of settling a difference of opinion.
The few goods brought to the new home were carried by packsaddle. The produce grown on the clearing was consumed at home. Corn was the staff of life. White bread was at first unknown, and for years after- ward it was a Sunday luxury. Game was plentiful and formed much of the living. Bears and wolves were troublesome, and sheep and calves had to be safely penned by night, the inclosing fence being sometimes twelve feet high. There was little call for ready money, unless for am- munition and salt, and very little to make it out of at that. Pelts and sometimes cattle could be taken over the mountains and sold or bartered for supplies.
The preacher and the teacher had not yet appeared. Mails were few or none. The young people were growing up illiterate. Hospitality was a virtue, but manners were coarse. A sense of liberty ran riot. Social and legal restraints were not deeply felt, fighting was a very common oc- currence, and in general the times were rude and rough, yet there was a looking forward to better things as the frontier region acquired age and stability. A period of general privation was accepted as unavoidable.
The season of 1773 was known as the "starving year," there being too little grown in the frontier settlements to feed both the resident pioneers and the newcomers flocking in. It was perhaps at this time that a man was heard shouting across the Cheat at Morgan's Run, but the waters were too high for him to be brought over. The next year the remains of a stranger were found in a hollow place in a cliff, from near which he had called for help.
In 1774 the red men of the Ohio valley were roused into active hos- tility by the pressure of the advancing paleface and by such incidents as the dastardly murder of the wife and children of Logan. But within a few months the victory of General Andrew Lewis at Point Pleasant brought a few years of peace. Whether the infant settlements in Preston were molested at this time does not appar. But the danger was very evident, and about this time if not earlier two stockades were built.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
Fort Morris stood in a glade a fourth of a mile southwest of Glade Farms. The wall was built of sapling logs standing eight or ten feet above the ground and sunk about three feet into the soft alluvial earth. It contained one or two cabins, and here the families of the Sandy Creek Glades fled for shelter at the rumor of an Indian incursion. When im- mediate danger seemed past, the men would return to their clearings, leaving their families in the stockade. Butler's fort stood on the Cheat bottom at the mouth of Roaring Creek. The isolated farm cabins were built with a view to defence, and if one were not too near a covert that could be seized by an Indian foe, it might beat off a sudden assault in day time by a small party. But it was not calculated to stand a long siege, and the roof was liable to be ignited by firebrands. Within a stockade the people were fairly secure, since the natives did not like to storm a fort which they could not reduce by stratagem. In the winter season there was little danger, because the Indians did not then go on the warpath.
Less than half a year after the conclusion of the Dunmore war of 1774, the first war with England broke out. The Revolution was begun by the American people to maintain their rights as subjects of the British king and to free themselves from the vexatious restrictions laid upon their trade and manufactures by the British parliament. They acknowledged allegiance to the same king as did the English people. But in matters which concerned themselves alone, they recognized no other law-making body than their colonial legislatures. Not being represented in the British parliament, they denied its authority to levy taxes upon them at its own pleasure. This point once yielded, the door was open to all manner of injustice and oppression. The Americans had reason to be jealous of their rights. They perceived that the king was seeking to rule by his own will, that he overshadowed his parliament through bribery, and that the British people were falling into indifference with respect to their own civil liberty. The claims of the Americans did not necessarily lead to independence, yet its assertion was soon made inevitable by the obstinacy of the king.
The war once fairly on, it became a duty for the people of the sea- board to stay where they were and resist the invading enemy. Therefore emigration across the mountains was nearly suspended. People were not escaping the perils of war by crossing the Alleghanies, while on the other hand, the men of the frontier had to defend their own firesides from the savages turned loose upon them by the British.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
For three years after the battle of Point Pleasant, the Indians were comparatively quiet. Yet Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, after being driven to take shelter on a warship, sent an emissary named Con- nolly to stir up the Indians of the Ohio country and to raise a regiment of tories to assist them. This was a sample of the methods of the British. To win back the American people they burned and plundered their towns and farmhouses, maltreated the women and children, stole the slaves, murdered the sick in their own homes, starved the captives of war in foul prison-ships, turned victories into massacre, and paid their savage allies for the scalps taken in their cruel raids.
It is not clear that any depredations were committed in Preston until the spring of 1778. But during the warm seasons of the next ten years there was the ever-present danger of Indian forays. The settlers of the Sandy Creek settlement seem to have been little disturbed. Those of the middle districts were more exposed and they suffered accordingly.
On the IIth of April of this year a party of hostiles came to the house of Hugh Morgan at the mouth of Morgan's Run. They were seen by his little girl, who at once ran to her mother. Mrs. Morgan left her washing at the river bank, and hastened with her child to a field where a young man by the name of Wildey Taylor was plowing. He at once cut the traces, put the mother and child on one horse, mounted the other himself, and there was a wild dash for Butler's fort. They were not overtaken, and the Indians left after killing a young woman at the house.
The next morning the savages ambushed the house of Richard Powell on Snowy Creek. The pioneer was just then entertaining a party of ten or twelve travelers, who amused themselves in shooting at a mark be- fore resuming their journey. The Indians prudently waited until the company had left. James Brain was then living with Powell, feeling more secure here than at his exposed home on Three Fork. He was killed while laying clapboards on a stable roof. The boys of the two men were playing at the time, and hearing the very commonplace report of a gun, the Brain boy thought he would have some fun at the expense of his playmates. He accordingly jumped upon a stump and shouted that the Indians were coming. The other boys looked in the right direction, saw the savages actually coming, and with pioneer instinct hid them- selves. One of them escaped capture, but the other was taken, and so was the unsuspecting Ben Brain, who was a prisoner for six years. Ac- counts differ as to whether the other boy was a Brain or a Powell. Find- ing he had but one eye, his captives tomahawked him at once.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
It was probably about this time that one of the Fields was murdered a mile south of Masontown. He had gone alone to examine some traps, and not returning in due season, a search party was sent out from Cobun's fort near Morgantown. The body of Field was found stripped and scalped, and pierced by seven balls. He was apparently drinking from a spring when waylaid. The burial was in a hollow formed by the up- rooting of a fallen tree. The spot is on the line between the farms of Simon Snider and Sanford Watson.
It was perhaps in the same year that a settler named York was killed on the run in Reno which bears his name.
In 1779, 300 Indians crossed the Ohio, but fortunately for the Preston settlers they did not deem it prudent to come so far east. Otherwise the scattered settlers might have been driven away or exterminated. The two stockades could hardly have warded off the attacks of a force so large and accompanied as it was by white renegades.
About this time a party of seven Indians paid the unlucky Morgans another visit. Patrick Morgan was shot dead while climbing a fence on his way home from burning some brush. No assault was made on the house, where the other men had gathered, and a brother was with dif- ficulty restrained by Wildey Taylor from rushing out and fighting the savages single-handed.
At this or another visitation, a daughter of William Darling, a neigh- bor, was taken captive, but was eventually restored.
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