USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 7
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In 1781 the father of John Miller was accupying a vacant hut, found with the land he purchased on and near the site of Kingwood. Hearing one night a noise made by a prowling Indian, he and his two boys effected their escape and returned to the Shenandoah valley.
There were doubtless some other depreadtions which are unknown to the present inhabitants of the county. During this war there was no pitched battle fought within our confines, yet the aggregate amount of damage must have been considerable. Intending settlers were delayed in coming or deterred from doing so, and without doubt Miller was not the only man to abandon his frontier home.
Every civilization has its heroic age of fearless men and picturesque incident, moving on the background of a free, unconventional life. The earlier half of the pioneer epoch in Preston history is our own heroic age, alive with treasured recollections of peril and privation. The most famous of the characters who figure in these is Lewis Wetzel. Though not a resident of this county, he had a sister here and visited her at times.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
The family was from Switzerland, coming to America about 1740, during the boyhood of the father of Lewis.
John Wetzel, the father, was a German-speaking immigrant of an uncommonly fearless and venturesome type. The elder Wetzel speedily made his way to the frontier and became a hunter and Indian fighter. He visited Kentucky before Daniel Boone ever saw that "dark and bloody ground." He built a cabin on Wheeling Creek, fourteen miles above its mouth but within the West Virginia line. His sons were Mar- tin, Lewis, Jacob and John, born, respectively, in 1762, 1764, 1766, and 1768. There were four daughters, one named Christina. She married Jacob Wolfe, a pioneer of Preston, who spent several years with the Wetzels.
In 1777 Wetzel was attacked in his cabin and killed. Lewis and Jacob were carried away, but the wife escaped. The other children were absent from the home. The second night after the capture, the raiding party was twenty miles away and in camp beyond the Ohio. Because of the smallness of the prisoners, the Indians did not take their usual precau- tions. But the boys were chips of the old block. In the dead of night, and while the warriors were asleep. Lewis, who had kept himself awake, whispered to his brother that they would give the savages the slip. They crept away several hundred yards and sat upon a log. They were bare- footed and Lewis had the audacity to return to the camp and procure moccasins. He went back a second time and secured a gun. Soon after- ward, the Indians discovered the flight and gave chase, but the boys eluded them and returned home.
Frontier boys considered themselves men as soon as they could han- dle firearms, and the four brothers bound themselves by oath that so long as they could sight a rifle they would keep no peace with the In- dians. Their vow had dire results to the red men. Lewis was the most indefatigable of the quartette. Disguised as a native, he alone killed twenty-four Indians during the war on the upper Ohio, besides killing several in Kentucky. He usually went by himself, and was sometimes absent so long that his friends would give him up for lost.
In 1787 a band of hostiles committed several murders in the east of Ohio, and a party under Captain McMahon went in pursuit. When almost upon the enemy, they found the savages more numerous than themselves. A council of war decided on a retreat, but Wetzel sat to one side on a log and held his tongue. He kept his seat as the company began to move back, and the captain asked if he were not going with
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them. "I am not," was the reply. "I came to hunt Indians, and now that we have found them, I am not going away without stirring up some trouble. I shall take an Indian scalp before I return home, or lose my own." McMahon's entreaties went for nothing, and Wetzel struck into the woods, avoiding the large parties of the redskins. Next evening he found two braves encamped on the bank of a small stream. After dark one of them started off with a firebrand, apparently on his way to a deerlick. Wetzel waited a long while for him to return, in- tending to kill both men. But the approach of daylight found the savage still at the deerlick. So Wetzel crept upon the sleeping Indian, took his scalp, and went home. At another time he attacked four slumbering natives on the Muskingum and killed three, the fourth escaping into the woods.
At Gum Spring, near Cranesville, he killed three Indians and cut his initials on a beech that is no longer standing. On a visit to his sister Christina he asked her if she wished a present, and being told that she did, he dropped a fresh scalp into her lap. The tuft of hair was inter- twined with silver beads strung with silk. All in all, it is believed that he slew about 50 Indians, causing more loss than was inflicted by the army under Braddock.
Wetzel was five feet nine inches tall and of broad and powerful frame. His eyes were black, wild. and rolling. His very black hair reached below his belt. His naturally dark complexion became as swarthy as that of the Indian because of his outdoor life. He lived until 1808, and although he fought the natives until they had vanished from the East, his wife is said to have been an Indian woman. Wetzel lived a sober life, but his feud with the red man brutalized his nature. He was true as a friend, but most dangerous as an enemy. He died in Texas, after living a while at Natchez. He had gone South because of imprisonment for one of his killing exploits.
His rifle, which carries a half ounce ball, is now in the possession of Hu Maxwell, the historian. On the barrel are the initials, L. W. The Indians called it the gun that was "always loaded," because of Wetzel's ability to load his weapon while running. This expertness, together with his strength, activity, and endurance, and his sureness of aim always gave him the victory in his combats.
All the Wetzel brothers used to visit their sister in P:eston. On one occasion Martin Wetzel was about to cross the Cheat at Dunkard Bot- tom. Indians were on his trail, and his bullet-pouch becoming entangled
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
in a bush, he had to stop to get it loose. A bullet from one of the In- dians cut off the obstruction, and he continued his flight with the limb of the bush hanging to him.
We append to this chapter a list of the households of Preston in 1782.
Ashcraft, Richard V
7 Menear, David
V
8
Askins, Edward
Pl. 9 Moore, Ann
G
3
Butler, Joseph
Po. 12
Moore, James
G
5
Butler, Thomas
Po. 10 Morgan, James K
1
Chipps, Thomas Po. 8
Morgan, David K 4
Cobun, James
V
7
Morgan, William
K
7
Connor, John (?)
G
6 Morris, Richard
G
3
Connor, John ( ?)
G
4 Pringle, Samuel ( ?)
K
4
Connor, James
G
5
Robinett, John
G
4
Cuzad, Jacob
K
6
Robinett, Joseph
G
7
Dougherty, John
Po.
4
Robinett, Samuel
G
5
Frazee, David
G
5
Schoolcraft, John
?
1
Goff, Salathiel
V
7
Sovereign, Daniel
Pl.
7
Goff, James
V
5
Sovereign, Joseph
Pl. 1
Graham, John (?)
Pl.
4
Spurgeon, William
G
12
Green, John
K 10 Spurgeon, Samuel G 5
Jenkins, James
Pl.
1
Spurgeon, James
G
8
Judy, Martin, Sr.,
G
9
Scott, John
G
2
Judy, Martin, Jr.,
G
9 Wolfe, Jacob (1)
P
2
Knotts, Edward ( ?)
R
2 Wolfe, Jacob (2)
P
*
Kelley, John
Pl.
6 Wolfe, Samuel (?) G
2
McCollum, James
G
5 Worral, Attewil G
6
Menear, Jonathan
V
5 Worley, Anthony
G 11
Frazee, Samuel G
7 Schoolcraft, Christian ?
2
*The second Jacob Wolfe refused to give the number in his household.
Thomas Butler had two slaves and Salathiel Goff had four. The total number of slaves in all Monongalia was 69.
NOTE-The letters after the names indicate the districts. The figures show the number of persons in the various households. Perhaps a few other families should appear in the list, but those given herewith are such as could be identified with fair certainty as belonging in the Preston area.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
CHAPTER VIII
LATER PIONEER PERIOD
Founding of Morgantown - How Land Was Acquired - Manners and Customs - Washington's Visit - Last Raid by Indians - First Villages - Roads and Taverns - Mills - Prices - Religious Interests - Ghostly Legend.
As we have already seen, the county of Monongalia was organized in 1776. The first court after organization met in a farmhouse on the pres- ent site of New Geneva in Pennsylvania. Three years later the county seat was placed six miles north of the Preston line at Miffintown, now Woodbridgetown. But by the settlement in the same year of the boundary dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania, the whole of Yohogamia county was lost to the former state with the exception of the small part lying within the Northern Panhandle. The northern side of Monongalia was also shorn away, and a relocation of the county seat becoming necessary, Morgantown was selected for this purpose. Zack- well Morgan is said to have settled on this spot in 1766 or 1768, although Thomas Decker located here in 1757. In 1785 the town came into being as a creation of law. Morgantown was now designated as such by legis- lative act, five trustees being appointed. A tract of fifty acres was laid off in half-acre lots to be sold at auction after being advertised two months. Each purchaser of a lot was to put up within four years a dwelling at least eighteen feet square with a chimney of brick or stone. The money from the lot sale was to go to Zackwell Morgan, on whose land the town was established.
The year 1783 brought peace with England but not with the red men. No part of West Virginia beyond the Alleghanies was quite free from the possibility of Indian incursions until the decisive victory of General Wayne in 1794. By Act of Assembly, December 4, 1789, lot buyers in "Morgan's Town" were allowed three more years for building their houses because of past and prospective Indian hostility. Yet dur- ing this eleven year period, Preston was so little molested that the in- coming landseekers were more numerous than ever. The years from 1785 to 1790 were years of good times, and it is during such occasions that emigration to a new and inviting home becomes active. The influx into Preston did not by any means cease with the hard times coming on in 1790 and lasting until the close in 1815 of the second war with Eng-
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
land. In the years between 1782 and 1815, the population of the county increased at least eight-fold, and it is during this period that a host of our group-families find the time of their arrival.
It is now in order to look into the method of acquiring wild land. In Preston, as elsewhere in West Virginia, much litigation has grown out of titles and boundaries, and this comes through the lack of method with which Virginia parceled out her public domain. There was no thought of a systematic survey in advance of settlement. In colonial days, the prospector in his eagerness to avoid cull land caused his boundary line to wind in and out through the woods like a cowpath. The next comer, in his search for springs, rocks or trees as corner-marks, would perhaps run into the prior survey, or else leave a narrow, undesirable strip be- tween the two holdings. A blue print of any West Virginia county out- does a crazy quilt with respect to the shapelessness of the areas outlined upon it.
Neither did the interests of the small, bonafide settler receive more than minor consideration. By orders of council, land was granted in large bodies to small companies of influential men, who were to parcel it out to homeseekers. These men did not take a tract in a solid body, but in small, choice pieces, leaving the adjoining cull lands on the hands of the state. These choice portions were sold to settlers at a price seem- ingly low, yet relatively high, when we consider that in the latter years of the eighteen century the purchasing power of the dollar was more than twice what it is now. In the disputed belt south of Pittsburgh, re- mote as it then was from commercial centers, the land offices of Penn- sylvania were selling the public domain at twenty-five cents an acre, although upder the spur of competition the Virginia authorities cut their price to one-tenth of this amount. Money was scarce in the colonial days, and the man unable to gain realty was not at all unknown.
Yet after all, the earliest comer had a chance. In 1752 the Virginia legislature offered an exemption of tax for ten years to men who would go west of the mountains. At the next session the time limit was ex- tended to fifteen years, the law taking effect in 1754. Frontiersmen would mark trees to identify choice tracts which they might secure after the Indian title was quieted. Out of this practice grew the toma- hawk right. The settler would deaden a few trees around a spring and cut his name in the bark of other trees, so as to mark a boundary. The tomahawk right had no standing in law, though now and then a man would pay a little money to the squatter to quiet his claim. Sometimes,
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
however, the quieting was done by applying a hickory club to the squatter.
The settlement right had full legal standing. By means of it, the man building a log cabin and growing some corn, however small the crop, might secure title to 400 acres and gain a preemption right to 1000 acres more. The cost of the certificate of title was 40 cents. There was a further payment of $1.67 for each 100 acres. There were three com- missioners to grant certificates of settlement rights. The certificate and the surveyor's plot went to the land office of the state, and after lying there six months a patent was issued, provided in the meantime there was no filing of a counter claim by another person. The patent was engrossed on parchment and was signed by the governor of the state. It was in this manner that title to much of the Preston soil passed into private hands.
We have observed that the Viriginia government was more con- siderate of the land speculator than of the actual settler. The most con- spicuous of the early instances of non-residential monopoly was that of Francis and William Deakins of Maryland. In 1784-9 they patented 52 tracts in the East Side, making an area of 33,383 acres. Yet a still larger holding was the "great survey" of Claiborne and Moylan in 1773. In this county it included about 50,000 acres, and reached from the Tucker line to near Masontown. The surveyors of this great block did not stop to run around the small tracts owned or claimed by settlers, but included these, afterward deducting such acreage from the sum total. The patent passed into English hands, but as the new owners were aliens they had to vest the title with American agents. Their local representatives have been Israel Baldwin, Sylvanus and John Heermans, John Gregg, and Alexander Jeffreys. Much of the Preston soil that was grabbed by non-resident speculators fortunately reverted to the state. Delinquent tracts were in existence even later than 1845.
That we have not given way to mere prejudice in thus expressing our opinion of the land monopolist, may appear from a petition of 1793 by Monongalia pioneers. These men recite that they
Forced a settlement upon the lands in this county at the risque of the lives 3 of themselves and families, and thereby became possessed of the equitable right in the soil, contrary distinguished from the swarms of land jobbers that traveled through the country making tomahawk improvements, and selling them before any actual settlement was made thereon.
.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
Immigration was usually in the spring. Very much of it still climbed the Allegheny by the Braddock road, which was merely a rough lane full of rocks and stumps. But prior to 1800 the packsaddle was the rule and the wagon the exception. The former was made of the crotches of two forked limbs fastened together by two pieces of board padded under- neath with sheepskin. Four inches of the limbs were left above the crotch for horn and crupper. The effects were tied in bundles. These included only the veriest necessaries. There was some clothing and bedding, there were also a few tools, a small stock of provisions, and per- haps some iron, but more probably a bag of salt, worth pound for pound more than sugar either at that time or this. By night the horses were turned loose to forage, their whereabouts remaining in evidence through their tinkling bells.
The kit of tools was considered quite complete if it included axe, hand-axe, hand and crosscut saws, draw-knife, iron, auger, gimlet, and perhaps a hammer and a blacksmith's tongs. The newcomer had to be handy with these, since very often he was his own carpenter, blacksmith, moccasin-maker, and harness-maker. He had to be fertile in expedients, and quick to recognize the raw materials which were most serviceable to him.
So simple and so meager an equipment being thus the common rule, the man of twenty-one married and went into the wilderness with little else than his clothes, his horse, his rifle, and his kit of tools. If the young wife had been industrious, she contributed a brood mare, a cow and calf, and some bedding.
Unless the new arrival succeeded some earlier comer, every foot of open ground had to be won from the virgin forest. The site for the cabin was cleared by felling the trees from which the new house was to be built. The cabin logs once ready, other settlers were notified, and from a distance of sometimes more than ten miles they assmbled to give him a "lift." If the dwelling was not large, the logs were put in place before sunset. The remainder of the daylight was used in feats of strength or dexterity, and after the feast of corn pone and game, the new neighbors went to their homes, not forgetting to invite the stranger to visit them.
The completed cabin had a roof of clapboards and weight-poles, a puncheon floor fastened with pegs, and a slab door swinging on wooden hinges. At one end was the stone chimney with broad fire-place. On one side of the room a log was left out of the wall, the space being filled
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
in with small panes of glass set endwise, or, as was more often the case, with greased paper, through which in dull weather but little daylight could penetrate.
A patch was cleared for corn and potatoes, but game was the chief reliance during the first season. When the corn was ripe, it was either taken to the primitive watermill known as the "corn cracker," or was made into coarse meal at home by pounding the kernels in a hominy block, or by rubbing the ears against a tin grater nailed to a block. The sieve for bolting the meal was a piece of deerskin stretched over a hoop, the punctures being made with a hot wire. The farm once fairly under way, the leading crops were corn and flax; the corn for food and the flax with the help of wool for clothing. The tilling was done with a wooden plow and a thornbush harrow, while the hoe, shovel, and fork were sometimes of wood rather than iron. The yield of corn was only twelve to fifteen bushels on fresh ground and fifteen to twenty on older lands.
The metallic kitchen utensils were perhaps only the pot and skillet, the knives and forks, and the pewter spoons. The bedtick was filled at first with leaves and afterward with husks, straw or feathers. The table fare was corn bread, mush and milk, potatoes, squash, beans, greens, roasted corn, fish, game, and wild fruits. After a few years the return of Sunday might in part be known by coffee and white bread.
Among the wild animals, the wolf was particularly troublesome to the young livestock, and a large bounty was placed on his head. In 1798 we come upon a petition asking encouragement for the killing of wolves.
Despite the usual opinion to the contrary, the pioneers were not ex- ceptionally healthy and they grew old before thir time. Their fare was indeed wholesome, but their porous moccasins, their many privations, and the dampness of their low-situated, forest-shaded cabins induced fever and rheumatism. The weakling was liable to fall by the way, for it was a time of the survival of the fittest. When illness invaded the home, remedies were looked for in salt, copperas, onions, cornmeal, flaxseed, slippery elm, snakeroot, horseradish and other leaves, hog's lard, spikenard, elecampane, and the oils of snakes and skunks. Some of these remedies became known through the Indians. Frederick Spahr is said to have been taught by a red man how to use arbutis for con- sumption, and how to make a poultice for carbuncle out of bread soaked in sweet milk in which indigo has been boiled.
When in 1786 Patrick McGrew came from the Cumberland Valley,
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
it was because land was high priced in that region. He had heard the lands in the Sandy Creek glades were very cheap and wondrously fertile. It was reported that stable manure was so far from being of value that the settlers could better afford to build a new stable than to clear out the old one. But on settling in the most thickly populated part of Preston, he found the few homes remote from one another and the roads mere trails. There were no mills to saw lumber or to grind the scanty crops of corn. There were neither churches, schoolhouses, nor stores, and the nearest doctor was at Beasontown (Uniontown), twenty-five miles away. The "Pittsburgh Gazette," the first newspaper in the West, did not appear until August of the same year. The country looked hilly and stony, and the soil only moderately good. But there was a healthful air and an abundance of game and pure spring water. The future did not seem bright, but the man and wife were young and strong, and not lacking in determination. They decided to make the best of what ap- peared an unfortunate change of place and condition. The land they purchased had a small cabin and a small clearing. The former was en- larged, but as there was no labor for hire the enlargement of the cleared area was slow. Apple and peach trees were set out, and some of the former are still in bearing. A barn of the Pennsylvania pattern was built, and after twenty-eight years a commodious log house was com- pleted. Through a prudent foresight as to what would be indispensable in the new home, a blacksmith's outfit had been brought in the big conestoga wagon. By means of this the making of needed improvements was facilitated, and the hardship incident to pioneering was relieved.
Conditions such as we have sketched necessitated a simple life, yet the contrast between the Atlantic coast and the Alleghany frontier was not so broad as we may be inclined to suppose. A relatively plain life was general in the older region. No one had more than a few of the numerous conveniences with which we are now familiar. At the very time when McGrew came to Preston, the staples were costly in the older communities and meat was seldom eaten. There were no grapes but fox grapes. Cantelopes, cauliflower, eggplant, and head-lettuce were un- known. So were geraniums and verbenas, the usual ornamental plants being pinks, roses, lilacs, tulips, hollyhocks and sunflowers. Washing- ton was one of the wealthiest men in America, and his mansion is pre- served as nearly as possible in the very condition in which he left it in 1799. Yet the unpapered walls, the rag carpets, the hand-made locks, and the brick-floored kitchen give the visitor an impression similar to that of a well white-washed and well-ordered log house.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
Not all the pioneers were like McGrew in accepting the situation and eventually living in comfort. As we have previously remarked, the people who begin the settlement of a new country are restless. The gorgeous rhetoric of the land boomer is not peculiar to the present age. The newcomer can scarcely resist the lure of moving onward and yet onward toward the setting sun, in the hope of finding the skies of Eden hovering over a fresher and more fruitful expanse of God's green earth.
But until 1795 the pressure of Indian hostility was acutely felt. By the peace of Greenville in that year, the door to the western lands was opened much wider, and by the conclusion of the war of 1812 it was opened fully. Men like the Butlers, the Morgans, the Judys, the Clarks, and the Moores began to flock to Ohio and Indiana.
In the fall of 1784, General Washington rode across the north and east of the county. He always had an eye to the main chance, and at his decease was the owner of 49,083 acres in various states. Before the Revolution he had taken up several large bodies of land in the west of Pennsylvania and also in what is now West Virginia. During the long struggle for independence, he was so engrossed with his duties as com- mander-in-chief of the American army that he had no time to look after his Western lands. He returned to his home at the close of 1783, and on looking over the condition of his property interests he found that the Western settlers were showing very scant consideration for the claims of non-resident landholders. In his own words, "as soon as a man's back is turned, another is on his land. The man that is strong, and able to make others afraid of him, seems to have the best chance as times go now."
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