USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 8
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In September, 1784, he determined to look after his Western interests in person. With a few friends he journeyed over the route taken in the Braddock campaign of 1754, and came to Uniontown, then known as Beesontown. Thence he rode to the Cheat, crossing the river at its mouth. He was struck by the clearness of the Monongahela and the inky hue of the Cheat. The waters of the two streams flowed side by side for some distance without mixing. This testimony alone should set at rest the incorrect idea that the Cheat was formerly a clear stream, and that its darkness is the result of sawmills and sawdust. There were as yet no lumbering operations on the Cheat.
Washington crossed the river and went forward a few miles to meet Captain Hanway. At his house he also met Colonel Zackwell Morgan and several other citizens, with whom he discussed several rivers, par-
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ticularly as to how far they were navigable or could be made navigable. He had been told boats had gone up the Cheat to the Dunkard Bottom, but he was now given a very unfavorable account of that stream. There is a seeming discrepancy as to whether he lodged with Hanway or with Colonel John Evans. The Evans house was standing a century later.
The next day was September 25. He was intending to return by way of the Dunkard Bottom, but gave up the plan when told the trail was a blind path grown up to briers. So he recrossed the Cheat at the ferry kept by Andrew Ice, and took the McCulloch old path, originally a buffalo trail, but by this time a tolerably good road as far as the Big Sandy. This stream was crossed near the site of Bruceton and at the home of James Spurgeon. Here the McCulloch path forked, the old trail leading to Bloomington, while the new one went by the Dunkard Bottom, and thence to Oakland and Fort Pendleton. From Spurgeon's it was 22 miles by the crooked old path to the Braddock Road, over which he had passed almost thirty years earlier.
The general took the old path, and after going nine miles made a pause at the house of a man named Lemon. Here the party experienced a wetting from a shower. Pushing onward, they camped at the entrance to the glades of the Youghiogheny, where Washington's cloak was his only shelter from a heavy night rain. From this point he was told the distance to the Dunkard Bottom was eight miles. Continuing his jour- ney the morning of the 26th, he came in ten miles to Charles Friend's. This settler had been living nine years on the Stephen Browning place near Oakland. To reach Friend's, the Youghiogheny was crossed a mile west of his house near the present railroad bridge. There was nothing here for the horses, and only boiled corn for the travelers. But the visit seems to explain why a fine spring near the present town of Oakland is known as the Washington spring.
Leaving Friend's, the Backbone Mountain was crossed by what Wash- ington terms in his diary an "infamous road." Perhaps his oral ob- servations were more emphatic and picturesque. The general's temper was rather volcanic when his patience was sorely tried.
The hero of Yorktown was a very interested observer of the country he was now passing through. He was too good an agriculturist not to be able to judge accurately as to the nature of the soil by the trees rising from it. The glades called forth his admiration. He said they were "pritty, resembling cultivated Lands & Improved Meadows at a distance ; with woods here and there interspersed." He also remarked how the
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roads could be strengthened and bettered. In the glades he noticed that some "causeying" would be needed. He considered that a serviceable road should permit a common team to draw a load of twenty hundred- weight.
Washington showed his faith in the West by acquiring much land in this section, even before the Dunmore War. He was thoroughly awake to the desirability of seeing it occupied by English-speaking people, and it was primarily through his advice that John Fairfax, Thomas Brown, Richard Pell, and others came from the east of Viriginia and made choice selections in the glades of Valley. He had in fact a knowledge of the West and its people that was unusual among the dwellers on the sea- board. His accurate perception of the laws of trade and of commercial geography is shown in his strenuous efforts to link the seaboard with the interior by means of a thoroughly good roadway if not also a waterway. It is significant that eleven years after Washington's visit we find a petition by Monongalia settlers, asking for a good wagon road eastward, so as to avoid the Spaniards at New Orleans, "where Americans are treated ill."
In 1788 occurred the last visit by hostile Indians. Once again the Morgan home was the objective point of the raid. Nine years before this date, David Morgan, who lived on the Monongahela, had slain two warriors in hand to hand combat. His companions had skinned them, made the skin into leather, and used it to cover a saddle, a shot pouch, and perhaps other articles. The Indians thus hated the very name of Morgan, but not daring to attack David again, and supposing William to be a brother, they sought to wreak their vengeance on the settler at the Cheat.
The war party consisted of six Mingoes led by a Shawnee partially acquainted with the Preston valleys. It was their intention to follow Morgan's Run from its source in the westerly arm of Laurel Hill. But not interpreting the landmarks correctly, they went down Green's Run, and came into the clearing of John Green. They first fell upon a hired man named Daniel Lewis, who was splitting rails and had Green's gun with him. After killing Lewis and capturing the gun, they went to the creek, where Green was dressing a millstone, and killed him also. Three young daughters of the settler were playing in a field. . When they saw the Indians coming they ran toward the house and two of them were captured.
The third was fired upon while still running. A sting came in her
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arm, which fell limp and unnerved her in a partial degree. Yet she had the pioneer presence of mind to crawl into a depression crowded with bushes and leaves, and thus she evaded capture. The search for her was not long kept up, since Butler's fort was only two miles away and it was not prudent for the red men to tarry long. The girl soon made her way to the river, hallooed to the men at the fort, and was taken across. The ball had passed through her arm near the elbow, and though it did not break any bone it permanently affected the muscles.
Mrs. Green and the other girls were taken captive. The youngest of the children was a baby, and the mother was ordered by a redskin to give it to him. He then brained the infant against the doorpost. The bloodstains were never erased and were still visible thirty years later.
After a year or two, Mrs. Green was released, returned to the desolated home, and remarried. But for nine years nothing was known of the captive girls. In 1797 they reappeared as the wives of white traders named King and Souerhaver. The county court then ordered a division of the Green farm, the beneficiaries being the widow, who was now married to a Spurgeon, and the daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth. The partition was made by Edward Jones, Thomas Smoot, Joseph But- ler, William Darling, Conrad Sheets, and John Miller. Sarah was by this time the wife of Joseph Friend of Maryland. King, the husband of Elizabeth, did not wish to leave the Indians, and as Indian marriages were not recognized by the whites, the way was open to sell his interest in his wife and infant boy to Andrew Johnson, the consideration being a rifle. Johnson, who had been a soldier under Wayne, wedded the girl and came to Preston to live. Tradition has it that the other daughter returned with her trader-husband, but only for a visit, both preferring to remain with the Indians. It adds that she sold her interest in the farm, but this does not appear in the official record, and it is a matter of doubt whether she actually returned. At all events nothing further was ever known of her.
As an old lady, Mrs. Johnson is remembered by some of our elderly people. It is said that her manner and actions continued to show in a marked degree the impress of her life among the Indians. Her shoulders became bent and calloused from carrying backloads of fuel to the camp fires.
It is related that the Indians would not have attacked the Greens but for their belief that they were disposing of William Morgan and his family.
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The last of this bloodletting in or on the borders of Preston occurred in 1795. But this time the redskin was not on an errand of fire and slaughter. He was a solitary individual passing through the county to visit the homes of his forefathers. Within the Maryland line he was wantonly murdered by a man named Dawson.
In 1786 there were 51 tax-payers in Preston, not indicating any notice- able gain since 1782. But during the next decade the increase was rapid, the population in 1790, when the first Federal census was taken, being probably 1000. In 1786 the Rev. John Stough came to Union, looking for a place to start a German settlement. He selected the vicinity of Carmel and returned the next year with five families. In 1788 still other families came, and thus began the colony known for a while as Salem.
In 1793 there was so considerable a settlement along the Big Sandy that the number of witnesses of the betrothal of Sarah Morton to John Forman was about fifty, chiefly or wholly of the Quaker colony that had begun to settle here a few years earlier. There were now people in all the eight districts, though seemingly but few in Lyon and Reno. The plateau east of Briery Mountain and southward to Aurora was a wilder- ness except for a few families on the state road which passed through the site of Terra Alta. The slopes of Laurel Hill from Morgan's Run to the Tucker line seem to have been an unbroken forest until after 1800.
Five years after Patrick McGrew came to Preston, Pittsburgh was only a crude frontier village of 1200 people. Fourteen years still later, Michaux, a French traveler, found but 400 houses at Pittsburgh and 60 at Morgantown. Nevertheless, manufacturing had begun along the Monongahela. Glass was made at New Geneva, and shoes, paper, and flour at Redstone. It was from the latter place that Pittsburgh received most of its corn, ham, cured bacon, and salted butter. These goods, with linen, bar-iron, bottles, and whiskey, were shipped to New Orleans, the river voyage occupying twenty to thirty days.
With such comparisons to go by, we may imagine that in an area like Preston, too sparsely settled to require a county organization, the sub- stantial village was slow to arrive. In 1790 Beckhorntown was laid off a mile northeast of Glade Farms. Yet it assumed so very little of reality that scarcely even a recollection of it remains.
July 4, 1793 Leonard Deakins and Jonas Hogmire plotted the town of Carmel. There was now a considerable number of settlers in this
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vicinity. The town site included a public square intended for a future courthouse. At each corner of the square was set up a stone bearing the name of the place, the date of the plotting, and the year of the new federal administration. The first house was built by a Laidley and stood to the rear of Shaffer's store. In 1796, Christian Whitehair purchased at the price of $53.33, the town lot numbered 42. The size was 99 by 221 feet. It was perhaps this same lot which Whitehair sold two years later to Abraham Wotring, Sr., for $73-33. In accordance with a cus- tom of that period relative to town property, Wotring was to pay Francis Deakins, the original owner, a silver half-dollar each first day of July. Early in the next century this obligation to pay quitrent lapsed into "innocuous desuetude."
In 1796 Burchinal Town was laid out in the Craborchard near the present Methodist church, but had only a brief existence. When in the following year Burchinal sold his farm, he reserved the portion which had been laid off into lots. Not later than the early spring of 1798 King- wood was laid out on the lands of John Miller and William Morgan. In 1811 it became a town by legislative act, and likewise a postoffice and voting place.
Wagons were few previous to 1800, but roads were a necessity. Prob- ably the first was the "Old Sandy Creek Road." It started from the Little Crossing on the Youghiogheny and made an elbow into Preston near the Morris fort. Another road from the Little Crossings led to Morgantown. Near the Maryland line was a tavern on this highway kept by Jesse Spurgeon, and near Hopewell was another kept by a man named Wilson. Near the home of Jonathan Brandon a diverging road led southward to the settlements in Crabbottom and Whetsell's. Pleas- ant was crossed in its southern side by the McCulloch trading path, and the north of Portland was crossed by the Burchinal road, which followed an Indian trail. At an early day the Carmel settlement was connected with the Dunkard Bottom by a road crossing Salt Lick near its mouth.
The most important of the early thoroughfares was the Winchester and Clarksburg road. Entering near Corinth, it went through the Terra Alta gap, crossed the Cheat at Caddell. traversed the site of Kingwood, and skirting the southern brow of Mount Phoebe, it kept on in the direction of Gladesville. Three miles beyond Kingwood a diverging road led to Morgantown, while from Kingwood itself another fork led to Evansville. The main Clarksburg road probably took its beginning about 1785. It was improved about twenty years later. In 1812 and
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again in 1813 the legislature voted an appropriation for a wagon road from the Ohio River to the glades of Valley, then known as the Monon- gahela Glades. The people in the west of the county were much in- terested in these roads, because they would lower the price of salt and other necessaries.
Along the Winchester and Clarksburg road the first hostelries were those of William Ashby, a mile east of Terra Alta, Abner Messenger, three miles west of Ashby, Peter Casey on the Cheat, John Miller near Kingwood, and Samuel Gandy near Gladesville. On the Morgantown branch was the Reeder tavern a mile west of Reedsville, kept in 1806 by Allen Martin. At the river, Jacob Mouser succeeded Casey, and was himself succeeded by William Price, whose sign in 1802 read as follows: "Tavern by William Price; Grain for Horses, Whiskey for Men."
The earliest roads would pursue a very direct course regardless of the contour of the ground. Such was the case when they followed the Indian trails. But aside from this consideration it would seem that a heavy grade was esteemed of less consequence than the amount of tree felling to be done. Also the high lands were likely to be more open and less exposed to ambuscade than the thicket-fringed watercourses. Thus the road from Kingwood to Gladesville climbed Mount Phoebe to within a hundred and fifty yards of the summit, although it is the highest eminence of the whole region. In such of the old roads as are yet in use the heavier grades have been reducd by relocations.
The earliest authorized ferries were one at Bruceton and one at or near Trowbridge. Wagon bridges, even on the smaller streams, were unknown for many years. In September, 1785, Thomas Butler petitioned that he might operate a ferry on the Cheat. His paper recites that a "great road" runs through the lands he owns on both sides the river, and that he has provided the necessary boats and advertised his inten- tion. Two years later, Andrew Ramsey, living on the Cheat opposite William Morgan, applied for a ferry on the state road which crossed near him. In 1802. Andrew Johnson, who was keeping the ferry at Dunkard Bottom, asked that he might be permitted to charge higher tolls, the existing fare for a loaded wagon being 48 cents. A petition in 1805 for an appropriation of $4000 for a bridge at Dunkard Bottom was indorsed as "reasonable."
For a while the growing of wheat was seldom attempted. The grinding of corn was all the work the first gristmills had to do. Perhaps the earliest of these was the corn-cracker of Anthony Worley built at Hazle-
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ton in 1784. Samuel Morton built a mill on the Big Sandy in 1791, yet there was an older mill on Little Sandy, where Mathias Stuck afterward settled. John Green was making ready for a mill at the time of his mur- der in 1788, and it was probably on the same spot that a mill was operated a few years later by Burkett Minor. The Rev. John Stough had a mill on Wolf Creek in 1790, and a little afterward John Fairfax built one on Field's Creek.
All these early mills were very small and in every respect they were very primitive. The grinding was slow as well as coarse, and as the capacity of the burrs was not always so much as three bushels a day, the pioneer fetching a two bushel load had sometimes to make a second long trip before he could get all his meal. A man bringing a grist to a tubmill on Bull Run found only the miller's wife in attendance, and thought to hurry matters by throwing a double handful of corn into the hopper. He was told that would never do; that he must drop in only one kernel at a time. When we reflect that the burrs were only as large as small grindstones, and revolved only as fast as the horizontal water- wheel lying in the bed of the stream, the account is not much overdrawn. As to the dog that was found licking up the meal as fast as it came through the spout of a certain mill, the story is familiar to the Preston people.
A very small amount of lumber was unevenly sawed by means of an up and down blade. On Sovereign's Run a powder mill was operated by David Graham and Evan Jenkins. The building, which stood close to the present postoffice at Hudson, was about eighteen feet square. The pow- der manufactured here was coarse and unglazed.
As for commerce during the first three decades of Preston history, it was exceedingly limited. So far as we can learn, there were no stores. There was little to convert into ready money, except pelts, wild meat, and a little homemade cloth. Livestock could be driven to market, but the price was low. It took several days to make a round trip to the towns of the Shenandoah and Cumberland valleys, the nights being generally passed in the open air.
The Whiskey Insurrection of 1794-5, which arose in the neighboring section of Pennsylvania, was largely due to the need of a commodity which could be taken to market at a profit over the rough Alleghany trails. Farm produce in its bulky form was out of the question. But spring water and rye, after coming through a copper still, became an available export. There was a still on every eighth or ninth farm. A
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horse could carry on a packsaddle but three or four bushels of rye, whereas if converted into whiskey the animal could carry the equivalent of twenty bushels, to be exchanged for salt at $5 a bushel or iron at eighteen cents a pound. When this liquid industry ran against a Fed- eral tax there was profound indignation. Though the tax was but seven cents a gallon, it represented forty per cent of the local value of the liquor. The counties of Virginia adjacent to Pennsylvania were invited to join the insurrection, yet it does not appear that there was any active response. A band of insurgents came over the state line and drove a collector of revenue from Morgantown, this act causing a warning proclamation by the governor. Virginia contributed 4800 soldiers to put down the movement, and a portion of the army returned through Pres- ton. We have no information as to any quoto furnished by this region.
In the opening decade of the nineteenth century, better roads were established, wagons were more often seen, and stores began to appear. But commodities were both actually and relatively high in price. Coffee was a dollar a pound and calico a half dollar a yard. Whether it was easy to pay. these prices may be judged from a forced sale in 1814 of three horses, three cows, two calves, and a wagon and harness for the sum of $21. Taxes were seemingly a trifle, yet it was often a hardship to pay them. In 1812 the tax on 100 acres was ten cents and for a horse it was twelve cents. A tax bill of two dollars indicated a man who was thought well to do. The high price of writing paper is apparent from its skimpy use in bills, receipts and other papers. As a curiosity in this line we give the following receipt verbatim :
"Padetown Nov 25 1803 Received of Moses Royse all Debts Dues & Demands from the Be'n'g of the world to this Day and ten shillings for pence for John Murphy. I say received by me Ed W McCarty"
Wild land usually sold at a fraction of a dollar to the acre, unless the tract were a choice one.
In 1796, Joseph Friend sold 100 acres of the John Green farm for $200. The next year 232 acres on Coal Lick sold at $500. In 1805 the Darling farm of 186 acres was purchased for $2000. The first receipt in this transaction reads somewhat curiously today. It is worded as fol- lows:
"Nov. 29, 1805. Received of Moses Royse one hundred dollar bank bill No. 169 on the United States, which bill is to be returned to said Royse again, or else to be received in part of eight hundred dollars which is the first payment. Bill bearing date Oct. 21, 1802. William Darling
Teste, Abraham Darling."
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In 1805 Hugh Evans paid $1000 for 263 acres of the land where Evansville was laid out almost thirty years afterward. In 1812 William Bucklew paid two dollars an acre for his farm in the Whetsell Settlement, and about this time a tract between Carmel and Amboy brought nine dollars an acre. When the general nature of those times is taken into account it is not very clear how a man could be justified in paying such prices.
Preston was well represented in the war of 1812; considering that the population was hardly more than 2000. The company of Captain Leonard Cupp was reorganized at Point Pleasant and served six months in the Fort Meigs campaign. It experienced great hardship in marching through swampy land to that point. The company of Captain McCowan volunteered for three months and served its time in the spring and early summer of 1814. Several of its members, after their arrival at Norfolk, volunteered in the artillery company of Captain Kennedy. The com- pany under Lieutenant Conn volunteered at the close of the winter of 1814-5. It was organized at Morgantown and marched through King- wood to the Dunkard Bottom, where an order to disband was received, peace having been proclaimed.
Until 1786, religion was not free in Virginia. The established church was the Episcopalian, and all citizens were taxed for its support. It was the general opinion east of the Blue Ridge that the cause of morality would suffer, were there no church to be recognized and supported by the state. Yet religion was better defended than practiced, for while the planters, who were the ruling class, stood by the church, many of them were not of exemplary habits. It is no reproach to the Episcopalian sect that its clergy were not infrequently open to the same remark.
But the people west of the Blue Ridge were in general of different antecedents from those to the eastward. The Fairfaxes and perhaps a very few other families from that section adhered to the Episcopalian church, yet there was never a local organization. The Scotch-Irish brought with them their Presbyterian faith, while Lutheranism came with the German element, and Quakerism with a colony from Pennsyl- vania. Methodism, with its adaptability to pioneer conditions, was very early on the ground, it being affirmed that Francis Asbury, its first bishop, officiated at the wedding of Samuel Crane and Abigail Roberts in 1791. Yet it was a considerable while before any church building ap- peared. A petition of 1802 sets forth that there was then no authorized minister east of Laurel Hill (Chestnut Ridge), and that it was a general
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custom to put up with unlawful marriage. It asked that Colonel Jonathan Brandon and William Johnston be qualified to unite couples in marriage.
The earliest school of which we have definite knowledge was taught at Carmel in 1790 by August Christian Whitehair. In 1801 a lot one- half mile north of the village was deeded for school purposes, the trustees being Abraham Woltring, Jacob Ridenour, and Peter Heckert. The con- sideration was the nominal sum of one dollar. Yet it would seem hardly possible that educational matters would have been totally neglected to this date in the older settled northern districts. The Butlers were from New England, a land of schools. The Brandons and some others were men of intellectual force. The Quakers have always been zealous in the cause of moral and intellectual training. It is therefore probable that some instruction was given in the other settlements, though doubtless, in a very informal way. In fact, the people were awake to their needs, for in 1786 there was a request by Monongalians for a "public seminary of learning." There was regret that "the Rays of Science from the University of William and Mary cannot shoot their enlightening Beams amongst us," because of "the intervening Mountains, our distance, & our poverty."
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