USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 9
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Yet after all, the scholastic horizon of the average settler was very narrow. A belief in the flatness of the earth was general. Books were very rare in the frontier cabins, and very many of the inmates could not read, even if they had possessed books. An interesting glimpse of the state of general information is afforded in some lines written by a Quaker of Grant in eulogy of John Forman. They breathed the diction, the thought, and the battle-smoke of the Revolutionary period. The date of the paper is June 9, 1794. The lines are a proof of some reading and literary instinct, and the vocabulary is not meager. Yet they disclose a lack of proper school training, the sentence construction being very defective. One of the more perfect quatrains is the following :
"Truth from her lips her sacred lesson taught, With sophistry's perplexities unvex't; Pure flowed each word, the type of purer thought, While thy life made a comment on thy text."
The pioneer time was an age of ghostly legend, and of signs and wonders. People are very susceptible to superstition when they live in close contact with primeval nature and amid the gloom of a dense and
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almost unbroken forest. The pioneers were observers of the phases of the moon, and they had their signs for planting, shingling, butcher- ing, and other matters, without due heed to which they did not suppose their undertakings would prosper. Many of these beliefs came with the German settlers, one of which was the superstition relative to "ground hog day"-February 2. Even the hours of sunlight were not free from the appearing of "spooks."
A young woman of the Big Sandy Settlement was on her way with her oldest child to her father-in-law's. She saw approaching what she supposed was a woman of her acquaintance wearing a sunbonnet. She shifted her child to her other arm, so that she might shake hands, but the phantom rose two feet from the ground, and at that level floated toward the woods. Thinking the woman did not wish to meet her, and then failing to see what could have become of the object, she came to the firm conclusion that she had seen a ghost. One of the shadowy visitants in the same part of the county was so thoughtless as to appear without a head ; possibly because of having a very poor one while in the flesh. Another wraith was wont to show itself with the head of a pig. This, again, was perhaps an index to the character of the embodied spirit.
Because of the unfortunate burning of the Monongalia courthouse in 1796, with its accumulated papers of twenty years, we are without the records which would have made this and the preceding chapter more complete. Among the early justices from the Preston end of the county was Thomas Butler, who resigned in 1797. Others were Thomas Chipps, John Fairfax, Jonathan Brandon, Hugh Evans, John T. Goff, Amos Roberts, who went out in 1809, and Frederick Harsh, who served from 1803 till 1811. Still others, with the dates of their mention, were Rawley Evans in 1810-13, Charles Byrne, Isaac Powell, and Hugh Evans in 1810, Nathan Ashby in 1811, William Sigler in 1814-16, and James Webster in 1816. Butler was sheriff in 1793, Chipps in 1794, Goff in 1800-2, and Fairfax in 1805-6. During the five years preceding, Fairfax was one of the two delegates to the state legislature. Alexander Brandon was an assessor from 1796 until 1813, and Charles Byrne from 1813 to 1818. As overseers of the poor we have mention in 1806 of John Willett and James Clark; in 1812, of William Connor, Joseph Forman, and Peter Mason ; in 1816, of Daniel McCollum, Frederick Harsh, Richard Forman, and Samuel Minor. In 1807, the Preston area formed the 3d, 4th, and 5th constabulary districts of Monongalia.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
In 1816, the October court of Monongalia ordered a special election on the east side of Cheat, the polling to be at John Rodeheaver's the second Monday in April for a state and congressional ticket.
We are now at the close of the Pioneer Period. There is no longer any person living who can turn back to it. To us its features seem picturesque and romantic, though prosaic enough no doubt to the pioneer himself. The reminiscences we do possess are well worthy of preserva- tion and study. It is not easy to gain a correct perspective of the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth. Since that time the externals of our American life have changed so enormously that we should not judge the earlier era by the standards of our own. Yet the Preston of the twentieth century is an outgrowth of the Preston of the eighteenh. Our pioneers did foundation work in empire building, and are thereby entitled to an honorable and grateful remembrance.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
CHAPTER IX SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF AMERICA. .
British Unfriendliness - Speed of Western Settlement - Provincial Feeling - Growth of Nationalism - The West - A Colony of the Seaboard - Westsylvania.
Before taking up the next period in our local history, it will be of interest, as well as profitable, to spend a few moments on a bird's-eye view of the United States in general. This view will cover the epoch of seventy-five years beginning with national independence, in 1776, and closing with our own sub-pioneer period, in 1851.
We have already sketched the primary cause of the Revolution, which came to a successful end in 1783. Yet it was a war for independ- ence rather than of independence. The concession of American inde- pendence had been grudging, and strings were attached to it. A second war had to be fought with arrogant England, and that country then saw fit to abate, in a radical degree, her persistent display of insolence.
There is, in recent years, a school of writers of weak American feel- ing, who, in their desire to soothe British sensibilities, allege that the war of 1812 was needless, and not truly successful. Yet a more patri- otic reading of American history between 1783 and 1812 will show that England was making a deliberate effort to strangle American com- merce and thus crush a growing rival. The war could not have been avoided by us without loss in national self-respect. England could not truly comprehend that America had broken her leading strings. She regarded the late colonies as a group of prodigal sons, who needed some vigorous cuffing to make them come home and be good. Al- though the war of 1812 was mismanaged on our part, it is significant that England at once acquired an abiding respect for America and American commerce. The true American cannot, and should not, for- get that England never treated his own land with good manners until she had to. So far as the governments of the United States and Britain are concerned, there is now a comity between them, and it should be encouraged to continue. Another war between the two great countries would be a crime against civilization. But the reunion, which is occa- sionally mentioned, is an "irridescent dream." From the very planting of the colonies America has developed on a diverging line, just as the English and Germans, both of the same stock, have diverged from one another.
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Also, with the conclusion of the war of 1812, all practical danger from Indian raids was at once removed from the banks of the Ohio to beyond those of the Mississippi.
The speed of settlement in the country behind the Alleghanies is one of the wonders of the modern world. When the first permanent pio- neer came to Preston, in 1766, there were in this part of America only 6,000 French-Americans, and a much smaller number of British-Amer- icans. A quarter century later there still were only some 20,000 people in the portion of Virginia lying west of the dividing ridge. But when Preston became a county, in 1818, there were more than 2,000,000 peo- ple in the interior region. This was equal to a third of the inhabitants on the seaboard. It was about equal to the whole colonial population when the war for independence began. The thirteen states had become twenty-one, and the purchase of Louisiana had carried the frontier of the republic from the Mississippi to the shore of the Pacific. Virginia was still the most populous of the states, and, with Pennsylvania and New York, contained more than a third of the American people. Yet there were still large vacant areas in these and others of the Atlantic states. A number of the present counties of West Virginia remained a quite unbroken wilderness. Philadelphia, the metropolis of the re- public, had scarcely more than 100,000 people, and Washington, the capital, had but 10,000.
But in thirty-three more years, bringing us to 1851, the number of states had become thirty-one, and the population had risen to 24,000,000. Florida had been purchased, Texas annexed, the larger and better share of the Oregon country secured, and, through war and purchase, a vast region had been won from Mexico. With the Gadsden purchase, very soon to take place, the contiguous portion of the United States grew to its present dimensions.
In 1818 the steamboat had arrived and was in use on the Western rivers, but otherwise the methods of transportation and manufacture had undergone no material change. America was poor, and a crude agriculture was still the resource of a very large majority of the people.
But in that year the completion of the National Road was a mighty stimulus to travel and trade between East and West. So also was the Erie Canal, completed in 1826, and thus reducing the cost of freight between the Hudson and Lake Erie to only a tenth of what it had been. For a while there was a rage for digging canals, but the appearance in 1831 of the locomotive engine caused the fever to abate. In twenty
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years more, quite a network of rails had been put down on the Atlantic seaboard. Already the locomotive was testing itself on the Allegheny grades. Steamboats were plying on all navigable rivers, both East and West, and the telegraph had very lately appeared as a mighty help in annihilating distance.
Until the very close of this latter period America was still relatively poor. Few men had great wealth, while on the other hand there were few who felt the pinch of poverty. But in 1851 California was rapidly furnishing the gold to provide the nation with the capital to expand its industrial development. From 1776 to 1848, gold and silver to the value of only $24,000,000 had been dug out of American soil. Califor- nia was now digging from her own soil each year twice this value of gold alone. Since 1800 factories had been growing in number and im- portance, yet it was only until toward 1850 that labor-saving machinery had fairly begun to work a revolution in methods of industry.
In the days of the Revolution, moral and religious interests were at a low ebb. Even in 1820, profanity, intemperance, pauperism, Sunday desecration, and crime in general, are mentioned as very common. By 1850 religious feeling had become an active power and a topic of gen- eral discussion.
Also, in the Revolutionary times, America was rather sluggish. A strong local feeling was a characteristic of its people. The thirteen colonies were practically independent of one another, and each was wrapped up in its own interests. Travel was very slow and tedious, and little of it was done. In 1850 America was still quite provincial, because speedy travel and speedy industrial methods were as yet a novelty. But she had thrown off the old-time sluggishness. Develop- ment had become a watchword. The American had now an absorbing desire to prosper and to make the most of himself. It is true that the first sewing machine was smashed; that the first telegraph wires were cut ; that the first seller of coal in Philadelphia was chased out of town as a swindler; that the first successful trial of a reaper was followed by a hooting, jeering crowd of spectators; but in 1851 the avearge American was quite imbued with a spirit of enterprise.
Already the American was very proud of his big country, much in- clined to brag of it, and very quick to resent any jibes coming from across the Atlantic.
The Jeffersonian principle of freely entrusting the people with polit- ical power was now triumphant. Religious and property qualifications
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for voting had generally disappeared by 1851. The number of voters was now over 3,000,000, whereas at the first election of Washington there had been only 150,000. The increase in the size of the electorate was more than three times the increase in population.
The thirteen states of 1775 were not a nation. They were a group of independent, jarring republics, each jealous of its own interests and distrustful of a common bond. It required the blundering tyranny of the British government to force them into a political union. Until 1789 this union was a confederation pure and simple. It was a rope of sand, yet nothing better could at first be reached. The Federal Consti- tution was adopted only after strenuous opposition, both in the conven- tion which framed it and in the state legislatures which ratified it. The new government was not merely a new thing in statecraft, but it was an experiment. It was, therefore, impossible that it could be regarded at the outset with deep-seated affection. In theory and in promise it was a federation, but in the minds of the people it long continued to be a confederation.
Now, the strict difference between a confederation and a federation is this: In the confederation the central government acts on its citizens only through the medium of the various state governments; but in the federation it acts on its citizens independently of the state governments.
Had there been no Western country to expand into, the American Union might very possibly have remained in the nature of a confedera- tion to this day. But there was a Western country, and it produced a world of difference. Now a mountain chain tends always to become a natural boundary between peoples of differing interests. In 1776 the country beyond the Appalachians was not in a practical sense a part of English-speaking America. It had thus far received but the merest touch of white settlement. During the Revolution the Americans wrested this country from the British, and it was yielded to them by the treaty of peace.
As the early settlers on the coast were colonists from beyond the sea, so were the early emigrants across the Alleghanies true colonists from the coast itself. They felt that they were in another America. The region where they had gone was spoken of by the people of the coast as the "back country." In return, the men across the mountains spoke of the old home as the "back country." Moreover, the West was a unit in a social sense, because the settlers had come indifferently from North- ern, Middle and Southern states.
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Again, the new country was much larger than the seaboard, and it was more fertile. Its rivers ran westward and not eastward. Its nat- ural trade outlet was down the Mississippi, and not through the intri- cate passes of the broad Appalachian region. Our first president was one of those men who saw that an abstract attachment to the Federal Constitution was not enough to hold the West to the Union. He saw that the West would fall away if its trade routes became firmly fastened to the Mississippi, the mouth of which was controlled by a foreign power. He remarked that the people of the West were "standing as it were on a pivot; the touch of a feather would send them either way." It was this solicitude that caused him to work in behalf of an easy com- mercial highway across the mountains.
The rapid peopling of the West alarmed the East. Some of the best statesmen of the day believed that an independent English-speak- ing nation was sure to arise just beyond the mountains. This feeling Spain, France, and England sought to encourage, having less fear of two distinct American nations than of one. But, though there was a strong tendency toward separation on the part of the Western people, the march of events at length cut the ground from under it, and the crisis was passed.
The Louisiana purchase, the National Road, the Erie Canal, and the steam locomotive, all appearing within thirty years, caused the separatist feeling to drop out of sight and out of mind.
The West being very homogeneous, it was carved into distinct com- monwealths only because of its size. State lines did not have the same meaning west of the mountains that they did in the East. Conse- quently, the West led off in regarding the Union as a nation indeed, and the various states as members of an inseparable whole. Because of the close trade relations between the East-North and the West-North, a feeling of nationality at length prevailed in the former section. Yet until after the war of 1861 it had permeated the South but little.
It was this growing consciousness of a national sentiment that made the American of 1851 so proud of his country and so enterprising.
A certain episode of the separatist feeling is of special historic in- terest to this county. Had it succeeded, the name of West Virginia would not be on the map.
Geographical knowledge in the colonial era was often foggy. The boundaries named in the colonial charters sometimes overlapped, thus giving rise to serious disputes. It was in this way that Virginia laid
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claim to the west of Pennsylvania, and it explains why Governor Din- widdie sent Washington there to present his remonstrance to the French. After the French and Indian war, each colony opened land offices in this region. By underselling the Pennsylvanians, Virginia was getting the business. Virginia troops seized Fort Pitt and changed its name to Fort Dunmore. From this place Governor Dunmore issued, in 1774, a fiery proclamation, ordering respect to be paid to the laws of Virginia, and threatening disagreeable results in any case of refusal. The settlers west of Laurel Hill were more interested in the local situ- ation than in the quarrel between America and England.
To find a way out of the trouble, the Continental Congress was pe- titioned to create a fourteenth colony under the name of Westsylvania. It was to include the district of West Augusta in Virginia and the county of Westmoreland in Pennsylvania, these being the only political subdivisions in the two colonies which lay wholly west of the Alleghanies. The delegates of both colonies issued a letter, bearing the date of July 25, 1775, and addressed to the "inhabitants of Pennsylvania and Virginia on the west side of Laurel Hill." Among the signers were John Dickinson, George Rose, and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry of Virginia. But action was not taken, the matter dragged along, and in 1779 the contesting colonies appointed three delegates each, who met at Baltimore. After long negotiation, a compromise was reached, and was ratified by the legislatures of both states. Had Westsylvania become a state, the effect on American his- tory might easily have been important.
The Whiskey Insurrection of 1794 was more than a quarrel over an excise tax. It was a veiled threat at political separation on the part of the West. Washington put down the movement with a strong hand, believing that a divided America would be a misfortune. Our first president was not a James Buchanan.
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CHAPTER X
FORMATION OF PRESTON.
Efforts to Divide Monongalia - Act of Assembly - James P. Preston - Organization of New County - West Virginia Map in 1818 - Annexations to Preston - Move- ments to Reduce the County.
The original Monongalia was larger than the state of Delaware. A process of sudbivision at length began, in consequence of the rapid set- tling of transmontane Virginia. The natural boundary of Chestnut Ridge indicated one of the lines of partition. To reach Morgantown, the settlers in the Sandy Creek glades, on Snowy Creek, and at Carmel, had to travel distances of 30 to 40 miles. So, by Act of the Virginia Assembly, dated January 19, 1818, Preston came into being as the twen- tieth of the counties now comprised in West Virginia.
Yet it would be a great error to imagine that this step was easily or speedily accomplished. It required a quarter century of constant agitation. The legislature of Virginia was bombarded by petition after petition before it saw fit to accede to the wishes of the people in the Preston area. The first of these papers, dated July 25, 1792, presents the following statement :
Your Petitioners humbly sheweth, that it is Inconvenient, for the Inhabitants on the East Side of Laurel Hill, to attend at the Court House, at the time of Election, or on any other account whatsoever, occasioned by the Extensive Distance to the amount of forty miles for some, and having to cross that Ridge of Mountains where there is no Inhabitant, nor never can be. Therefore your Petitioners humbly Prayeth, for that Part of Monongalia County, Eastward of the Laurel Hill to be struck off to compose a New County.
In this first petition, Thomas Butler, Thomas Chipps, Russell Pot- ter, Andrew Ramsey, and John T- were recommended as justices for the court of the new county. The signatures number 235, and in- clude these names :
Butler, Thomas
Benson, William
Butler, Thomas (?)
Benson, William (?)
Butler, Nathan
Brandon, Alexander
Butler, Joseph
Brandon, Jonathan
Brandon, Joseph
Butler, Joseph (?) Butler, Israel
Brandon, Walter
Burchinal, Thomas
Brandon, L. Richard
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Brown, Jeames
Matheny, William
Chipps, Thomas
McCollum, Samuel
Connor, John
McCollum, Daniel
Connor, Robert
Morgan, David
Connor, William
Morgan, Hugh
.
Cress, Henry
Morgan, William
Daugherty, William
Seypolt, George
Daugherty, William, Jr.
Simpson, Jeremiah
Daugherty, James
Smith, Aaron
Foreman, Robert
Smith, John
Hatfield, Whightly
Smith, Jonas
Horton,
Smith, Samuel
Jones, Ezekiel
Spurgeon, George
Jenkins, Benjamin
Spurgeon, James
Jenkins, Evan
Spurgeon, William
Jenkins, James
Spurgeon, William, Jr.
Jenkins, John
Trader, Arthur
Jenkins, Thomas
Wagner, Jacob
Jenkins, William
Webster, James
Kelso, Joseph
Wolf, Jacob
Kelso, William
Worley, Anthony, Sr.
Lemon, George
Worley, Anthony, Jr.
Martin, George
Worley, John
Matheny, James
Worley, John of Anthony, Sr.
Matheny, John
A petition presented in October, 1795, but advertised with due patriotism July 4th of the same year, tells of
that well known but much dreaded mountain which makes many good citizens almost shrink back from their duty when called on as jurors, by which means often the innocent suffers and the vile offender goes free. Immigrants in general pass us by and many worthy citizens are abandoning our unhappy borders.
On the last-mentioned paper are 215 names, and there is the declara- tion that more than a hundred persons had had no opportunity to sign. Among those who did sign we find the following names:
Bright, John
Hazle, Abraham
Bright, Michael
Hazle, Hannary
Bright, William
Hazle, William
Bright, Carlyle
Matheny, Ephraim
Asking, Reuben
Severe, James Severe, Jesse
Cale, Christopher
Clutter, Abraham
Severe, Robert
Fickle, Daniel
Squire, Meeker
Fickle, Gabriel
Willets, Ellis
Gibson, Thomas
Willets, John
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
The 295 signatures to a petition of 1798 are given herewith, and in the order and manner in which they appear. In several instances there would seem to be a repetition of the same name :*
*See index at end of chapter.
Russell Potter
Thos Sayre
Willm Hazel
John McClain Henry Hazel
Abraham Hazel
John Munyon
John Rice
Richard Brandon
John Bright
John Willets
Benjm Howard
John Gribble
Thos Scott
Terah Dorcen
Godfrey Waggoner
Samuel Clark
Nathan Conch
James Concade
Amos Spencer
Saml Morton John Connor
Thos Coldzeiger
Isaac Hays
Archibald Moore
W. S. Tannyhill
Saml Tannyhill James Doran
Jerimy Tannyhill
Willm Webster
Daniel Boyce
Moses Crane
Willm Johnson
John Scammons
David Boyce
Smith Crane
Samuel Morton
Moses Easton
Gabriel Fickle
Joseph Parsonet
Gabriel Solard
John Thompson
Nath Hatfield Daniel Fickle Joseph Fickle Saml Maxfield Potter
Owen Derby
Levi Potter
Danl McCollum Thos G-
John Hugging
John Lapp
John Scott
Benjm Woods
James Clark
Willm Webster
Robert Wood
Abraham Johnson
Willm Wood
William Squire
Nathan Funker
John McLane Thos Morton
Jonathan Brandon Mordecai Dunham Willm McClain Joseph McClain
Thos Graham
Saml Willets
David Archer
John Archer Robert Connor
James Concade
David Concade David Orr
John Stewart Eli Joseph John Simple
Thomas Morton
Robert Thompson
Willm Tannyhill
Martin Waggoner
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
Carlisle Bright
Christian Cale
David Scamons
Daniel Jones
Michael Floyd
Benjm Butler
Willm Brandon Jonathan Brandon
Amos Glover James Morris
Rowland Ellis Willm Morton
Jacob Wolf
Joseph Martin
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