USA > West Virginia > Lewis County > A history of Lewis County, West Virginia > Part 17
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In 1841 parts of the road were formally placed in operation. The Board of Public Works was given authority to establish toll gates and levy tolls on users of the turnpike, subject to certain restrictions as to max- imum tolls.
An act of the General Assembly appointed a com- missioner to sell out short stretches of the road along the Hughes river in the extreme western section of Lewis County. Beverly was made a point on the road in 1842, by the machinations of the delegate from Ran-
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dolph County, although the route was thereby made more roundabout and the construction more difficult. An act of the legislature in 1845 appropriated $30,000 for the completion of the road between Beverly and Weston. By an act passed in 1847, bridges were pro- vided for over the Tygart's Valley river at Huttonsville, over Hughes river, over Stone Coal creek and over the West Fork river at Weston to replace the dilapidated structure which had been completed in 1830. The next year funds were provided for additional bridges, among which, in Lewis County the more important ones were across Polk creek, and across Alum fork near its mouth.
The new bridges were solid, substantial structures without the faults of those hurriedly erected at an earlier date by the county courts. Many of them have contin- ued in use until the present time. The Stone Coal, Polk creek, and West Fork river bridges were built by Lem- uel Chenoweth, of Philippi, who had received the con- tract under rather interesting circumstances. He took a model of the bridges he proposed to erect to Rich- mond and entered it in competition with the plans and models submitted by bridge builders from all parts of the country. Few persons paid any attention to his rude unpainted model until he placed the ends on two chairs and then stood in the middle of the bridge. He dared his competitors to do the same, but none of them ventured to try it. The finished structures have proved themselves as strong as the model, as shown by the fact that the bridges across Stone Coal and Polk creeks are still in use after seventy years of constant service, and they are apparently good for another seventy years.
In order to make the turnpike fit for a considerable winter travel, an act was passed in 1849 appropriating $60,000 for macadamizing parts of it. The next year the General Assembly authorized the Board of Public Works to borrow $150,000 on the credit of the state to complete the road through the wild lands, and to mac- adamize the sections of the road where there was great-
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est need for repairs. It was provided by the same act that the maximum grade might be four and one-half per cent "at difficult points where it was unavoidable," be- cause a great deal of trouble had been experienced in securing a suitable location in crossing Rich mountain and other high hills. Some of the bridges having been destroyed by floods in 1852 an appropriation was imme- diately passed to provide for rebuilding them. The amount named in the act was $100,000, which was to be used for planking and macadamizing in addition to the replacement of bridges. Heavy rains following the melt- ing of snow which had laid on the ground through most of the winter of 1852, caused a great deal of damage to the road, apart from the washing away of bridges. Ac- cording to the report of Superintendent John Brannon, of Weston, the road was in very bad condition, owing to the number of serious washouts. The tolls were re- ported to be wholly inadequate for the proper upkeep of the road. The legislature made no new appropriations of importance except to repair damages resulting from floods and hard usage in some sections. In 1860 the turnpike was divided into two sections with a superin- tendent in charge of each, their jurisdictions being di- vided by Cheat mountain.
The road was an ambitious attempt of the state of Virginia to establish a route for commerce between the eastern and western parts of the state. It was the only turnpike of importance entirely owned by the state, and for which the state took all responsibility, north of the Kanawha valley. Its total cost within the present limits of West Virginia was $264,043.07. Of this amount $146,403.47 had been borrowed on the credit of the state, and formed part of the Virginia debt in 1863. That the investment of Virginia in constructing the turnpike was not a profitable one is shown by the fact that only $17,- 080.71 was collected as tolls upon travelers. It was not expected that it would be a financial success for many years, otherwise the Board of Public Works would not
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have had the burden of constructing it. Private cap- ital could easily have been secured for the task. The state took charge of the construction largely to tap the resources of a hitherto undeveloped section, and to make it commercially dependent upon the business men of the « egion around Richmond.
The results of the building of the road were far- reaching. While it was in course of construction work was provided for many citizens of Lewis County, for which they received payment in cash. It had been facetiously said that the mileage of members of the legislature and the income from digging ginseng had furnished the only sources of ready money in the back- woods counties. Henceforth Lewis County was out of the backwoods. Its citizens had to depend no longer for their income from agricultural produce sold in dis- tant markets, but had markets at home. The labor re- quired to finish the road was even greater than the local supply, and many Irish immigrants, who had just ar- rived in America, were attracted to the work. The great amount of unoccupied lands along the route and the easy terms of purchase offered by the proprietors, led many of them to settle permanently in Lewis County. Their wages were used for the purchase of the necessi- ties of life or were devoted to making payments on land, and the prosperity of the county was thereby increased. The construction camps were a ready market for agri- cultural products. For the first time in the history of the county the people had an important local market. After the completion of the road the market still existed. The steady stream of emigrants gave great prosperity to the keepers of hotels. Ordinaries sprang up at the foot of Buckhannon mountain, at the present site of Camden, at Steinbeck's (below Alum Bridge) and at the import- ant road junction at Linn. Minter Bailey erected on the northwest corner of Second and Main streets a three- story brick hotel building which was perhaps the largest in central West Virginia at the time of the formation of
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the state. A regular line of stagecoaches was establish- ed to run between Weston and Staunton. The hauling of manufactured goods over the mountains from Balti- more was largely given up on account of the fact that they could be shipped to Parkersburg and then hauled to Weston much more cheaply. The establishment of the road thus for a short time changed the course of commerce in the county.
The Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike was one of the principal causes of one of the greatest eras of busi. ness prosperity ever experienced in the county. Lateral roads were constructed almost immediately following the completion of the road, which connected the county seat with points north and south of the turnpike. The most important of these were the Weston and Charles- ton, the Clarksburg and Weston, the Weston and Gauley Bridge, the Weston and Lewisport, the Weston and Fairmont, the Buckhannon and Little Kanawha, and the Weston and West Union turnpikes.
The first of these roads to be established was the Weston and Charleston turnpike, which was authorized by the General Assembly in 1836. The road was to be constructed by a joint stock company in accordance with the policy of the state at that time. The capital stock was $10,000, three-fifths of which was to be appropriated by the legislature and the remainder to be raised by levy, donations and subscriptions in the counties of Lewis and Kanawha. Braxton county had no part in the con- struction of the road, which did not pass through the territory of that county. In 1837 Lewis County raised $1,000, of which $300 was raised by levy and the remain- der from a subscription among the people. Kanawha County furnished its quota by 1842, when a commis- sioner was appointed to supervise the location and con- struction of the road.
The route as finally determined upon followed the Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike to the present site of Linn, where it crossed to Stewart creek by way of
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State Road run. It passed through the present villages of Glenville, Lettergap, Normantown, Stumptown and Millstone, and reached the Elk river at Clendenin. The act of the legislature apparently did not contemplate a real connecting link betwen the northern and southern parts of the state. The appropriation was entirely in- adequate for the construction of other than a dirt road. It was well graded, however, and furnished a far better means of communication than any that had previously existed in that section.
The immediate effects of the Weston and Charles- ton turnpike upon the development of the extreme west- ern part of Lewis County was out of all proportion to the cost of the road. It has continued to exercise great influence over the development of Gilmer, Calhoun and Roane counties. By 1842 the town of Hartford was es- tablished at the point where the road reached the Little Kanawha river. When Gilmer County was formed, this town became the county seat. The whole district drain- ed by the West Fork of the Little Kanawha river and by Steer creek was opened up to settlement. So great was the rush to these lands, and so brilliant the future apparent for that region that the citizens began a move- ment for the formation of Gilmer and Roane counties shortly after the opening of the road. It was the prin- cipal route from the West Fork to the Great Kanawha river until the construction of the Weston and Gauley Bridge turnpike nearly twenty years later·
The other roads constructed following the comple- tion of the Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike will be treated in another chapter. They exercised a tremen- dous influence over the history of the county, but not perhaps as great an influence as they would have had but for the advent of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad into northwestern Virginia at this time. The new and more powerful agency of transportation had come to take the place of the slow moving wagon on the dirt road even
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before the completion of the Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike.
While Virginia was attempting to construct a canal from the James river to the Kanawha valley which would capture the trade of the entire west for Rich- mond and Norfolk, a group of Baltimore capitalists was engaged in constructing the Baltimore and Ohio rail- road to the west. The locomotive reached Harper's Ferry in 1833 and Cumberland in 1842. The effect was immediately felt in the quiet dales of the West Fork. Merchants who had previously hauled all their goods from Baltimore now hauled them from the nearest rail- road stop. They were thus enabled to sell them cheaper, and the citizens of the county were enabled to buy greater quantities of manufactured goods. It was no longer necessary to drive cattle all the way to Baltimore to market. They could be shipped part of the way, and they brought more per head at home because part of the expense of marketing them at home had been elim- inated.
The railroad was pushed farther westward until it was opened as far as Fetterman in 1852. In 1856-7 the Northwestern Virginia railroad was completed from Grafton to Parkersburg. The final completion of this last link enabled the business men of Lewis County to have their goods hauled all the way by rail with the ex- ception of the distance from Clarksburg.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
THE IRISH AND GERMAN IMMIGRATION
1
The last of the five districts of the county to be set- tled was Court House. By 1840 every other considerable territory in the county had a number of families, and the beginnings of institutions could be discerned. Sand fork and its tributaries, Butcher's fork, Cove creek, Indian fork, and other smaller streams, together with a consid- erable territory on Leading creek remained unsettled except for Tom Boilen, who had settled at the mouth of Rock Camp run, and Jim Ditcher, colored, who lived on Goosepen. Everywhere else was dense wilderness. The primeval forest covered the slopes of the hills and dales. The creatures of the wild, then rapidly being extermin- ated before the advance of the white man found their last refuge in Lewis County on its western borders. Sand Fork in the thirties was a paradise for hunters. Deer, bears and all the other animals of the western Virginia forests remained in the valley and furnished good hunting though they had been made wary by the number of hunters who invaded their haunts.
The greater portion of this land had, of course, been patented even while the Indian wars were in pro- gress, and some surveys had been made by the intrepid Henry Jackson and others. The Pickering survey of 100,000 acres on the headwaters of the West Fork and Little Kanawha rivers, which included part of the Sand fork lands, was made in 1785. The Ford grant made in 1797 for 27,000 acres, extended southwest from a cor- ner near the head of Rush run. Many smaller tracts had been patented and surveyed by speculators. In al- most every case the large surveys had been made with
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the view of inducing immigrants to make settlements; but the abundance of more desirable lands, both in west- ern Virginia and beyond the Ohio, and the small num- ber of immigrants who stopped in this section, caused the investments to be unprofitable. In the first quarte: of the nineteenth century, most of the surveys had either been sold or had been reported delinquent.
Tracts of 100,000 acres were sometimes mortgaged for small sums and the mortgage left unpaid until it was foreclosed. Large estates changed hands for a few cents per acre. Colonel James M. Camp bought up many of the tracts on Sand fork in early years, and stored the deeds for them in his trunk without having them record- ed. Unfortunately for him and for his heirs the con- fusion of land titles in that region was so great that other claims to the same land, almost equally good, were admitted to record by the courts. Several younger cit- izens of the county, believing that the Sand fork sec- tion had a future, bought up small tracts as they came on the market.
The process was hastened by a change in the policy of the state with respect to delinquent lands. The laws of Virginia respecting these lands had always been very reasonable. Under them the owners always had a long period of grace for the payment of taxes. By acts passed in 1831 and 1835, however, the titles of lands published as delinquent and not redeemed were declared forfeited. Under an act passed in 1837, a commissioner of delin- quent and forfeited lands was to be appointed in every county of the northwest. His duties were to survey the tracts declared delinquent, to make adjustments for the payment of taxes if possible, and if not to sell the lands for what they would bring.
One of the first holders of the office in Lewis County was Minter Bailey, proprietor of the Weston Hotel, who had achieved some local fame as a surveyor and land speculator. Among other land dealers in the county, none were more prominent than Gideon D.
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Camden and Richard P. Camden. Just what the rela- tions were between Bailey and the two Camdens before his appointment as commissioner of forfeited lands is not clear. By 1841 a partnership between them is evi- dent. In that year Bailey, as commissioner, "after ad- vertising in one of the Clarksburg papers, and at the front door of the courthouse", sold a large tract to G. D. Camden for about ten cents per acre. He reconveyed one-third of it to R. P. Camden and one-third to Minter Bailey at the same price per acre he had paid for it. The greater part of the Reed and Ford surveys and part of the Pickering survey also came into the possession of the firm within a few years.
In addition to the land sold for taxes there were to be found on Sand fork isolated small tracts which had never been patented, or if patented had never been sur- veyed. Many of them were taken up by one of the part- ners and added to the common stock of Camden, Bailey and Camden. A tract of 2,172 acres lying in Gilmer and Lewis counties, but mostly in Lewis, was patented by R. P. Camden in 1846, and smaller tracts were afterwards purchased through the land office. The largest tract-one which had been overlooked, and the existence of which had probably been discovered by Minter Bailey when he was county surveyor-was taken out in 1856, a great quadrangle extending from Leading creek across Cove lick, Left fork of Sand fork, Butcher's fork and Indian fork, and containing 20,000 acres. It was unbroken ex- cept where one homeseeker had located a farm which in- cluded forty-seven acres on the eastern boundary.
It should be explained that there is no evidence of unfairness or of sharp practices in the possession of the Sand fork lands by Camden, Bailey and Camden. The old deeds show that the sales of forfeited lands at the courthouse were always well advertised according to law. Minter Bailey did only what most other county surveyors and commissioners of forfeited lands have done both before and after his time. As commissioner, he knew the legal status and the quality of all the for-
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feited lands, and as county surveyor he had unusual op portunities to know the location of a great deal of un- patented land. The other two members of the partner- ship were far sighted business men. Gideon D. Camden was a capitalist of Clarksburg, who probably financed the operations. R. P. Camden was a business man of Weston who seems to have devoted a great deal of his time to the business, and probably did most of the de- tailed work. It was a well-balanced partnership.
Other great landholders in the Sand fork water- shed were James Bennett, Jonathan M. Bennett, George J. Arnold and William E. Arnold. Their lands were lo- cated in various parts of the region. They did not exer- cise as great influence in the settlement of the country as Camden, Bailey and Camden. The lands in the Sand fork watershed were seen to be desirable on account of the fact that the Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike was nearing completion. It was confidently expected that settlers who came west over the road in search of homes would be attracted to the lands, now that means of transportation were assured.
They were not disappointed in their hopes of form- ing a colony. Many of the laborers engaged in the con- struction of the Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike were frecent immigrants from Ireland and Germany. They had been engaged in construction work on many of the public works then building in all parts of the United States. The effects of the panic of 1837 in de- creasing the amount of construction work everywhere continued to be felt for many years thereafter. The Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike, being under con- struction by the state, did not feel the effects of the panic as did enterprises of private concerns. When it was prac- tically completed the laborers seemed to be out of em- ployment, for all the other construction projects had all the laborers they could use. They were glad of any op- portunity to make a living until conditions should im- prove. The advantages of settling on the lands owned
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by Camden, Bailey and Camden were early brought to their attention. In order to provide farms within range of their means the large tracts were divided into smaller tracts of from fifty to one hundred acres. Few of the Irish laborers had sufficient funds to purchase their lands outright, but the matter was waived by the owners who arranged that they should pay for them as soon as they were able. Meanwhile the Irish were to build their homes on the land, clear as much as they wished and raise their crops.
The first Irish to take advantage of the opportunity were John Hayden, Thomas White, John and Michael McLaughlin, Michael and Patrick Copely, Patrick Hare, James and Thomas Mullady, Thomas and Anthony Hart and William Murphy. Minter Bailey needed a varied supply of provisions for the Bailey House, including venison, chickens, potatoes, corn, wheat and pork. The need was partly met by the residents on the lands of the firm, who received credit on their accounts; but by far the greater amount was paid in cash.
The clearing of the land was done by the men dur- ing the winter when the demand for labor was not very great. As soon as spring came, the Irish put out their crops and then went in search of work to do either on the farms of other citizens or on public works. The cul- tivation of the crops was left in the hands of the wives and children. Sometimes the men went away from home in the spring and did not return to their farms until the beginning of the following winter-but they always re- turned. Soon by the united efforts of husbands and wives they accumulated sufficient ready money to buy their way to landed independence.
One of the first deeds recorded from Camden, Bailey and Camden in the county clerk's office in Lewis County transfers title to land on Sand fork to Thomas and James Malady, 1845. From that time on a great number of these deeds were recorded every year. The price paid for the land was from $2.75 to $3.00 per acre.
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The proprietors could afford to allow the Irish and Germans to settle on their lands without requiring the payment of rental of any kind because of the fact that every small tract improved enhanced the value of all the lands in the vicinity. Every acre grubbed and put under cultivation or seeded to grass meant an increase in the value, not only of that parcel of ground, but of all other lands in the vicinity. The proprietors would have lost nothing if an occasional settler had become discour- aged and left his farm without making any payment at all.
As a matter of fact few of the thrifty immigrants were ever long in arrears in making payment for their land. 'Squire Oliver says that not a single Irishman abandoned his farm or allowed it to slip from his grasp. They had stopped working on construction jobs in order to settle on Sand fork and they meant to stay there no matter what happened.
By 1848 the Irish colony on Sand fork was so large its permanence so evident and its prospects for a further great development so bright that steps were taken by their leaders to secure a church of their faith. The next year Camden, Bailey and Camden conveyed to Bishop Francis V. Whelan of the diocese of Wheeling, thirty acres of land on Loveberry run and Rock run for the purpose of building a church and laying out a cemetery. This tract was afterwards utilized as the site of the first Catholic church on Sand fork.
Other owners of lands on Sand fork also became in- terested in the possibility of developing them by settling a colony of Irish and Germans upon them. George J. Arnold and William E. Arnold, owners of an extensive block of land, busied themselves in competition with Camden, Bailey and Camden, and succeeded in forming what is known as the "Murray Settlement" on the upper tributaries of Indian fork. It grew and prospered with only less rapidity than the Sand fork settlement.
The potato famine in Ireland, 1846, drove a large
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proportion of the population to the United States. Many of them found employment in the construction of the Baltimore and ¡Ohio railroad which was then being pushed westward from Cumberland to Wheeling. Prac- tically all the excavation for the roadbed was done by the new immigrants. Some of those who had been in America for some time held positions as foremen. Some of these immigrants were also attracted, before the com- pletion of the railroad, to the route of the Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike which was then being macadam- ized. From either of these improvements it was only a step to the magnificent domain of Camden, Bailey and Camden, and many of the laborers settled among the earlier comers. It is related that R. P. Camden went to the camps along the Baltimore and Ohio railroad and explained the advantages of the land on Sand fork, and that the Arnolds also made special efforts to bring the Irish to the lands. It is also reported that Bishop Whe- lan, who had gone among the immigrants establishing missions from the time they came to western Virginia, also recommended that they buy land on Sand fork and settle there. After the movement had begun, the best advertisement for the lands was the sight of the farms which had been established on Sand fork. The comple- tion of the railroad left many of the laborers out of work temporarily, and more of them sought jobs along the turnpike or purchased lands from Camden, Bailey and Camden and others along Sand fork and its tributaries.
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