USA > West Virginia > Lewis County > A history of Lewis County, West Virginia > Part 3
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The families of most of the settlers did not accom- pany them at once. They waited until the winter of 1770-71, when they could have corn which had been grown the summer before. When they came to the Buckhannon valley in 1769 they planted their corn and hoed it once or twice; then some of them returned to the South Branch settlements to assist their families
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THE BEGINNING OF SETTLEMENTS
to move to the west. While they were gone, the buffa- loes invaded their clearings and totally destroyed the crops of several settlers. They were then compelled either to do without corn meal for a year or to delay moving their families to the new settlement for an- other year. 1127371
The pioneers of western Virginia were not to be deterred by obstacles. If there were no bread, then their families would eat meat. The movement of set- tlers was hardly checked at all by the lack of corn. Jesse Hughes, who was afterwards to achieve fame in the border annals second only to Lewis Wetzel, having chosen a tract of land near the mouth of Jesse's run, (known as Jesse Hughes' run in the earliest records) on his first visit to Hacker's creek in 1769, built his cabin and settled there after his marriage to Miss Grace Tanner, in 1770 or 1771. The records of the Monon- galia County court show that a grant was made to him in 1781 of "400 acres on Hacker's creek, to include his settlement made in 1770."
The settlement on Hacker's creek was well begun by the close of 1771. The next year there was a rush of settlers to the valley and the surrounding country. John Whendy settled at the mouth of Whendy's run, a tributary of Hacker's creek; Francis Tibbs and Daniel Veach are known to have made settlements on the creek, which must have been only temporary on account of the absence of further records and also the fact of their having assigned their claims to others. Robert Lowther built his cabin at the mouth of Hacker's creek, and his son, William, who afterward became the most prominent leader on the northwestern frontier, settled near the home of Jesse Hughes for a year or more, and then moved to the vicinity of Clarksburg. The danger of Indian attacks did not force a grouping of the set- tlers as was the case later, and we find that hardy pion- eers had made settlements which were the basis of later claims to land on the right fork of Freeman's creek, on
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
Gee Lick run, then called the left hand fork of Freeman's creek; on Polk creek, "beginning at the road that comes from Gee Lick," and not far from the present Polk Creek school house; and on Stone Coal creek before the year 1774. These settlements were all abandoned at the beginning of the later Indian wars, and even the strong Hacker's creek settlement was temporarily broken up during the year 1778.
It was not necessary for the immigrants who came after 1771 to delay removing their families until they could clear their land, build their cabins, put out a corn crop and wait for it to mature. They loaded their pos- sessions on pack horses and, with their wives and chil- dren, walked from the South Branch to Hacker's creek. They depended upon the settlers who had previously come to the country for sufficient supplies to tide them over the spring and summer until their own crops were harvested. So many were the new immigrants that the settlers were unable sometimes to provide for them, and there was at one time not more than one-third enough corn for the needs of the population. The year 1773 is known in border tradition as "the starving year." The older settlers divided what must not have been a large crop of corn with the newer comers, but the sup- ply was totally inadequate for their needs. There must have been great suffering if one of the newest of the immigrants had not risen to the occasion and shown the stuff he was made of. William Lowther, whose ability was later to be rewarded with the title of colonel and the command of the forces of northwestern Vir- ginia, "roamed amidst danger and alarm, killing veni- son, elks, Buffalo and Bear, and thus he supplied all their wants." According to a later chronicler, "his name is transmitted to their descendants hallowed by their blessings." Still another account states that he was asso- ciated with Jesse Hughes in hunting for the settlement. The supply of game lasted until the crops matured, and
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THE BEGINNING OF SETTLEMENTS
there was never afterward any danger of starvation among the settlers in Lewis County.
The increase of population the next year was prob- ably as great as in 1772; for there were many who pre- ferred not to move to a new settlement until it had be- come permanent on account of the discomforts inci- dent to life in the wilderness without any great supply of bread, without aid in raising their cabins and without neighbors. The most noteworthy of the new comers to Hacker's creek during the year were the Wests, father and two sons, who emigrated from the South Branch. After the removal of young Lowther to the settlements farther down the West Fork they assumed the lead in the Hacker's creek settlement, and later built for protection the fort which bore their names The settlements on Freeman's creek received a slight accession, and some tracts on the West Fork river be- low the mouth of the creek were cleared at this time. There was a considerable body of settlers below the site of West Milford and also at Clarksburg and Bridge- port. The settlements on the Buckhannon river had been extended to include homesteads on Saul's run and Fink run not far from the Lewis-Upshur line.
Within two or three years after the coming of the homeseekers the whole of Lewis County had been pretty thoroughly explored, and the settlers had got their bearings with regard to the surrounding country. Most of the streams in the vicinity of the Hacker's creek settlements had been traversed and named. Tom- ahawk claims had been made by adventurous hunters in all the most favored locations. The low gap between Rush run and Sand fork had been discovered and hunt- ers had penetrated the hollows of Court House district -a territory which was not to support any considerable population for eighty years.
Tradition credits William Lowther, Jesse Hughes and his brother Elias with the first actual exploration of the Little Kanawha river. In 1772, it is said, the three
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
men traveled up the West Fork river and, having crossed to the Little Kanawha by way of Sand fork, they descend- ed the river to its mouth where Parkersburg now stands. The return trip was made by way of Hughes river, which they first discovered and named. By another account the discovery is said to have taken place in 1774, when the two Hughes brothers, after reaching the mouth of the Little Kanawha, proceeded down the Ohio river and took part in the battle of Point Pleasant while Lowther went to Fort Pitt.
The most remarkable of the explorations by mem- bers of the Hacker's creek colony was made by the first settler, John Hacker, soon after his arrival in the west- ern wilderness. His first crop of corn was one of those which had been destroyed by buffaloes during the ab- sence of the settlers in the east. His anger was so aroused by the devastation that he followed the trail of the three animals which led southward from his corn field, bent upon killing them and making their hides pay for the destruction. The herd was a small one- two full grown animals and a young calf-and they had proceeded leisurely southward toward their winter quarters. Hacker pitched his first hunter's camp at the mouth of Curtis run on Little Skin creek; the following night he encamped on Crane Camp run, which at first was called Crane's Nest camp; the third camp was a shelter in the rocks on what is now Hacker's Camp run ; and the fourth was at Buffalo lick, now Hacker Valley, where he shot and crippled a buffalo cow. He followed a short distance further where he killed the wounded cow. Primitive vengeance was appeased. One of the destroy- ers of the corn crop had paid with its life for the de- struction wrought; and the first settler of Lewis County took the robe and some choice meat and returned by the same route he had come. At each of the spots where he camped he made a tomahawk entry, that is, he cut his initials on a tree nearby. The only one of the "settle-
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THE BEGINNING OF SETTLEMENTS
ments" which he afterward claimed, however, was the one on Little Skin creek, which he gave to his son.
The character of John Hacker can not be judged from the single incident of the buffalo hunt. He was from the beginning one of the leaders of the community, generally being one of the first to introduce improve- ments. He brought to the west the first buhrstones, which he is said to have rigged up to run by water power, and which furnished a better quality of meal for himself and his neighbors than they could secure by the ordinary method of crushing the corn with a pestle in a mortar. He remained in the settlement through- out the Indian wars with the exception of a short time when Hacker's creek was deserted by all its inhabi- tants. His son William was given an education suffi- ciently good to enable him, according to tradition, to pre- pare a history of the Indian wars which later became a part of Withers's "Border Warfare." He served under General George Rogers Clark in his campaign against the British posts of Kaskaskia and Vincennes. When the Indian wars were over, 1795, he was chosen to rep- resent Harrison County at the peace conference held at Greenville. His house was always open to the itiner- ant preacher, and there is a tradition that the first re- ligious services held in Lewis County were held there.
A circuit preacher, writing about 1790, has this to say of John Hacker: "I believe this man could read, but not write; and yet he was a magistrate and a pa- triarch in the settlement. * * He was a man of good common sense, and I think an honest man, and a good Christian, and among the first that took in the Methodist preachers. His house had long been a preach- ing place and the preachers' home, and also a place of refuge in time of danger."
It is unfortunate that all the settlers were not men of the character of John Hacker. Being far from the influences of organized society, without the ordinary re- straints of the law, left to their own whims and caprices,
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
the settlers were frequently guilty of outrages against others which would not be tolerated in a modern so- ciety. The necessity for presenting a united front to the Indian was the greatest restraint placed upon them. Wanton murder of Indians in time of peace was rather common; and murder of white men also occasionally took place. Instances are numerous of white men turn- ing renegades and leading the Indians back to the set- tlements in order to gratify their spite against some of their neighbors. Such an 'occurrence took place at Bush's fort on the Buckhannon river, and it was so serious in its consequences that it resulted in the tem- porary abandonment of the settlement. How many murders attributed to Indians were really the work of white men will never be known. Minor crimes, like fraudulent entry of land, fraudulent claim for pensions, and theft were too common among the first settlers to excite much surprise. Laziness and lack of respect for women were not uncommon traits. When John Radcliff and Elias Hughes moved to Licking County, Ohio, after the Indian wars, they are said to have given over to their wives the cultivation of their small corn patches while they roamed the woods, and it is probable that more than one of the small clearings on Hacker's creek was cultivated in the same way.
There is probably more truth than poetry in the hu- morous statement credited to Adam O'Brien, one of the eccentric pioneers of central West Virginia, as to his reasons for coming to the west. "He said he was a poor man, and had got behind hand and when that's the case, there is no staying in the settlements for those varmints, the sheriffs and constables. * That after the king's proclamation for all surveyors and set- tlers to remove east of the big ridge, from all the west- ern waters, there was no people on the west side ex- cept those who had run away from justice and here they were as free as any buck a-going." There were many men like the Pringles who had reason to keep
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THE BEGINNING OF SETTLEMENTS
away from civilization. The frontier has always been rough and wild and disorderly until the permanent set- tlers, men with families and possessing considerable property have displaced the first comers.
Though the earliest settlers would hardly be eli- gible for admittance to polite society nowadays, it must not be forgotten that the services they rendered in the development of Lewis County were of the highest im- portance. They fought Indians in time of war, and drove them back. They held the western frontier of the Virginia commonwealth while the people of the eastern part of the state were repelling the British. They risked their lives in order that they might hold their settlements. Their clearings became the nucleus of further settlements. The homely comforts they had built up, the first beginning of institutions which they developed, their mills, their schools, their churches, in fact everything which added to the economic, social and political growth of the country, were all used by the later comers. Without the early beginnings made by the pioneers, it may be doubted whether conditions in the new country would have attracted the homeseekers.
Besides those who felt more comfortable on the western side of the wilderness there were three other principal classes. The first was made up mostly of younger men who were attracted by the magnificent hunting. To such as these existence for a long time in one place was unthinkable. The second class was com- posed of homeseekers who had been unable to buy farms further east, and who came west where good land was to be had for little or nothing. According to Adam O'Brien, it was necessary only to cut his initials, A. O. B. on some trees, cut down a few saplings and plant a handful of corn, and he had secured the right to four hundred acres of land, "though it afterwards cost him a great deal of hard swearing." The third class were men of initiative and energy who came west to secure large tracts of land and to make their fortunes.
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
Probably a combination of all these reasons was re- sponsible for the rapid increase in population. The great movement of 1769 when, in a single year, settle- ments were made at the present sites of Morgantown, Wheeling, Buckhannon, Hacker's creek, and within the boundaries of Monroe, Greenbrier and Fayette counties, and in Kentucky, was not a spasmodic effort. In the year before, the Iroquois had ceded all their lands south of the Ohio river to the English government. Though the land was not formally opened to settlement, the pioneers on the South Branch disregarded previous proclamations of king and royal governors and rushed into the new territory intent on securing the choicest locations. The garrison at Fort Pitt made a pretense at expelling the settlers west of the Alleghanies during 1769, but there is no record of a single man's being sent back. The westward movement was inevitable, and it could not be long delayed by artificial barriers to set- tlement.
The royal authority could at least refuse the set- tlers full title to the lands if it could not prevent their coming. Not a single patent was issued until 1779 for any land west of the Alleghanies, and it was not until 1781, the year of the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown, that claims in the West Fork valley were adjusted.
The settlers took possession of four hundred acres each by reason of having made a settlement, and some of them took advantage of the right to pre-empt 1,000 acres additional, under the provisions of the Virginia act which applied to land on the western slopes of the Alleghanies. They held their claims without much dis- pute-as the pioneers generally respected the claims made by others. Another basis for claim to land was a. corn right. A law of Virginia provided that a settler who planted a corn patch might have one hundred acres of land for each acre in his patch. Much land in Lewis- County was originally granted on the basis of early corn rights. Another and very inferior sort of title was.
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THE BEGINNING OF SETTLEMENTS
a tomahawk improvement, under which the conditions of the law were partly fulfilled by girdling a few trees near a spring, and cutting the initials of a settler on a tree nearby. No title could legally be maintained on a tomahawk improvement, but, in general, the settlers did not invade the claims made by others, but were careful to acquire all previous rights before claiming the land as their own. The settlers who came to Lewis County had their lands recorded for the first time in 1781, when a special commission was appointed by the court of Monongalia County to investigate land claims, to settle disputes, and to issue certificates to the right- ful claimants.
CHAPTER IV. LEWIS COUNTY IN DUNMORE'S WAR
The movement of settlers into northwestern Vir- ginia, which in 1772 and 1773 promised to people the country within a few years, was rudely interrupted early in 1774 by Dunmore's war. The war resulted early in victory for the whites; but the final results of this war and of others which followed it in quick suc- cession, upon the settlement of Lewis County and its later history can hardly be estimated. For twenty years, with only a short breathing space, the pioneers were subjected to all the horrors of Indian warfare, whole settlements were broken up, and many outlying families were completely destroyed.
The renewal of the Indian wars had been foreseen by English statesmen, who had advised against a set- tlement of the interior of the country until the lands between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic were com- pletely occupied. The prospect of securing cheap lands, coupled with other reasons which have been enumer- ated, had resulted, as we have seen, in a considerable immigration even before the ban had been lifted, and before satisfactory arrangements had been made with the Indians. From the time of their first coming- that is, from about 1765 in the region around Fort Pitt- there had been hostilities between the Indians and the settlers at widely separated points. The wanton ag- gression of the borderers in murdering every Indian they could find alone, and the action of the Indians in repaying the debts with interest led to bitter feeling on both sides, until finally open war broke out with all the horrors usually attendant upon frontier conflicts with
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LEWIS COUNTY IN DUNMORE'S WAR
savages. The rapid advance of the settlers caused the Indians to fear lest the hunting grounds of their fore- fathers should be completely destroyed.
The land really belonged to the whites. The Indian title to the lands south of the Ohio had been extin- guished by several treaties: with the Iroquois at Lan- caster, Pa., in 1744; with the Shawnees at Logstown, on the Ohio, in 1752; and a renewed cession by the Iroquois, the real owners of the country, at Fort Stan- wix, New York, in 1768. The last named treaty was, as we have seen, the immediate cause of the large im- migration in 1769 and the following years. The Ohio Indians, lessors of the territory for hunting purposes, had not given their assent to the provisions of the treaty of Fort Stanwix, and they regarded the settlers as tres- passers on their territory.
Almost from the beginning of the settlement on Hacker's creek some of the more reckless pioneers killed without thought of mercy all Indians whom they could find unprotected. Bald Eagle, a chief who was well regarded by both his own people and the whites, and who often took part in the hunting parties ar- ranged by the settlers, was foully murdered at some time between 1770 and 1772 by Jacob Scott, William Hacker (a brother of John Hacker) and Elijah Runner. No motive for the crime seems to have existed save a wanton desire to kill. The body was placed in a canoe and allowed to drift down the Monongahela until it reached Province plantation where it was decently in- terred by Mrs. Province.
An even more atrocious crime took place at Bull- town, on the Little Kanawha river, now in Braxton County. The place had been occupied about the time of the coming of the whites by Captain Bull, a Delaware chief from New York, who had led five Indian families to western Virginia. He was regarded by the settlers as being friendly to the whites, who often resorted to his town to secure supplies of salt, and who often hunted
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
with him. It was rather to the advantage of the pion- eers to cultivate the friendship of Captain Bull, and most of them thought highly of him and his people. Unfortunately, in 1772 the family of Adam Stroud, a settler on the Elk river a few miles south of Bull's village, were all murdered in the absence of the husband and father, by a band of Shawnees. The trail of the murderers led in the direction of Bull's village; and without determining whether or not his people were guilty, a party composed of William Hacker, William White, John Cutright, Jesse Hughes and another man whose name is not known, constituted themselves a court of inquiry to wreak vengeance for the murder. All the Indians at Bulltown, with the exception of Captain Bull, who was then absent beyond the Ohio, were treacher- ously slain and their bodies thrown into the river. Upon their return to the settlements the five avengers stated nonchalently that they had been out hunting. Later, when the fact of the massacre had become generally known and suspicion was cast upon them, they at first denied all knowledge of the killing and then came out boldly with the story that they had killed the five Indian families because they were the murderers of the Stroud family. As proof of their assertion they de- clared that they had found clothing belonging to the Stroud family in some of the houses in the Indian vil- lage. None of the clothing was ever shown to the other settlers if it had, in fact, been found. Under the cir- cumstance of nearby residence, the finding of the cloth- ing there is not strange. At best it would be insuffi- cient to convict the Indians of more than theft. The intentions of the party were suspected by the other set- tlers before they ever went to Bulltown, and they pre- pared a general remonstrance against the killing of the Indians. There is no record, however, of any action having been taken by the community as a whole after the murder. The settlers probably did not care partic- ularly whether peaceful Indians were killed or not-
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LEWIS COUNTY IN DUNMORE'S WAR
but as a matter of policy they disapproved of such murders as likely to bring down upon the heads of the settlement the vengeance of the relatives of the dead tribesmen.
While the five were at Bulltown, they learned that a party of thirteen Indians, who had come from beyond the Ohio on a hunting trip, were then at Indian Camp on the upper course of the Buckhannon river. They secured the assistance of Samuel Pringle, James Strange and others from the Buckhannon river settlement and made preparations for an attack against the hunting party. Just before daybreak the whites arrived outside the cave in which the Indians were asleep, and posted themselves so as to command the exit. When it had become sufficiently light, at a preconcerted signal a volley was poured without warning upon the unsus- pecting Indians. So effective was the first fire that only one warrior, badly wounded, succeeded in escaping from the cave. He was dispatched by another shot. According to tradition, the bodies of the Indians were left unburied.
There was no immediate retaliation against the participants in the wholesale slaughter of these Indians. In other centers of white settlement there were Indian reprisals on detached cabins and lonely settlers. An in- termittent guerrilla war was fought for another year in which both whites and Indians were killed. The whites on the Kentucky border suffered most.
War was inevitable within a short time, the char- acter of the whites and Indians being as it was. The only question was how long the embers of conflict would smoulder before breaking out into the blaze of a gen- eral war.
The event was precipitated by an attempt to set- tle a problem which had nothing whatever to do with the Indians. Lord Dunmore, then the royal governor of Virginia, had land claims in the vicinity of Fort Pitt which would not be valid if Pennsylvania acquired title
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
to the region as that colony threatened to do. He wished to secure the northwest for Virginia and also to divert the attention of the Virginians from the tyrannous acts of George III by a popular Indian war.
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