USA > West Virginia > Lewis County > A history of Lewis County, West Virginia > Part 5
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
Nutter's fort, and some to Bush's fort on the Buckhan- non, in both of which places their numbers were a desir- able reinforcement. The more timorous returned to the South Branch where they would be safe from Indian molestation. The Flesher settlement at the mouth of Stone Coal creek seems not to have been abandoned at this time, and it remained during 1779 the only habita- tion of a white man within the present limits of Lewis County.
The opening of the year 1779 found practically all the settlements in better condition than ever before to resist the raids of the Indians. For one thing they had been consolidated. The detached farms had been aban- doned. The settlers had also received considerable ac- cretions in strength from adventurous young men who came west to engage in the war where they would not have to bother with discipline and commanding officers, and also from militiamen from east of the Alleghanies, who, like Captain Stuart, had been ordered to the forts in the valley of the West Fork. Most of the militiamen were rather indifferent Indian fighters, and some were court-martialed later for desertion. They afforded much strength, however, not only in the addition to the small numbers of the settlers, but also in the encouragement they gave the frontier guardians of Virginia that the authorities of the state had not utterly forgotten their danger, but were doing all they could to send relief, while themselves carrying on the war with the British troops on the Atlantic seaboard.
Active measures were soon afterwards taken by the state authorities to reduce the number of raids and the amount of damage done by the Indians. Vigorous ef- forts were made to watch the Indians and to warn the settlements of their approach. Several companies of spies were formed, among them George Jackson's com- pany on the Buckhannon in 1779 and William Lowther's at Nutter's fort. From that time forth small parties scoured the woods in the vicinity of the Indian trails.
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Sometimes the scouts would go down the Little Ka- nawha from the Buckhannon settlement to the mouth of the river, and return the same way, but the usual route was to proceed overland to Wheeling, then drift down the Ohio to the Little Kanawha, from which point they would return, closely examining all the trails along the river for signs of Indians. This system of scouting had been found to be most successful through a long period of warfare with the Indians, and by 1779, it was working well. The vigorous action of Colonel Lowther in pur- suing the Indians after each attack had the effect of making them wary, keeping them from the settlements and reducing the amount of damage done. The largest number of men which he commanded in pursuing the Indians at any one time during the Revolution was about twenty-five.
During 1779, the Shawnees and other tribes were engaged elsewhere, chiefly in expeditions to regain the Illinois country which had been captured by George Rogers Clark, and in defending their villages, some of which Clark had captured and burned. During the win- ter of 1779-1780, several of the settlers who did not want to lose all their improvements and have to commence again in the wilderness ventured back to Hacker's creek, and in the spring they moved, as usual, into West's fort. They had not been there long when a party of Indians laid siege to the fort, and, contrary to their usual cus- tom, remained there several days. The inhabitants were too few to sally out with any hope of success, their supplies were nearly exhausted and they were in despair of being relieved. Jesse Hughes determined, if possible, to secure aid from the Buckhannon settlements. It was an extremely hazardous undertaking, for the Indians had posted sentinels on all sides to prevent the escape of the garrison; but Hughes crept out in the dead of night, and, after proceeding cautiously for several hours, he passed far beyond the last outpost of the savages. In order to inform those still within the fort of his being
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clear, he gave the prearranged signal of the hoot of an owl. The Indians, probably understanding the counter- feit nature of this particular bird's cry, and knowing that help must be near, broke camp at once. The next morn- ing Hughes led a party from Bush's fort back to Hack- er's creek, and conducted the residents of West's fort in safety to the banks of the Buckhannon. Here they spent the remainder of the year. During their absence West's fort was set on fire by Indians, and completely destroyed.
Two days after the arrival of the garrison from West's fort there occurred perhaps the only battle on the West Fork, which was fought in the open, and which was yet not an ambuscade. A small party of settlers who had returned to some of the houses on Hacker's creek to remove their furniture, came unexpectedly upon a party of Indians in the woods not far from the Buck- hannon. The Indians were equally surprised. They fired first and Jeremiah Curl, an old man, was hit under the chin. He refused to take flight, and called to the others that they were able to whip the Indians. An Indian rushed at him. Curl took aim and pulled the trigger ; but the powder in his gun had become wet with blood from his wound and it failed to ignite. It happened that he was carrying a gun belonging to another of the party in addition to his own, and, taking quick aim with it, he brought the warrior down. Alexander West, who was one of the swiftest on foot of all the frontiersmen, pursued the Indians, and succeeded in wounding one of them before the others took refuge behind trees and made the conflict too unequal for him to maintain un- aided. The war party was pursued the next day by about fifteen whites who could be spared from the fort, and they succeeded in recovering several stolen horses and other plunder with the loss of only one man slightly wounded.
The savages continued to lurk about Bush's fort all summer, and they succeeded in killing one of the Buckhannon settlers and taking his niece prisoner. They
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also infested the settlement around Richard's fort, steal- ing horses, killing live stock and committing other dep- redations. Horses were the special objects of their thiev- ing propensities. Cows and sheep were often killed by the Indians in order to reduce the already extremely small number of domestic animals in the frontier com- munities.
The winter season of 1780-81 was, as usual, free from Indian forays, most of the savages being snug and warm in their log houses beyond the Ohio. During the seasonal lull the Hackers creek settlers again ventured back to their homes, and prepared to defend them. All joined in the erection of a new fort in a stronger loca- tion. It stood on level, rather marshy ground, but it was a far more satisfactory site than that of the old fort because the besiegers could not have a vantage point within gunshot where they could hide. Because the fort was built almost entirely of beech logs, it was called Beech fort, a name which stuck for a year or so, and then the settlers returned to the old designation of West's fort. It is supposed that the beech fort was more capa- cious than the old fort, and that it was a stockade of logs enclosing a much larger house of hewn logs.
Beech fort was used for other purposes than for de- fense. The Rev. John Mitchell, the first minister of the gospel on Hacker's creek, alternately fought Indians. and shepherded a more or less wayward flock, holding services within its walls. Other preachers came later and held their services there. There is a tradition that the first school in Lewis County was held in the new fort, with the Rev. Mitchell as its teacher. The fort soon be- came the social center of the settlement. Primarily, however, it was for defense; and the settlers behind its strong walls, their numbers increased by new arrivals and perhaps by militia from the counties east of the mountains, had well-founded hopes of maintaining their positions against any force that the Indians were likely to send against them.
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The year 1781 was a quiet one so far as the settle- ments on Hacker's creek were concerned. Henry Flesh- er left his cabin at the present corner of First street and Main avenue, Weston, and went to Buckhannon to spend the winter, returning apparently the next spring. The only military operations in the upper West Fork valley that were of any importance were those con- nected with the pursuit of a party of Indians who had broken up an outlying settlement on the Tygart's Val- ley river. Colonel Lowther and his company of scouts gloriously avenged the murder of the settlers and recov- ered several of the prisoners they had captured. The Indians received a lesson on the strength and unity of the settlements.
The usual reinforcement from east of the mountains failed to come to the aid of the western settlements in 1781 on account of the invasion of Virginia by Lord Cornwallis. Every nerve of the state was being strained to add new recruits to the forces of Lafayette, who was attempting to defend the state. Additional volunteers were raised wherever possible. Even Hampshire county, which had furnished the bulk of the militia for the de- fense of the west, sent a regiment to Yorktown which in- cluded some of the Monongahela pioneers.
The Trans-Alleghany settlers were thus left to shift for themselves, but the activities of General George Rogers Clark in the Illinois country had the effect of keeping the Indians occupied at home. In May, 1781, George Jackson, of the Buckhannon river settlements, recruited a company for service against the British and Indians. General Clark had planned an expedition against Detroit to capture that stronghold of British influence over the western Indians, that headquarters for Indian supplies, that refuge from which British agents kept continually stirring up the savages against the settlements. Clark hoped by destroying the evil at its source to end all Indian wars, and he invited settlers from all over the western territory to take part with
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him. William Lowther also responded to the call, and was raised to the rank of colonel for meritorious services rendered. The expedition failed to secure its expected strength, and nothing was accomplished except that the Indians were kept occupied beyond the Ohio by the threat against their villages.
Colonel Lowther gained experience while on the expedition which served him in good stead in organ- izing the defense of the settlements at a later date. He saw the need for improvements after his return as never before, and he took the lead from that time on, not only in pursuing Indians who had committed depredations, but in preventing the depredations.
The militia of Monongalia County in 1781 was esti- mated at not less than a thousand men. The number in the valley of the upper West Fork must have been in the neighborhood of 150 men between the ages of sixteen and sixty The actual population was prob- ably six or seven hundred. Colonel Benjamin Wilson wrote to the governor at the beginning of the year 1782 stating the effective force of the West Fork at eighty men, and urging that reinforcements be sent from east of the mountains. "If the Indians pursue the war as they did last spring," he wrote, "it will cause the settlers to leave the country." In response to the appeal, sev- enty men of the Hampshire County militia were sent to help defend the Trans-Alleghany. They were stationed at Beverly, (now in Randolph County) St. George, (now in Tucker County) and Clarksburg.
Early in the spring a large war party invaded the Buckhannon valley, and 8 March 1782, they attacked the homes of some of the settlers before they had time to move into the fort. Some of the people were mui- dered without warning. Captain White, "the lion in the defense of the settlement in the absence of George Jack- son," was killed within plain view of the fort, and Tim- othy Dorman, who had been a subaltern in Captain Jackson's company of scouts, joined the Indians. So
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bad was the character of Dorman, so many were the threats which he had made against the other settlers, and so well acquainted was he with the habits of the settlement and the weak points in its defense, that in despair of successfully resisting an attack, the whole body of the inhabitants left the fort and went to Clarks- burg.
Dorman returned in the same year at the head of a war party of savages. A number of settlers who had come from Nutter's fort for the purpose of gathering the grain on the Buckhannon and transporting it to Clarksburg, found Bush's fort in ruins. They suspected from certain signs that the Indians were still in the neighborhood, and they therefore exercised all possible vigilance. All attempts to lure them into an ambuscade having failed, Dorman and others fired upon them while they were near the fort, and they were forced to take refuge in a cellar. Here they remained all night while George Jackson ran to Clarksburg for help.
The year 1781 saw the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown; and in 1783 commissioners appointed by the Continental Congress signed a treaty of peace by which Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States and admitted their right to territories reaching as far west as the Mississippi. The Revolution was fought and won on the eastern seaboard; but the hum- ble part of the settlers on Hackers creek and the other outlying points west of the mountains kept the savage allies of the British king from harassing eastern Vir- ginia, and allowed the state to devote practically all its energies to the defeat of the red-coated British and their German hirelings. For six long years the devoted bands of settlers had sustained the weight of the Indian as- saults, suffering untold privations and hardships, but still maintaining a foothold in the region west of the
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Alleghanies, as a basis for a tremendously important later development. Now that the war was over they expected that the Indian outrages would stop and that they would be allowed to pursue their accustomed em- ployments of hunting and tilling the ground unmo- lested.
CHAPTER VI.
THE END OF THE INDIAN WARS
The treaty of Paris, 1783, did not bring peace with the Indians. For twelve years longer the settlements on the western border were subject to sudden attacks and raids conceived and executed with all the fiendish cruelty common in savage warfare. The Indians were, however, unable to press the attack with their former vigor on account of the fact that their supplies were not forthcoming from the British stations at Detroit and other points in the northwest. In Virginia the Indian wars ceased to be carried on for the purpose of extermin- ating the whites and they consisted merely of raids for the purpose of securing plunder and scalps. It was not uncommon for young Indians to come to the set- tlements alone to steal horses or to waylay members of the pioneer families who ventured far from home. If they returned with plunder or a scalp their reputation as warriors was assured. The young warriors were en- couraged to make these raids because they resulted in broadening their experience as warriors. Alexander West once discovered a lone Indian in the field where Beech fort was afterward erected. He fired, and the Indian made off evidently wounded. West did not pur- sue him, fearing an ambuscade. Two weeks later, upon following the trail, it was found that the warrior had bathed his wound in Indian spring near the mouth of Life's run, and had then crawled into a rock cliff where he perished miserably.
The Trans-Alleghany settlers were disappointed in their expectations of strong reinforcements from east- ern Virginia. All possibility of danger from the British
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had been removed and the people east of the mountains were henceforth left free from attack. They did not choose to devote much attention to the problems of the west. If the new state government of Virginia had been as energetic in the defense of the western frontier as the old royal government under Lord Dunmore, an expedition could have been sent out strong enough to break the power of the northwestern tribes. Much of the difficulty came from the fact that Virginia had ceded her lands northwest of the Ohio river to the fed- eral government, which was then powerless to act. Vir- ginia refused to conquer Indians who lived outside the boundaries of the state. The state was content to con- fine her efforts in defense of the frontier to sending a few militiamen from east of the mountains to assist in garrisoning the forts. The number of men sent was never large enough to be of much service, and appeals were made to the governor every year for more troops. Colonel Benjamin Wilson in 1784, wrote to the gover- nor inviting attention to the fact that their fellow citi- zens who reside east of the mountains were enjoying themselves in peace "while neglecting to secure that privilege to the west."
An act was passed by the legislature in 1784 which aided the citizens to organize more effectively against the Indians. The number of settlers who came to the west during the closing years of the Revolution, the prospect for a larger immigration as soon as peace could be made with the Indians and the desire for a more compact political organization, caused the creation of Harrison County in 1784.
The first fruits of the creation of the new county, from the standpoint of measures for the protection of the inhabitants, was the appointment of John P. Duvall, one of the most prominent of the early landholders in what is now Lewis County, as colonel of the county militia. Colonel Lowther, upon whom the duties had previously devolved, accepted the appointment as sheriff of the
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new county. Colonel Duvall immediately made requi- sition on the governor for additional arms and ammuni- tion for the men of militia age in the county. He re- ported that the effective force of the county was in the neighborhood of 215 men, for whom there were but 130 rifles in 1785. Two hundred additional rifles were re- quested at once. It was not to be supposed that there were nearly one hundred settlers in western Virginia in a time of more or less active Indian warfare without fire- arms. Each man carried a flint lock musket, but it was not rifled, and hence not so accurate and effective as the newer firearms which had been introduced into the col- onies after the French and Indian war, but which had not been manufactured in sufficient quantities to supply all. Colonel Duvall reported also that ammunition was very scarce.
Colonel Duvall continued in general command of the militiamen formerly led by Colonels Benjamin Wil- son and William Lowther, though the last named, as sheriff, continued to pursue Indians. Duvall went from one end of the county to the other-from the dividing ridge separating the watershed of the Cheat from that of the Potomac to the mouth of the Little Kanawha river-inspecting blockhouses, organizing for defense and giving encouragement. Despite the fact that the settlers continued to be thrown largely upon their own resources, the strength of the settlements became greater than ever before.
Beginning about the close of the Revolutionary war there was a rush of emigration to northwestern Virginia. Dwellers east of the mountains who had been despoiled of their property by the British, who feared the high taxes after the war, or who wanted to get a new start on the cheap lands of the west, braved the dangers of Indian warfare and came in a constant stream. Within a short space of time after the close of the Revolution hundreds of new settlers came into the territory drained by the headwaters of the Monongahela. Among the
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new comers were William Powers, afterwards one of the first justices of the peace in Lewis County and one of the early chroniclers of the county's history; Henry McWhorter, whose descendants have made their mark in county and state affairs; Patrick McCann, builder of a fort, Indian scout and hero of the border, who settled at the mouth of Edward Hughes' run, afterwards called McCann's run; the Rev. John Mitchell, who was the first preacher in the county ; the Browns, who settled on White Oak Flat run, where they built the Mongue (or Mung) fort which stood a short distance from the later site of the Broad Run Baptist church; and a host of others only less prominent. John Waggoner, Joseph Glanfield, Thomas Short, Peter Swisher, Jacob Wolf, George Dobson, John Starcher, Peterman Hardman and Jacob Cozad are names worthy to be recorded. Hack- er's creek was becoming rather thickly settled for a frontier community ; and had it not been for the incur- sions of the Ohio Indians, settlement would have been far more rapid.
The first attack following the close of the Revolu- tion took place on the spot destined in later years to be chosen as the seat of government of the county. About the middle of October, 1784, assisted by Paulser Butcher, then a mere youth, but later one of the largest landhold- ers in the county, Henry Flesher had been engaged in hauling logs for a stable to be built near where the Bap- tist church now stands. Flesher went to his house to get a bell to put on his horse preparatory to turning him out to graze in woods. When he reached the ravine which came down the hill about where Bank street now is he was fired upon by an Indian lying in wait. The ball passed through his arm, and he immediately started to run to his cabin. The savage ran after him and al- most succeeded in overtaking him at his own door. In attempting to kill him before he entered the house the Indian, using his gun as a club, brought it down against the logs of the house with such force that the stock was
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shattered. Mrs. Flesher succeeded in pulling her hus- band into the house, and then scared the Indian away by calling upon the other men in the house to fire. The family spent the night in the woods, fearing a renewal of the assault. There is a tradition that Mrs. Flesher carried her husband into a thicket near the house and spent the night under the widespread limbs of a syca- more which stood at the mouth of Stone Coal creek. The next morning she met John Schoolcraft, who sum- moned help from West's fort. Another account states that a young woman of the family reached Hacker's creek the next morning and that the remainder of the family were guided into West's fort by Edward Hughes. The Flesher family and young Butcher remained at West's fort until the near approach of winter made it unlikely that any savages were in the vicinity, when they returned to their home.
In December, 1787, occurred perhaps the most frightful of the Indian outrages perpetrated in Lewis County ; and for sheer barbarity and brutality its equal is scarcely to be found in any of the border annals. Earlier in the fall the Indians had come into the valley of the West Fork above Clarksburg and had stolen some horses. Their trail was followed by Sheriff Lowther, who overtook them at the mouth of the Little Kanawha river. Three Indians were killed and the stolen property recovered. The Indians never believed the whites justi- fied in killing them to punish plundering and they made swift reprisal-as usual directed against the innocent and the helpless. The war party was accompanied by Leon- ard Schoolcraft who had been taken captive some years before at Bush's fort. The settlers, believing that they were safe from attack owing to the lateness of the sea- son, did not take the precautions usual at other times of the year.
The Indians came upon Martha Hughes, a daughter of Jesse Hughes, not far from her father's home and took her a prisoner. Proceeding farther some of them
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came upon Edmund West, Sr., while he was engaged in bringing in his fodder. He was caught unawares and could not make any resistance. Upon being led to the spot where Martha Hughes was being held by the In- dians, he fell upon his knees and begged that they would spare his life. A stroke of the tomahawk answered the plea. The party then went to the cabin of Edmund West, Jr., where they found his bride of a few months, his 12-year-old brother and Mrs. West's sister, a daugh- ter of John Hacker. Mrs. West and the boy were im- mediately tomahawked. The girl took refuge behind a door. A savage aimed a blow at her head, but she dodged and the tomahawk took effect in her neck, wounding her severely. She had presence of mind to fall to the floor and lie as if dead. The savages then sat down at the table and ate a hearty meal, the little girl silently observing them all the time. At the close of the meal they scalped Mrs. West and the boy and plundered the house, even emptying the feathers to carry off the ticking. They then dragged the Hacker girl by the hair to a fence about fifty yards from the cabin where she was scalped and thrown over it. Schoolcraft, noticing some signs of life, observed, "That is not enough ;" whereupon the savage thrust a knife into her side. Fortunately the knife came into contact with a rib and did little injury.
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