USA > West Virginia > Lewis County > A history of Lewis County, West Virginia > Part 7
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Alex West Matthew Richards Conrad Richards
Jacob Harleson James Sleath
Jacob Bush
Thomas Doyle McCune Elizah
Abraham John Huggle
John Runyon
Henry Flesher
Joseph Kester
Christen Harrison
Samuel Norris
Jesse Huse (Hughes)
Alex. Sleeth George Collins Edmund West, Constable
James Schoolcraft
Adam O'Brien
Elias Huse (Hughes)
Ebenezer Haley Samuel Bonet Joseph Crozan Thomas Hughes Daniel Cane James Campbell
John Richard John Brown
Jacob Cozad
John Waggoner
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
William Hannan David Wales Sleeth John Sleeth Adam Bush
Isaac James Tanner
John Collins
George Brush (Bush) John Hacker
Richard Clark
Joseph
Edmond West
Joel Lowther
Even before the completion of the enumeration the court directed that the sheriff should collect from "every tithable in this County 2s. 6d., being the County levy for the year 1784, and pay the same as directed by the proportions." There was no property tax collected at that period, only a poll tax on males over 21. The amount of the tax for 1784, reckoned in terms of dollars and cents, was 411/3 cents on each individual. The ex- penses of the county government were not large, being confined at first to the erection of the public buildings. Roads were worked by the tithables, who may on that account be said to have paid an additional poll tax in labor. The justices of the peace received no salaries, but they had considerable fees and an occasional turn at the sheriffalty.
The first care of the county court was to provide for public buildings. A court house. thirty-six by twen- ty-six feet set eight feet above the ground, was con- tracted for. John Prunty undertook to build a jail for £19 15s., and Daniel Davisson was to erect the whip- ping post, pillory and one pair of stocks for £5 19s. 11d. All were completed by 1789.
Just how primitive the justice established in Har- rison County was in the beginning may be inferred from some of the records of the court in the latter part of the eighteenth century. A female prisoner convicted of felonious taking was given ten lashes on her bare back in 1788. In the same year a man was convicted of hav- ing stolen an ax, a hat and a pair of stockings. The court ordered "that the sheriff immediately tie the pris- oner to the public whipping post and give him thirty- nine lashes well laid on & deliver him to David Hughes
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THE BEGINNING OF LAW AND ORDER .
Constable" who should deliver him to the next consta- ble and so on until he was conveyed out of the county. In 1791 John Jackson was given a verdict by a jury in a slander case, but the damages were fixed by the jury at only seven shillings. Jackson demanded a new trial on the ground that the sheriff had conveyed apple brandy to the jury in a tea-pot while they were engaged in considering the case, and that the jury drank it. The motion was granted, and all twelve of the jurymen were fined twelve shillings each. In John Hacker's lawsuit concerning a tract of land, a jury of twelve men was summoned to appear on the land and inquire into and settle the bounds between the claimants.
In 1795 a prisoner entered the plea of guilty to a charge of felonious assault. While the members of the court were discussing whether the prisoner should be tried by the district court, the prisoner escaped. The sheriff was ordered by the court to raise the "hue and cry" and command assistance to take him. The same year Sheriff John Prunty objected because the court called a witness without having a subpoena issued, thus cheating the sheriff out of his fee. In the old record book is to be found a full account of the proceedings that fol- lowed: "Ordered that the said John Prunty be con- fined in the stocks for the space of five minutes" * * for his "damming the Court and the attorney who was there supporting the client's claim, and the whole bunch. The Court and the attorney was D-d fools and a set of d-d scoundrels." After being released he again showed disrespect and was confined for the remainder of the day. The court bound him over to keep the peace. After spending some time in jail bond for his good be- havior was obtained. Attempts of the court to oust him later were unsuccessful.
In spite of the crudeness of the administration of justice the establishment of the courts was a good thing for the people of the community. The substitution of orderly government for mob rule was the beginning of
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real social progress on the upper reaches of the Monon- gahela.
Above the county court was the district court, which was organized in 1785. Judges of the General court were detailed to hold court twice a year in each of the districts into which the state was divided. The sessions for the district in which Harrison county was included were generally held at Morgantown. Circuit courts su- perseded the district courts in 1809, and two sessions were held each year in each county.
The new county government began at once to look after the interests of the people. Means of communica- tion were most needed in the settlements, and many or- ders were passed within the first two or three years fol- lowing the formation of the county providing for the lo- cation of new roads. The first order of the Harrison County court dealt with territory afterwards a part of Lewis County : "Ordered that the road from Richards' Fort be extended by Edmund West's mill to John Hack- er's the nearest and best way. Nicholas Carpenter, Isaac Richards and David Sleeth be appointed to view and lay out such road and make report to the next Court to be held for this County is hereby revived." The fol- lowing year a road was ordered opened from Clarks- burg to the Flesher settlement at the mouth of Stone Coal creek. Other roads were opened at a later period to all the settled portions of the new county. Though they were mere dirt trails, often no more than pathways through the woods, they represented some advance in communication and a great advance in community con- sciousness, because they were public property, owned and operated by the public.
One of the most important offices in the county during the first four or five decades of its history was the land office. It was opened almost immediately upon the establishment of the county government. As soon as the surveyor was qualified he began issuing patents
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THE BEGINNING OF LAW AND ORDER
for lands and recording surveys for homesteaders or pur- chasers.
In direct opposition to the policy of the royal gov- ernment of the colonies in attempting to restrict settle- ments to the fringe along the Atlantic coast, the State of Virginia did all in its power to encourage settlers to make their homes west of the mountains, both to assure her hold on the territory for future occupancy and to provide outposts for defense against the British and In- dians, who, if they succeeded in crossing the Allegha- nies, would be able to strike at the vitals of the common- wealth. In order to make it worth while for settlers to cross the mountains and to hold those who had already gone to the west, the General Assembly in 1777 passed an act providing free land for every settler. Every per- son who had secured a settlement right or a corn right was to receive 400 acres with a preemption to 1,000 acres adjoining if he chose to take it. The price fixed for the additional land was so high that few of the settlers cared to take out preemptions. They eagerly took ad- vantage of the opportunity to secure homesteads, many of which were claimed on the basis merely of deadening a few trees and planting corn. The legislature in 1779 provided that a settler must have lived on land one year and have raised one crop of corn from it in order to be entitled to a homestead. Few large tracts west of the mountains had been patented up to that time.
By another provision of the act of 1777, it was pro- vided that as soon as possible the land claimed as home- steads by settlers should be patented and recorded. In order to settle disputes which might arise between set- tlers who had built their houses close together and who claimed the same tracts of land, a temporary commission was appointed with both executive and judicial powers to determine who was rightfully entitled to the land, The commission for the district including Monongalia, Ohio and Youghiogheny counties was composed of John P. Duvall, James Neal and Will Haymond. They held
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
1
sittings at many different points throughout the dis- trict in the summer of 1781, and issued certificates to settlers which entitled them to enter the tracts specified with the county surveyors.
Not all the persons who were given certificates after- wards perfected their titles. Some sold their claims and others failed altogether to pay attention to the matter, preferring to be squatters on the lands of others. Many of the lands for which certificates were issued in 1781 were surveyed in Monongalia, but in other cases the owners waited until after the formation of Harrison County. Before the close of the year 1784, the surveyor's office of the new county had returned as surveyed and entered no less than eighty tracts. In 1785, 960 surveys were made, and the next year the number was 365.
The number of surveys indicates that the country was being filled up very fast with settlers following the close of the Revolution, and such was, in fact, the case, but the tide of immigration was not nearly so great as indicated by the number of tracts surveyed. In some cases they represented the patenting of lands by wealthy capitalists in Boston, in New Jersey, or in eastern Vir- ginia, who had purchased large tracts of land from the state and who hoped later to sell the lands to settlers at a profit. The act of 1779 had fixed the price at forty pounds per hundred acres, which proved to be beyond the ability of the hunter-trapper-farmer of the frontier to pay. In 1792 the price was reduced to the merely nom- inal charge of two cents per acre.
Some of the tracts sold under both acts were very large-for instance, the Pickering survey of 100,000 acres made in 1785, lying on the headwaters of the West Fork and the Little Kanawha rivers, and the Banks survey, equally large, which was located at about the saine time on the watershed of the Little Kanawha river, lying part- ly in Lewis and partly in Gilmer counties. After the price of land was reduced in 1792 thousands of acres of land were entered, embracing practically the whole area
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THE BEGINNING OF LAW AND ORDER
of the state. Often a large survey would include the homesteads of settlers, or lands claimed by other large holders, and the result was a series of lawsuits which began almost with the establishment of the courts in the Trans-Alleghany region and continued until long after the formation of West Virginia.
Henry Jackson was one of the most widely known surveyors of Western Virginia during this period. He went into the forests with only one or two assistants and surveyed thousands of acres. Often the work was not done thoroughly, as in the case of the Banks survey which he completed far from the spot, after having been compelled to flee for his life from the Indians. The only data which he had secured was his beginning corner, from which it could be seen that the boundary line of the survey would cross Leading creek three times.
The political beliefs and opinions of the people of Harrison County during the eighteenth century were not difficult to determine. During the Revolution, with few exceptions, they espoused the cause of independence, and against heavy odds defended the frontiers of Vir- ginia. After the close of the war they had some bitter experiences with the delays of the state government in the Indian wars, which caused them to favor the estab- lishment of a national government strong enough to cope with the Indians. George Jackson, who was sent by the citizens of Harrison County to represent them in the state convention of 1788 to consider the proposed constitution of the United States, voted in favor of rati- fication. His experience in the Indian wars and his na- tional patriotism caused him to disregard the claims of eastern politicians who favored a loose confederation. He truly represented the political opinion of his constit- uents.
Though politically coherent, Harrison County was not a geographical unit. Diverse elements came into ex- istence almost with the formation of the county. The fixing of the county seat at Clarksburg was almost as
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
much of an inconvenience for the people of the upper Tygart's Valley section as the former location at Mor- gantown. The people of that section were almost as well off before the formation of the new county. The objection early took form, and three years after the cre- ation of Harrison, an act of the General Assembly was passed cutting off all that portion of the county east of the Tygart's Valley and Buckhannon rivers and estab- lishing it as the county of Randolph.
Both sections were gainers by the separation. On the one hand the people of Randolph were able to trans- act their legal business without the inconvenience of a long journey to the county seat; on the other hand the people of the West Fork watershed were relieved from the burden of having to share the expenses of govern- ment with a section which lagged in its development as compared with the more favored valleys toward the Ohio. Henceforth the officials of Harrison County could devote their whole attention to the more and more complex problems of making the administrative machinery keep pace with the rapid course of development of the county.
The settlements near the mouth of the Little Ka- nawha river, which began about the time of the close of the Revolution, developed rapidly in their favored loca- tions on the rich Ohio river bottoms in contiguity to the New Englanders who had settled around Marietta. The likelihood of a further rapid increase all along the Vir- ginia side of the Ohio river made it clear that a separate county government would be necessary within a short time, especially since the new center of settlement was separated from the court house at Clarksburg by a wide expanse of unbroken forest. The General Assembly in. 1799 formed Wood County from parts of Harrison and Kanawha. The new county was a narrow strip extend- ing all the way from the Great Kanawha river to Middle Island creek.
After the cutting off of the Ohio river settlements, the inhabited portions of Harrison County formed a fair --
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THE BEGINNING OF LAW AND ORDER
ly homogeneous district, embracing most of the valley of the West Fork river from Buffalo creek in what is now Marion County to Bulltown. The most thickly set- tled portion of the county was around Clarksburg, on Elk creek, Simpson's creek, Lost creek and the country along the West Fork river. Few settlements had been made along the Little Kanawha or its tributaries, and the West Fork settlements had not extended far enough southward to make Clarksburg inconvenient as the coun- ty seat. The population of Harrison County in 1790 was 2,080.
NOTE-The author is indebted to Colonel Henry Haymond's History of Harrison County for many of the facts set forth in regard to the formation of Harrison County.
CHAPTER VIII. ECONOMIC BEGINNINGS
We have seen how the settlers on the western frontier of Virginia maintained their position in spite . of the raids and depredations of the Indian allies of Great Britain during the Revolution, and more than held their own against the raids for twelve years afterwards until the troops of the federal government defeated them and compelled them to sign a treaty of peace. The deeds of the Hugheses, the Wests, the Jacksons, and a host of other heroes in the desperate struggle with the Indians have been handed down by a grateful people who owed the peaceful possession of their lands to their efforts. We have also seen the establishment of justice and traced the beginnings of law and order in the settlements of the upper Monongahela valley. Colonel Lowther, John P. Duvall, David Sleeth and others had a great share in the movement and the records in the court house at Clarksburg show how important their work was for the future of Hackers' creek and the surrounding region.
There were other pioneers in the region whose deeds have been forgotten for want of a chronicler, and whose very names would be lost if they had not been recorded in connection with the entry of homesteads or the pur- chase of land, or as having been appointed to view the location of a proposed road, or summoned to give evi- dence before a grand jury. These obscure citizens were the ones whose humble efforts finally brought about civ- ilized institutions in place of the primeval forest. Their collective endeavors have made Lewis County what it is.
William Powers, Indian fighter, justice of the peace and chronicler of the events of the stirring years of the Indian wars, is said to have made the statement that in
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his opinion the settlers west of the mountains did not in- tend to remain permanently, but would leave when the game became exhausted. He believed that the soil of the county would not support a white population for any length of time. Others were of the same opinion. They thought that certain fields would bring crops for a certain number of years, and that other fields would bring a greater or less number, according to the lay of the land. The possibility of raising live stock on a com- mercial scale did not apparently present itself as a basis for prosperity in after years. The growing of grain and fruit in large quantities for distant markets was not to be considered without means of transportation better than any known at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- tury. The presence of hidden treasures of petroleum and natural gas was unsuspected. Bituminous coal (called by the settlers stone coal to distinguish it from charcoal) was known to exist in the valley of the upper West Fork and some of its tributaries, but it was ap- parently not much used for fuel by the earliest comers. If any one had suggested that some day it could profita- bly be mined and transported to a seaboard market he would have been considered eligible for transportation to a seaboard lunatic asylum.
The principal industries of the pioneers were hunt- ing and trapping. Agriculture was in a very elementary state-so elementary, in fact, that it can not be consid- ered in any other light than as a means of maintaining existence. After the close of the Indian wars many of the settlers came because they had been attracted by the land and intended to make improvements, raise larger crops, breed live stock and gain wealth from the produce of their farms and from the increased value of the land which would follow the expected rush of settlement and the gradual improvement of the country.
It was the settler's first care after locating his claim and building a cabin, to clear a small tract of land where he could raise a crop of corn and some vegetables to re-
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A HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
inforce and balance the supply of wild meat which needed only to be sought in the woods with a gun. Most of the clearings were made by grubbing the bushes and sap- lings and chopping and burning the smaller trees. The monarchs of the primeval forest were deadened by gird- ling them with an ax or by building fires at their bases. It was impracticable to clear the land in any other way, for the labor of chopping the larger trees would have been too great for the pioneer farmers. The deadened trees were sometimes allowed to stand in the clearings for several years until the danger of limbs falling upon the stock or on the corn fields became too great; they were then generally destroyed by piling logs or smaller pieces of wood at their bases and setting them on fire. Often dead trees continued to burn for several days. The smaller trees at the edges of the clearing were not burned, but were split in halves or fourths and used to make rail fences to keep out the stock. Usually the fences needed to be heavier than now. The high bottoms of the streams and the flats were cleared first because the land there was more fertile than elsewhere, and there was no dan- ger of the crops being destroyed by floods.
When the ground had been cleared and burned over it was stirred lightly with a shovel plow, an implement made often with a forked sapling for a stock and a small piece of iron rudely fashioned, for the point. The han- dles were fastened to the stock with wooden pins. The horse was hitched to the plow by means of grape vines tied with thongs to hames made from stumps of large ash trees, and the hames fitted around a buckskin collar stuffed with fibers of linden wood. The corn was drop- ped by hand and covered with a hoe. It was cultivated by plowing with the shovel plow and then cutting the weeds around the hills of corn with a hoe-a laborious process which has survived from pioneer days in most parts of the county. The early corn fields were hoed more often than not by the women and children of the family. There were no crop failures unless wild animals.
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or live stock broke into the enclosures and destroyed the crops. In spite of the poor quality of the seed planted the yields compared favorably with crops produced on the same fields today. The crops were gathered and hauled to the houses of the pioneers on sleds.
Corn was the staple food of the pioneers. No other grain was raised for many years. When the settlers came across the mountains without having raised a crop of corn they were obliged to subsist throughout the spring and summer without breadstuffs. Dr. Joseph Doddridge, whose father brought him to the west when he was a mere boy, wrote later of his experiences: "The Indian meal which my father brought over the mountains was expended six weeks too soon, so for that length of time we had to live without bread. The lean venison and the breast of wild turkey we were taught to call bread. The flesh of the bear was denominated meat. This artifice did not succeed very well. After living this way for some time we became sickly, the stomach seemed to be always empty and tormented with a sense of hunger.
"I remember how narrowly the children watched · the growth of the potato tops, pumpkin and squash vines, hoping from day to day to get something to answer in the place of bread. How delicious was the taste of the young potatoes when we got them. What a jubilee when we were permitted to pull the young corn for roast- ing ears. Still more so when it acquired sufficient hard- ness to be made into 'Johnny cakes' by the aid of the tin grater. We then became healthy, vigorous and content- ed with our situation, poor as it was."
Besides the tin grater referred to, which was merely a piece of perforated tin affixed to a block of wood, the corn was also prepared for hominy and bread by a mor- tar and pestle. The mortar was usually a block from a beech tree with a hole burned in the center, large enough to hold a peck of grain. The pestle was a short length of a sapling. The settlers on Hacker's creek did not long
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A. HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY
have to depend upon such primitive appliances for their meal. John Hacker, on one of his trips across the moun- tains, is said to have brought two small buhrstones with him. Edmund West also brought a small hand mill to the fort and rigged it up very early to run by water power. It is thought that this is the mill to which Isaac Washburn had been when he was killed by the Indians while riding toward home in the vicinity of Richards' fort. Both mills were very crude, however. It is sup- posed that their capacity was not much more than one and one-half or two bushels of meal a day. Some of the Hacker's creek settlers may have had their grinding done at George Jackson's mill on the Buckhannon, which was in existence by 1780 or 1781. It was destroyed by the Indians in 1782, after which time the nearest large mill was at Clarksburg. S. Stratton was given permis- sion to erect a mill on Hacker's creek by a court order made in 1785, but apparently he failed to take advantage of it.
The first large mill in the upper West Fork valley was built at West's fort in 1793 by Henry McWhorter. It was far superior to any that had thus far existed in the Trans-Alleghany settlements. McWhorter had come three years earlier from New Jersey where he had been apprenticed to a miller and had received a thorough train- ing. His mill had a capacity of only fifteen bushels of corn a day, but it ground practically all the corn meal for the settlers in the vicinity for several years, and finally gave its name to the village which grew up around it. For many years all the settlers from the Buckhannon river valley came to McWhorter's mill with their grists. So also did the settlers of Lost creek and the upper one- third of Harrison County until the establishment of Clement's mill at West Milford in 1800. The earliest mills did not grind wheat or any other grain than corn.
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