USA > West Virginia > Monroe County > A history of Monroe county, West Virginia > Part 11
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1
COLONEL GEORGE M. EDGAR Commander 26th Va. Battalion of Infantry, C. S. A.
ESTILL HOUSE Built by Isaac Estill, of Indian Creek, about 1800. Now the Residence of John H. Dowdy
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A FARM HOME IN 1800
pewter. There are no curtains to the windows and neither rug nor carpet on the floor.
It being summer time, there is no roaring volcano in the fire- place. But there is a blaze, since dinner is in progress. Propped up on the firelogs is a pot containing bacon and vegetables. Near it over a bed of coals is a second pot in which something is bubbling. The dinner preparations are watched by John's widowed mother, who holds possession of the easy chair. In her nearly toothless mouth is a cob pipe actively at work. We accept a very sincere invitation to share the bountiful repast of cornbread, potatoes, garden beans, bacon, stewed apples, rye coffee, and milk. The only sugar is maple sugar, and the entire bill of fare is made up of the products of Bee's farm. Had our visit come in the cold season we would have found venison, wild turkey, or bear steak. The only fruit at that time of the year would be stewed apples or berries, the process of airtight canning being unknown. White bread is only an occasional article of diet.
The head of the family wears in cool weather a hunting shirt, to which the modern sweater coat is a first cousin. It is of wool dyed with butternut. It has no buttons and is secured at the waist by a belt fastened behind and secured in front with a buckle. Fall- ing over the shoulders is a cape attached to the neck. The hem of the garment is fringed. Jeans trowsers and buckskin moccasins complete the visible part of the man's costume. His shirt is of linen. In winter he wears a foxskin cap and in summer a straw hat. His hair is worn long, but once or twice a month he shaves his face with a clumsy razor.
The wife wears a dress of striped plaid. When out of doors she may be seen in summer in a coarse linen sunbonnet and in win- ter in a woolen hood. The older children are attired somewhat like their parents. The young girls have plaid dresses of rather pretty colors, and the "least child" has a flannel wrap that comes to its ankles. At the time of our visit John is the only member of the family with any covering for his feet.
As we leave the room we catch sight of a skillet lid. When
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there are no live coals to start a fire with, John places on the lid a piece of maple punk, a piece of tow, and a few grains of gunpowder. Holding his rifle in his left hand, he kneels over the lid and strikes several sharp blows on the gunflint with his pocket knife. Several sparks fall into and ignite the powder, and thus a flame is commu- nicated to the punk and tow. The men of the settlement who are slaves to tobacco sometimes light their pipes with a burning glass, provided the sun is visible and no fire convenient. But the more expert among them can accomplish the desired result with flint and steel.
Behind the dwelling house is a smaller and somewhat decrepit structure. It was built by the senior Bee the year of his arrival. It is now called the loom house, but aside from the bulky loom we might find here a huge bear trap and a smaller trap to use against the detested wolf. Near the open door is a home-made basket. From a fresh, free-bodied hickory log a section of the bark was slipped off, the outer surface shaved down, and into one end was fitted a thin piece of wood. No hooping is needed for a utensil like this.
The barn consists of two pen-like inclosures of logs, a partially open space separating the two. In the hollow above the house is a spring of pure cold water, and near it, suspended from a tree, is a gourd drinking cup. There is little leather in the "gears" that John flings upon the backs of his bay team. The horse collars are of straw, bound together with hickory bark, and the lines are of the same material also. The bridle, the hames, and the back and side bands comprise the other parts of the harness. The doubletrees are hooked to the plow or harrow with a hickory withe, and the con- venient hickory bark is used to mend a sudden break. The saddle girth is a rope or buckskin thong. The plow is a crude and bulky contrivance with a wooden mouldboard. It runs shoal and hard and is liable to "ball up." There is a wooden-toothed harrow to cover a sowing of grain. The hand tools are of wood alone, so far as this one article will serve the purpose. The hayfork is simply a piece taken from a crotched sapling.
The farming is done in a simple and wasteful way. The farm
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contains 200 acres, but only a foruth part is cleared. This open ground is mostly meadow and pasture. But the pasture is supple- mented by letting the cattle and hogs roam the woods. There is no thought of maintaining fertility. A newly cleared field is con- sidered good for some certain number of crops, after which another strip of ground is subjected to soil pillage. If at length the whole farm should become too poor to grow anything but mullein, John considers that there is plenty more virgin soil farther west. The very small acreage of grain is reaped with the sickle, three "hands" making a sheaf, and thirty to forty dozen of the latter a day's work. The expert reaper brings his narrow crescent blade close to the fin- gers that are gripping a hand of straw, and the left hand carries the scars of more than one miscalculation. All threshing is with the flail, and John can pound out some fifteen bushels a day, not counting the time spent in winnowing out the chaff. Potatoes do not mature until near the close of summer. The little inclosure near the house yields a smaller variety of vegetables than is the case today. We look in vain for tomatoes or lettuce.
The acre of flax is no less essential than the little fields of corn and grain. There are no great cotton and woolen factories in the seaboard states, and the price of cloth imported from England is almost prohibitive to the lean purses of such men as John. But in the loom house the wool and the flax fiber produced on the place are woven into the cloth from which the family clothing, the bedding, and the grain sacks are made. Euphemia can weave in one day three yards of jeans or linsey, but as John has longer arms he can accomplish an output of four yards.
There is considerable labor in growing the flax and converting it into tow. The first harvesting process is pulling the stalks. This is done while the stalks are yet greenish although the heads show yellow. When the threshing takes place all the heads are laid one and the same way. After this process, the stalks are spread out for some four weeks. Exposure to rain and dew renders them soft as well as ill-smelling. They are now broken by blows with a wooden knife. The tow is then separated from the splintered bark
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by passing it through sets of steel blades in the hackling boards. The swingling, as well as the breaking, is dusty work. By this time the fiber is very nearly free of woody particles, and it is now boiled in lye to soften it. The next step is to bleach it and this is done on the grass. Finally the tow is spun on the spinning wheel and it is then ready for the loom. The spinner is expected to know the number of threads to the inch, there being eight hundred in the finest linen. Counting them is done through a magnifying glass. Linen clothes are worn in hot weather, but the warmer combina- tion of wool and linen known as linsey is used for winter gar- ments. The immigrants from Ulster were proficient in weaving, but when the war of 1861 broke out, domestic weaving went into disuse in consequence of the competition with the cheap cloth of the great industrial cities.
The homespun cloth is dyed brown with a cold solution of wal- nut hulls. By boiling this liquor a black color is produced. Mad- der gives a red color, maple a green, and hickory a yellow. If a blue shade is wanted the imported indigo is used.
Hemp is almost as generally grown as flax. Like the latter it gives off a bad odor when handled. A small portion of the fiber is used with wool to make a coarse and almost indestructible fabric. This cloth is greenish at first, but gradually turns white. The greater portion of the hemp is sent to the seacoast cities where it is in good demand. In the colonial period Virginia paid a bounty on winter-rotted hemp, and the richer soils in the mountains are well suited to this exhausting crop.
John has an apple orchard, and like many of the well-to-do set- tlers, he has a still, where most of the fruit is turned into brandy. The Ulster-Americans of that day were a very thirsty lot, and their whiskey displaced West India rum as the leading tipple in Virginia. There is no federal tax, and therefore John is not a moonshiner. Neither has he become so enlightened as to mix deadly chemicals with his firewater. Liquor in his day was in almost universal use by both sexes, and the amount consumed was very large. And as
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alcohol is alcohol, the world over, drunkenness was very prevalent, in spite of the popular delusion to the contrary.
John Bee is one of the "best-to-do" in his community, although he never has much cash in his possession. He lives as much as pos- sible within his own resources. In his dealings with other people, he resorts to barter as much as he can. There is no cash market for the minor products of the farm. The chief source of ready money is in horses and cattle, but $25 will buy a good horse and $10 a good cow.
Money is reckoned in pounds, shillings, and pence, the pound being $3.33, the shilling 16 2-3 cents, and the penny a little more than a cent and a third. Such terms as threepence, sixpence, and nine- pence are in everybody's mouth. Silver coins from Spanish America circulate alongside those of our own mintage. And yet the currency in use is not so miscellaneous as before the Revolution, when also English, French, and Portuguese coins of both gold and silver passed from hand to hand, and it was necessary to compute their value by weight. A pair of money scales was then as necessary as a purse. But the Mexican dollar is the same as the Federal and is equal to six shillings. Eight reals make a dollar, and therefore the real is equivalent to the ninepence, or 121/2 cents. The half-real is accord- ingly worth 61/4 cents. Thus we are the better able to understand why such values as 61/4, 121/2, and 183/4 cents are so often mentioned in the account books of the first half of the nineteenth century.
One of Bee's neighbors lives in a stone house and owns two slaves. But all follow the simple life. This is not from any dis- inclination to luxury, but because the remoteness of towns and mar- kets does not permit it. Some of the people in the settlement are poor and unambitious, and much dependent on the large landowners. Such families live in small, roundlog cabins, and as morality does not thrive in the one-roomed house, bastardy is not uncommon among them.
Several miles away is a log church, a description of which we leave for another chapter. Considerably nearer is the little log school- house, where the rudiments of an English education are imparted
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to the boys and girls, especially the former, of such parents as are able and willing to pay for the service. The free school is far in the future.
Writing paper is coarse and unruled, and a hog or a sheep will pay for only two quires. So when John Bee scrawls with quill pen his consent for sixteen-year-old Elizabeth to become the better half of Timothy Hay, he does not use a whole sheet or even a half sheet. He tears off a strip two inches wide, writes with ink made of nut- galls and copperas, and blots with ashes or dry dust. Finally he folds the slip into a small compass, as though he were a doctor put- ting up a dose of calomel. There is only one postoffice in the county, and the mails are few and exceedingly light. Envelopes being un- known, the fourth page of a sheet is left vacant, so that the letter may be folded in a special way, and the tuck secured with a wafer of sealing wax, provided any wax is at hand. Postage is paid by the person who receives the letter, and less than a ninepence will carry the letter only a short distance. The postage stamp is as un- known as the envelope. John receives two or three letters in the course of a year and writes as few. But he takes the weekly news- paper published in Staunton. This is about as large as one of our four page Sunday school papers, and as the editor has neither rail- road nor telegraph service, his weekly is very different in makeup from those of our own time.
Scattered over the county are 4000 people, and yet there is no town. The county seat is only a hamlet. Lewisburg is only a small village. Staunton, a hundred miles away, is the metropolis of this mountain land, but contains only about 500 people. Ameri- can life is not yet dominated by the cities and towns. Many of the leaders of opinion live in country homes.
The gristmill, the blacksmith shop, and the still-house are where the men congregate. The mill is a primitive affair and is run by an overshot wheel. At least one of these is to be found on every stream that is large enough to turn a wheel. The blacksmith is even more necessary than he is now. He makes farm implements, edged tools, all the nails that are in use, and he is even a manufacturer of cow-
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bells. Stores are few, small, and far between, but to some extent their place is supplied by the peddler. The store that John occas- ionally visits is a little dark room without showcases. The merchant brings his goods from Philadelphia and hauls sixty to eighty hun- dredweight at a time. He pays for them in deerskins, hams, gin- seng, and such other country produce as it will pay to wagon nearly 400 miles. A year ago, the merchant sent for some coffee, but it was months before there was any call for it. Then a man took home a pound, but complained on his next visit that "the old woman biled them split beans half a day and then they didn't get soft enough to eat."
All labor is hand labor, and although families are large, neigh- borly help is often in demand, especially when there is a house-rais- ing or a corn husking. After the work has been attended to, there is a square meal followed by dancing or other diversions. The purely social party is scarcely known, except the wedding occasion, which is always a notable event. The Monroe girl of this period thinks little of mounting a horse scarcely yet broken, and galloping a dozen miles with no companions save those of her own sex.
Doctors are few and unskilful, and being without the light of modern science, their methods would seem to us a suggestion of the dark ages. The quack doctor is more common than the honest one. There are quack remedies galore. But the "granny woman" is no quack, and with her very serviceable knowledge of herb* she is a fair substitute for the regular practitioner. These remedies she gathers from the garden, the woods, and the fields. Among them are slippery elm, white walnut bark, snakeroot, and mandrake.
The world, so far as known and understood, is very narrow. It means little more than an expanse of frontier wilderness, inter- spersed with settlements more or less new. Only a few of the men and none of the women get so far away as Philadelphia or Richmond.
*Some of these (not all of which are indigenous to this locality) are balm of Gilead, catnip, elecampane, garlic, horehound, horseradish, Je- rusalem oak, jimson weed, mullein, peppermint, spearmint, tansy, yarrow, and yellow dock.
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A HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
The ancestral home across the Atlantic has almost lapsed into a thing of tradition. As for the country beyond the Mississippi, it is less known than Central Africa is to us. The knowledge of the great Pacific is nearly as meager as our present knowledge of the Antarctic.
The times are not those of sloth, ease, and gayety. They are crude, coarse, rough, and laborious. The restraints of law, religion, and morality are indifferently observed. Men are addicted to liquor, fighting, and lawsuits. Such contentment as is found is the con- tentment due to an ignorance of anything better. People expect to do things very much as their fathers have been doing them. With but a faint foretaste of the industrial appliances with which we are so familiar, they experience little of our social unrest.
XIII
MONROE FROM 1799 TO 1861
Civil Government in Virginia-Boundary Changes in Monroe-Progress During the Period-Contention Between Eastern and Western Districts-Mrs. Royall's Visit.
URING the colonial period, and until 1852, civil gov- ernment in Virginia was quite different from what it was afterward. Prior to the war for American inde- pendence, the legislature was styled the House of Bur- gesses. The Governor's Council of eight members acted in a meas -- ure as an upper house and also as a supreme court. Men charged with felony or treason by the county courts were sent to the capital to be tried before the Council
The administration of local affairs was mainly in the hands of the county court, as is the case at present. But when a new county was to be organized, the governor commissioned certain of its citi- zens to act as "worshipful justices." When vacancies occurred, or when the court wished to increase its membership, one or more men were nominated by the court and confirmed by the governor. The justices held office indefinitely, except that the governor might re- move them for cause. Thus the county court was self-perpetuating. It was not responsible to the people of the county, and it levied taxes at its own pleasure. It was in its power to favor its own members and to be arbitrary and tyrannical. The justices belonged to the leading families, and it often happened that several of them would be closely related. But in practice, the system worked fairly well. The justices felt the responsibility of their position and they lived in close touch with the mass of the people.
The powers of the county court were very broad. The mem- bers of it were magistrates, and a quorum acted as a board of county
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A HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
commissioners. They tried chancery cases and breaches of the peace, and could sentence a slave to capital punishment.
At frequent intervals the court sent to the governor the names of one to three of the senior members, one of whom was commis- sioned by him as sheriff. But the sheriff sold out the office to the highest bidder, so that the actual work was done by his deputies. The court nominated the coroner, whose office was more important than now, since the incumbent was a conservator of the peace. It also elected the county clerk, the prosecuting attorney, the surveyor, the constables, and the overseers of the public roads. Commissioned officers of the militia were nominated by the court and confirmed by the governor.
Each county had a county lieutenant, who in theory was a dep- uty governor. He had charge of the local militia, and in the field he ranked as a colonel.
A minor share of the local government was attended to by the vestry, which was a parish board. A county contained from one to three parishes. The members of the first vestry were chosen by the people, but since the vestry filled its own vacancies, it became a close corporation like the county court. Its executive officers were the two churchwardens. It was their duty to look after the morals of the parish, to build chapels and rectories for the established church, and to levy taxes for the support of that church. They also bound out orphans and bastards, so that their duties were civil as well as ecclesiastical.
In 1776 Virginia asserted its independence of England, and adopted a constitution which remained the law of the state until that of 1829 went into effect. But as both these instruments continued things very nearly as they found them, the people of Virginia lived until 1852 under almost the same machinery of local government as existed under British rule. The most striking changes under inde- pendence were the disestablishment of the Church of England and the abolishing of the vestry, so far as it had to do with civil gov- ernment.
During this period there was much restriction on the suffrage.
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MONROE FROM 1799 TO 1861
In 1800 there were only three polling places in all Monroe. In 1804 one of the presidential candidates received 60 votes at Union and the other received but 27.
So late as 1829 two-fifths of the adult white males in Virginia were unable to vote. Even then the people could elect no state offi- cials except the members of the legislature, and no local officials whatever, except the overseers of the poor. Even the governor was chosen by the legislature and not by popular vote. It was only in a very limited sense that the government of the state could be termed republican.
But with the constitution that came into effect in 1852 there was a sweeping change. State and county officers were now elected by the people, and so was the county court of four members to each district. Until this time, the justices, of whom there was until 1830 no fixed number, served without pay.
Until imprisonment for debt was done away with, the jail was mainly used as a boarding house for delinquent debtors. The court- house yard was supposed to be provided with pillory, stocks, and whipping-post. The whipping-post at Union stood just outside the jail garden. The hands of the culprit went around it and were fastened with a clasp. The number of lashes administered to a culprit was seldom in excess of thirty-nine. The essential, feature of the pillory was a pair of short planks coming together at the edge, but with an opening to close around a man's neck. The stocks confined the ankles instead of the neck. Neither punishment could have been enjoyable in fly time, or when jeers, pebbles, or even eggs of uncertain quality were flung at the prisoner, as was done in some localities. But before the middle of the nineteenth century the criminal code of Virginia became more humane. The pillory and the whipping-post and burning in the hand were abolished.
After three years the county of Monroe was enlarged. But since then the boundaries have repeaterly been nibbled into. Appalachian Virginia is a land of mountains, valleys, and streams, and so it is comparatively easy for a neighborhood to convince itself that it is an intolerable hardship to go to the county seat. A mountain ridge
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A HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
becomes a frightful barrier. An intervening river has none but the most terrible fords. Political influence is called in to back up the petitions which are hurled again and again at the legislature.
An Act of Assembly of January 2, 1802, taking effect from date of passage added to Monroe that portion of Botetourt within the line described in the next paragraph.
Beginning at the top of the Middle Mountain, on the east side of Potts Creek, at the point where the Montgomery line intersects said mountain ; thence down the top of said mountain as far as that point thereof which is opposite the lower end of David Edgar's plantation on the said creek; and thence with a straight line northwest on such bearing as will include Samuel Logue's plantation on Dunlap's Creek, and so continued on to the line of Grenbrier County .*
The above annexation moved the boundary much east of the divide between Eastern and Western waters and added about 150 square miles of territory. But four years later the process of sub- traction began. Giles county, which became effective May 1, 1806, was formed from Montgomery, Monroe, and Tazewell, and was at the outset very much larger than at present. The original boundary on the northeast is defined as starting from the end of Gauley Moun- tain on New River at the intersection of the Greenbrier-Kanawha line, and running up New River with the Kanawha line to the in- tersection of the Monroe line. The line between Monroe and Mont- gomery is then followed to the upper end of Pyne's plantation, whence a straight line runs to the mouth of Rich Creek leaving the plantation of Hugh Caperton to the right, and then follows the Monroe-Montgomery line to the Botetourt line.
The next paring away was in 1822, when Alleghany county was formed out of Bath, Botetourt, and Monroe. The line between Monroe and the new county is described as starting from "the top of the middle of Potts Mountain, where the Fincastle and Sweet Springs road crosses; then with the Sweet Springs road to the top of Peters Mountain; thence a straight course to the Greenbrier line
*The line on our map which shows this boundary is approximate and not exact.
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MONROE FROM 1799 TO 1861
on the top of the Alleghany, passing between Sweet Springs and Red Spring."
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