USA > West Virginia > Pendleton County > A history of Pendleton County, West Virginia > Part 15
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In a large measure Pendleton is naturally designed as a forest reserve. Soil and climate are highly favorable to the growth of wood, and a very large proportion of its surface cannot profitably be cleared. Such tracts should not reerely be kept in forest and guarded against fire. Such negative care is not enough. They should be so looked after as to yield a large and regular supply of fuel and lumber. The nation has been reckless and wasteful with its timber supply. The process has gone to such a length that even a temporary famine in timber is inevitable in the near future. Stern necessity is compelling the American people to resort to systematic for- estry on a large scale, and to take lessons in this matter from Germany, France, and Japan. Germany and Japan supply their own needs in spite of their dense population. But Germany and France do not find it necessary to use six times as much timber per capita as the extravagant American. Under scientific forestry an acre of woodland yields three times as large a supply as an acre left wholly to nature. This method does not permit the appearance of such trees as are in the nature of weeds, and therefore of little value. Neither does it permit a tree to become decrepit and unsound. As soon as mature it is felled and another started in its place. German forests growing on a soil not particularly fertile yield a yearly income per acre of $2.50. At the same rate the 200,000 Pendleton acres that could well be spared to forestry would yield an annual return of $500,000. The county would not only be secure of a supply for itself, but it would have a surplus for less favored communities. Trees like the walnut, for which Pendleton soil is well suited, have a secondary value as producers of nuts. The conservation of the forest land would tend to preserve stability in the flow of
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the rivers, thus rendering them less destructive to the bottom lands and more trustworthy as sources of water power.
Forests and forest streams are the natural home of game and fish .. The Indian killed only enough for his own needs and thus lived within his income. The white man, far more numerous, slaughtered without restraint, using up principal as well as interest, and bringing the supply of game to the point of extinction. Sharp restriction in this matter is of course chafing to the man used to long continued freedom. Yet the intent of the recent laws is far-sighted and salutary and deserving of support. It is a radical measure to conserve the limited supply remaining, and thus in some degree to return to the policy of the red man. The American has been far too indiscriminate in his destruction of animal life. If he had been less fond of shooting small birds. his self- restraint would now be lessening the yearly toll of $500, 000, - 000 which insects levy on the products of the farm.
Pendleton has not as stable a supply of water as a region of lakes, yet the rapid fall of its streams and their degree of permanence render them of no little value in turning ma- chinery. The use of electricity is on the increase, and moun- tain streams are a cheap source of supply. Such water- courses are being looked up nowadays, and the landowners of this county will do well to be circumspect in the matter of alienating their water rights. A considerable share of the electric force which the streams of Pendleton are capable of supplying can be used to advantage within the county itself.
It is scarcely to be expected that this region will become the seat of large manufacturing interests. Yet there is no reason why this line of industry should not rank with the farm, the forest, and the mine. There are some indications that the tendency to build mammoth mills and factories in large cities has about reached its zenith. With electricity permitting cheap travel as well as economical water power, there will in some measure he a return to the day of the less expensive and more healthful workshop in the country. There is also the dawn of a revival of handicraft. Ingenious ma- chinery works wonders, yet there are certain things which deft fingers can do even better, and there is a growing de- mand for these. When Pendleton becomes industrially symmetrical. it will yield a regular supply of certain raw materials, which may in part be turned into manufactured goods within its own limits.
Still another source of income, as yet quite insignificant, lies in the merits of the county as a place of summer outing. American cities are numerous and growing, and to the toilers
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immured within their offices and factories, the summer vaca- tion has come to be a necessity.
When the railroad appeared. the day of good country high- ways was indefinitely postponed. Solid, smooth, and mud- less roads are expensive to build. but easy to maintain. They are now appearing in America, and the network of such will rapidly extend. Unlike many level localities Pendleton has a limitless supply of good road-building material.
With the coming diversification of industries, this county can support a much larger population than it now has con- venient room for. Several towns of respectable size will gradually develop, and they will bring many of the conven- iences of the city to the very door of the "dweller in the hills."
All in all. the Pendleton of the not distant future should be an even better place in which to live than it is now. The people of these triple valleys will have small reason to re- gret that their home is among them. If nature has discrim- inated against their county in some respects, she has highly favored it in others. It remains for the Pendletonian of to- morrow to make a good use of the better features of his American civilization, and not to permit the greed of capi- talism to elbow him out of his heritage in favor of the alien stranger.
PART II FAMILY - GROUP HISTORIES
CHAPTER I
The Nature of Family-Group Histories
A complete record of the pioneers of a county should cover these facts : the name of each pioneer, the full maiden name of his wife, the national origin of both man and wife, and the country, state, county, or town that the couple moved from; the full names of their descendants, generation by gen- eration, and the names of the persons they married; dates of birth, marriage and death; facts as to residence, occupation, civil and military services, and other matters of interest.
But where a county has been settled more than a century and a half, where no systematic genealogical records have been kept and preserved, and where no newspaper has ex- isted for more than a small fraction of the time, no such de- gree of completeness can be reached, even with an unlimited amount of time at the disposal of the local historian. He must depend very largely upon family tradition. It does not belong to him to set any of this tradition aside, except in so far as unreliability is plainly manifest. Again, information of this kind is certain to vary a great deal both in fullness and accuracy. One family will contain a member of strong and trustworthy recollection, while in some other family there will be found a discreditable degree of ignorance and indif- ference regarding the ancestral line. One person has sought to acquire and preserve a knowledge of family history, while another has never bothered himself with such matters. As a result of all these considerations, gaps in a given record are almost certain to occur, and with respect to what is given as fact, the memory or judgment of the informant may have de- ceived him. In short, the compiler of a local history can do no more than exercise his very best discretion. He can by no means vouch for the absolute accuracy of his work.
The people who live and have lived in Pendleton may be classed as the Pioneer, Sub-Pioneer, Recent, and Extinct groups. In the first may be placed those families who ar- rived prior to 1815. In the second belong those who came
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later, but not later than 1865. In the third class belong those people whose arrival has been subsequent to 1865 and who have become thoroughly identified with the county. The ex- tinct families represent those of the first and second groups, where the name but not necessarily the blood has disap- peared from the county.
The year 1815 marks the close of our pioneer period proper, because up to that time the westward movement of the American people had been very much held in check by the hostilities of the British and Indians. After that date the war cloud drifted beyond the Mississippi. The migration to the vast, level, and fertile West became more rapid than ever. Large numbers of the people of Pendleton joined in this movement, as the record of our families bears witness. Up to this time immigration into the county was active. Henceforward it grew small, there being a very limited amount of good land to be had. For this reason the number of existing families of the Sub-Pioneer class is not large. Pendleton has never fallen behind in population in any decade, yet the continuous movement to newer localities has drawn heavily upon the natural increase even with the small rein- forcement of newcomers from the older counties. The drift westward accounts in a great measure for the numerous ex- tinct families.
The year 1865 may well mark the beginning of the Recent Period. Not only had the county changed its state alle- giance, but there had come a period of far-reaching change, the nature of which is elsewhere sketched. As one of the fea- tures of the new period, emigration from Pendleton began to spread eastward as well as westward, a portion of the outflow locating in the Valley of Virginia, or even beyond.
The number of our Pioneer, Sub-Pioneer, and Recent families may be ascertained with much exactness. But with the families of the Extinct Group, the case is different. The number of such is very large, but it is practically out of the question to make up a complete list. It is not altogether im- portant to do so. Many of these families were little more than birds of passage. Oftentimes we find little or no evi- dence of intermarriage with other resident families. Often- times, also, the very name has been forgotten except to a few of the elderly people. But in some instances the name has remained here a long while, there have been many inter- marriages with the families who are yet here, and in the fe- male line there is still no lack of posterity. This portion of the Extinct Group is slowly growing larger. A very few of the Pioneer or Sub-Pioneer groups are represented at the present time by only a single individual in the male line, a
THE SENECA ROCKS .- Phot'd by W. S. Dunkle. The ledge as viewed from the mouth of the Seneca at the west.
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a person advanced in years and without prospect of offspring.
A little thought will explain this tendency. Let A be a pioneer with two sons and two daughters, each of whom marries and has likewise two sons and two daughters. The two daughters lose the family name as soon as wedded. Half the children of the sons are girls and they too lose the fam- ily name. Out of the 16 grandchildren, only 4 retain the surname of the paternal grandparent. If these 16 have chil- dren in the same number and proportion, there will be 64 great grandchildren, only 8 of whom will hold to the name. With each succeeding generation the proportion of offspring in the female line will become still larger. Thus we see that in an average of instances posterity is more numerous in the female line than in the male line. The tendency may in- crease even faster than in the typical instance given, and thus lead to entire failure of the family surname. It is of course true that the operation of the rule is modified by the intermarrying of cousins of the same surname, no matter how many degrees apart the cousinship may be.
In an old settled community the threads of relationship spread out in all directions. There are in this county per- sons of the seventh remove from the pioneer settler. Now as any individual has four grandparents, a little computation will show that if cousin-marriages are left out of the ques- tion. any such person would find his ancestry to comprise 64 of the pioneer families. At the close of another century the question before the young Pendletonian of that day will not be what certain pioneer families fall into his line of ancestry. It will be whether they do not one and all fall into the col- umn. As a fact of the present day, it is very few indeed of the residents of Pendleton who are not in some way related to the comparatively small number of pioneers who settled the county. Scarcely anything short of some profound eco- nomic or industrial change can prevent the progeny of those same pioneers from retaining the same firm hold on the soil.
The natural course of legitimate descent is broken by every instance of bastardy, wherein the surname borne by the bas- tard is not that of the actual father. Illegitimate births have never been few in Pendleton, and the present ratio of about ten per cent is apparently lower than in earlier times. Such instances seldom now occur except singly, whereas in former years entire families were reared whose paternity was out- side of wedlock. Among those persons and their offspring are some of the most worthy members of the community. It goes without saying that these broken links in the chain of family descent complicate the work of the compiler of local history. He cannot ignore them utterly, even if he would,
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while on the other hand he has no desire to make himself a party in attaching a public label to instances of illegitimacy any more than to instances of crime, divorce, feeble-minded- ness, or other matters over which the mantle of charity should for the purpose of his work be drawn. No person of illegitimate parentage is therefore mentioned as such in the following pages. In placing instances of this class among the various family groups, no one rule has been followed, and every rule used has been applied as liberally as a due regard for historic truth would permit. The person who has knowl- edge of a particular instance can read into the sketch where it occurs the necessary modification. But where the name of the individual could not be given without inevitably disclos- ing the circumstance of birth, there seemed no other course but to withhold the mention.
The posterity of a given pioneer is called in this book a group-family. One of these group-families may include sev- eral hundred persons, and those of the latest generation are sometimes as far removed from each other as the sixth de- gree of cousinship. In general, descent is reckoned only in the male line. A vast amount of undesirable repetition is thus avoided. The progeny of married daughters is to be sought among the families into which they have married. But in special instances, as when a daughter has married a newcomer, the resulting family is counted along with the male line.
In compiling this book it was needful to economize space. Therefore facts which are given elsewhere are not repeated in these group-family histories. Facts pertaining to public office or military history are presented in Part III. Various other topics in Part III, and in general the whole of Part I, will throw additional side information on these sketches. Our aim in presenting each family history as a skeleton-out- line is to make it the easer to trace the line of descent. If the account were burdened with biographic information, it would be more difficult to do so. But at the close of a sketch is given a general account of the family, or of particular in- dividuals, wherever it has seemed desirable to add such in- formation. The reader having personal knowledge of a given family can supply minor details out of his own observation.
A line of family descent may be given in a logical manner, and yet be hard to follow to a person unfamiliar with works on genealogy. In this volume the writer has therefore used a system of his own. With a view of making his method as clear as possible, an illustrative family history is presented and explained a little further on. This specimen sketch is so framed as to bring within a brief compass all the points in
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the real sketches that are likely to need explanation. The surnames used are entirely fictitious so far as Pendleton fam- ilies are concerned. It is constantly to be borne in mind that it is an imaginary history and not a real one. By reading it closely, together with the explanation which follows, it is hoped that the real group-family sketches will present no difficulty.
Given names are written in full. The name of a married companion follows in parentheses immediately after the name of the consort. If two or more names occur within the par- entheses, it means the person has been married a correspond- ing number of times. When the name of a county or state appears in place of the name of a person, it means that the consort was from that county or state, and the actual name probably unknown. Immediately following "ch." the chil- dren of the pinoeer are given; following "line" the children of a son are given, and before the next "line" is taken up, the first "line" is traced out in its own children, grandchil- dren, etc. Therefore in each "line" the children of each son are considered as a "branch." In each "branch" the children of each son are given under the heading "Ch." Under each group with the heading "Ch." the children of a son are given with the new heading "C." This is done to avoid confusion. So in each minor group under the heading "C," the children of a son are given under the new heading "Cc." If still further division were necessary, "Ccc." would be used. In some instances where the family descent begins very far back, the children of the son of a pioneer are given under the heading "family," and the children of the son's sons under the heading "line" as before.
In the matter of residence, when the name of a county is not followed by that of the state to which it belongs, a county of Virginia or West Virginia is to be understood. There are no counties of the same name in these two states, and few well known towns have duplicate names. By "W. Va." is meant that part of the state beyond the Alle- ghanies. By "W"-for "West"-is meant any part of the United States beyond the same mountains. Why we put this broad meaning on these two abbreviations is because of the indefiniteness of the terms in the minds of some of the peo- ple who gave information for this book.
It has been our effort to give the names of all the older people. - especially those no longer living, -so far as it seemed possible to collect them. It has not, however, been our aim to make the list entirely complete with respect to persons of the rising generation. We would gladly have done so but for these reasons : first, the book had to be com-
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piled within a limited time and at the least possible expense, and given to the public at the lowest possible price; further- more, to collect such additional data would have made neces- sary a great amount of special search, requiring much extra time and labor and adding to the cost of the book; and finally, such additional lists would be correct only for the present moment, because marriages and removals are constantly taking place among these younger persons, and also because in many instances a family of ungrown children is likely to become larger. Nevertheless we have included some of these young families where this could be done without a spe- cial search. There are indeed instances where the line of descent has not been carried so far forward as could be de- sired. But this shortage is by no means intentional. It is sometimes due to the failure of certain persons to respond to requests for information. As already stated, there was a sharp limit to the time and expense within which any results could be accomplished at all. It was not possible to give a "whole loaf," yet the compiler has gone as far in this direc- tion as ten months of uninterrupted labor would permit.
After all, a genealogic list is not the positive skeleton which at a first glimpse it appears to be. The interested reader, especially if having a familiar knowledge of certain group- families. can easily supply many a detail which will help to fill in the outline. It is not easy to enumerate the variety and scope of these details, but in addition to what is said along this line in other chapters of this book, a few obser- vations will here be given.
It is sometimes noticed that the children of the pioneer himself seem few and perhaps wholly of the male sex. This is because the surnames of the married daughters, and even the very existence of either married or single daughters, easily become lost to view. It is also because of forgotten youths and infants, the mortality among such in pioneer days having been large. In numerous instances we have only the given name of mother or of married daughter. If our infor- mation were more ample, many an unsuspected relationship would doubtless appear.
It is often to be observed that the original homestead re- mains in the family, and that the connection bearing the family name is still to be found within a short radius of the same. If the homestead has passed to another name, it is sometimes only in consequence of marriage, and if a branch of the group-family appears in a distant locality it is very likely a result of a marriage in that neighborhood. This ad- hesion to the original settlement is more marked in Pendle- ton than in the generality of American counties, and is because
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this region has never yet come fairly within the area of in- dustrial revolution. Emigration has indeed been very active, yet there has been no wholesale displacement of the earlier inhabitants by an influx of a quite different type, as is often observable in the North and West. This long continued local attachment has gone far to develop the peculiarities which distinguish the various districts. It also goes far to account for the prevalence of marriages between first cousins, a practice forbidden by law in a number of states.
The record of group-family with respect to thrift, enter- prise, educational attainment, professional, industrial, or commercial occupation, and conformity to the standards of social or moral behavior, it is a matter which will force it- self on the attention of many a reader. If here and there should appear a shortage in these matters, the shortage will suggest the cause. When pursued in the proper spirit a gen- ealogical search will result in new inspiration to effort rather than the reverse.
CHAPTER II Illustrative Group-Family Sketch.
The special abbreviations used in the family histories are given below.
Pdn
Pendleton Co.
b.
born
S - B South Branch m. married
N . F North Fork h.
husband
B -T Black thorn w. wife
W-T Whitethorn 88r
sister
B. D. Bethel District
bro. brother
S.G.D. Sugar Grove " S.
unmarried died-of a married adult, or
F. D. Franklin
D.
M R.D. Mill Run
d.
young unmarried adult when not fol- lowed by a date.
" youth
C. D.
Circleville
dy
U. D. Union n.
Fin.
Franklin town
k.
Ft. S. Fort Seybert out
C'ville Circleville village
others other members of same family
S. G. Sugar Grove " unp.
unplaced
U. T. Upper Tract
unkn whereabouts unknown
M. S. Mouth of Seneca
inf. infant child
C - B Crabbottom [ley infs infant children
S. V. Shenandoah Val-
C and Cc
children
Aug. Augusta County
Hamp. Hampshire County Rkm Rockingham "
Shen. Shenandoah
Hdy Hardy
G'brier Greenbrier
Tkr Tucker
Hld Highland
Rph Randolph
Poca. Pocahontas
Bee. Adam (Eve Duff. Penn-Mary Smith, Smith, m. 1795)-b. 1757,* d. Mar. 1, 1838-ch .-**
1. Adam (Susan Poe)-b. May 1, 1780-homestead.
2. Eve (John Paul)-m. 1808.
3. girl (- - McMinn)-0. 1825 *.
4. Valentine-k. at Tippecanoe, 1811.
5. Mahulda-S. 6. Isaac
7. John
" an infant
near
killed-in war of 1861
outside of Pendleton
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8. D .- (out)* By 2d m. -
9. Catharine (Hdy)*
10. William (Ann Dott, B-T)-W.
11. Noah (Jane Barley, Rkm)-Aug. late.
12. Abel (Lucy Duff, Poca.)-U. T.
Before entering upon a detailed explanation of the above, the reader is referred to the next chapter for a statement of the following facts, so far as known: the national origin of Adam Bee; his residence before coming to Pendleton; the year of his arrival; the farm or locality where he settled; his occupation, if not a farmer. For his military record, or for any important civil office he may have held, the reader is re- ferred to the appropriate articles in Part III. But as hereto- fore stated, "Adam Bee" is an imaginary person, and is used only for the purpose of illustration. As a matter of fact, therefore, his name will not actually be found in the places referred to.
Now for the explanation. Adam Bee was born about the year 1757. The star after the date means that the exact year is not known, but that 1757 is considered a close guess. He died in 1838, and in this county, since he never moved out of it so far as known. He had two wives. The first was Eve Duff of Pennsylvania. The second was a widow when he married her. Her maiden name was Mary Smith, and as her first husband was a Smith, she did not change her name. The second marriage took place in 1795. Since noth- ing is said as to the second wife not being a Pendletonian, it may be considered that she was living in the county.
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