USA > West Virginia > Pendleton County > A history of Pendleton County, West Virginia > Part 6
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As the party was about to cross the Ohio, young Seybert remarked upon a flock of wild turkeys flying high in the dis- tance. 'You have sharp eyes," observed Killbuck. "Wasn't it you that killed our warrior ?" "Yes," replied the boy, "Yes, and I would have shot you too. if my gun hadn't been knocked down." "You little devil." commented the chief, "if you had killed me, my warriors would have given up and come away. Brave boy. You'll make a good warrior. But don't tell my people what you did." Several years after his return the young man sold his father's farm to John Bliz- zard and he made a new home on Straight Creek. Some of his descendants still live in that vicinity.
James Dyer was among the Indians about two years. He sometimes accompanied a trading party on a visit to Fort Pitt, now Pittsburg. On the last trip he resolved to attempt his es- cape. He eluded the Indians, slipped into the cabin of a trader, and the woman within hid the boy behind a large chest, piling over him a mass of furs. In trying to find him the Indians came into the hut and threw off the skins one by one. until he could see the light through the openings among them. But fortunately for his purpose the Indians thought it not worth while to make the search thorough. After re- maining a while at the old home in Pennsylvania, the young man returned to Fort Seybert, and for more than forty years was one of the most prominent citizens of the county.
James Dyer is said to have been instrumental in effecting the recovery of his sister, Sarah Hawes, whose captivity lasted three and a half years. She thought better of the In- dians than of the French who sometimes visited the village. There was usually an abundance to eat, but in time of scarcity colt steak was prominent on the Indian bill of fare, and to this she demurred. But Killbuck asked her why she should have prejudice against an animal that eats only clean food, when all palefaces were fond of eating the flesh of the hog, an animal that searches in all manner of filth for something to eat. Her captivity worked some change in her appearance and manner, and when she returned her little daughter was
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not for a while willing to own her, but at length accepted the fact of identity. Her husband died either before her return or shortly afterward, and she then married Robert Davis.
Killbuck had good ground for using stratagem to cut short the siege. It was no great distance to the more thickly set- tled region of the Shenandoah Valley. A relief party under the command of Captain Brock soon appeared, but was too late to do anything more than bury the slaughtered victims. Their ghastly corpses were interred in one common grave un- doubtedly very near the spot where the tragedy was enacted. An inclosing wall of stone was thrown up and it stood for nearly a century. It was then torn down by a road overseer, who in order to fill up a mudhole was willing to forego the respect to the resting place of the dead which common de- cency requires.
At the time of this raid the home of Michael Mallow lay in a very exposed position. He in some way escaped, but his wife and son were carried off. Being told the wife was no longer living, Mallow was on the point of taking a second helpmate. But news of a different tenor reached him in time, and the two were reunited. The boy was recovered and was identified only through a mark on his thumb. An- other son, Henry, was born during the wife's captivity. The infant was quite promptly soused in a stream with a view of washing off the taint of his white blood and making him a good Indian. But in spite of this style of regeneration he grew up a good white man.
Other incidents of capture have come down to us. Thus a Harper girl of the connection of Philip Harper, living above the mouth of Seneca was carried away. In company with a girl taken from Grant she fled from the Indian village while the braves were away from home. The Ohio was crossed by means of a log Both girls were in rags when they re- gained their homes. The Harper girl married a Peterson.
Before the Kiles had come from Rockingham, George and Jacob of that family were taken prisoners. Jacob was very strong and was made to carry burdens. One night he gnawed the rope open that was holding him and released his brother. They had come back as far as the Roaring Plains when George lay down in some brush, utterly unable to proceed. The brother went on to the blockhouse at the mouth of Sen- eca, and because of his Indian costume came near being fired on by a sentry. A relief party was sent out and the ex- hausted brother brought in. During the time this Seneca blockhouse was used as a rallying-point, the towering cliff nearby served as a lookout.
John Reger had bought of Green, Wood and Russell 407
SITE OF FORT SEYBERT WITH RESIDENCE OF WILLIAM C. MILLER .- Phot'd by T. J. Bowman. The slight depression in the foreground marks a portion of the line of the stockade. One cornerstone of the blockhouse lies under the cellar window in the middle ground. Another cornerstone lies on the surface of the lawn, 21 feet to the right, and behind a low bush. The ledge where the Indian was shot is in front of the main entrance at a distance of 100 Yds.
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acres on North Mill Creek, but before conveyance of title he was killed by the Indians and his children, John, Dorothy, and Barbara, carried away. To preserve the title to the heirs, Matthew Patton, the administrator, obtained title in his own name in 1768, on condition that if the heirs returned he was to turn over the property to them. The girls re- appeared soon afterward, but the boy did not. To fulfill his bond, Patton made a conveyance to Barbara, now the wife of John Keplinger, Jr , binding her in turn to convey a moiety to her brother, should he eventually come back.
Another incident, vouched for on excellent authority, ex- hibits the more humane side of Indian character. A woman taken about the time of the massacre at Fort Seybert was carried to Ohio. A brave made known a decision to burn her, and said he would effect a rescue. He made her a pair of deerskin moccasins and told her that while she was absent from the village for firewood he was going to follow her steps. This program was carried out, and when they reached a large stream he told her to wade in. He helped her atross to shallow water, and then took the woman on his back to a cranny in a bluff. He bade her stay here till his return. He explained that her trail would be followed to the river and that it would be noticed that an Indian had pur- sued her. No tracks being found on the farther shore except his own, and these in a semicircle, it would be understood she had drowned. He left provisions promising a return af- ter the search and excitement were over. The Indian kept his word and conducted her to within sight of her home in Pendleton. A log-rolling was in progress. The guide re- fused to leave the shelter of the woods, unless she could bring assurances that he would be well treated. This she was able to do, although at first some of the men wished to kill him. The rescuer remained over night before starting on his return.
Soon after the Indian incursion of 1758. Captain Abraham Smith was sent to the South Branch. He was brought be- fore a courtmartial for cowardice on complaint of one Ed- ward McGary, but the charge was disproved. The accuser was fined 40 shillings besides 5 shillings for using a profane oath.
The total loss at Upper Tract and Fort Seybert was esti- mated by Washington at 60 persons. The burning of the forts and the general havoc wrought during the foray were a most severe blow to the infant settlements of the two val- leys. Some of the remaining people may temporarily have gone away. But the ground was not abandoned. With in- domitable resolution the pioneers went about repairing their
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losses, and we soon find them settling up the estates of their murdered neighbors. An Act of Assembly was passed for the rebuilding of Fort Seybert, but it does not seem that it was carried out. After the disaster the settlers of the South Fork adopted the plan of secreting their families in the coves of Shenandoah Mountain, whence they made trips to the river to cultivate their lands. Trusty watchdogs were also brought into requisition.
With the utter collapse of the French power in America in 1760, the Indian peril became less acute, and although raid- ing parties came from the Greenbrier and destroyed settle- ments to within a few miles of Staunton, there is no explicit account of any further attack upon Pendleton. Yet the In- dians prolonged the war on their own account. It was not until 1764 that a respite was given to the frontier. The red men were required to give up their captives, and of the 32 men and 58 women and children thus restored to their Vir- ginia homes, it is more than probable that some belonged in this county. A number of these, taken when quite young and who had nearly or quite lost the recollection of their par- ental home, were very unwilling to part with their dusky friends and had to be brought away by force. The Indians were no less unwilling to see them go. Hunting parties fol- lowed for days the returning captives, in order to keep them supplied with food.
Sometimes the Indianized person refused to give up the wild life. Isaac Zane, taken when nine years old, lived with the Indians ever after, but never forgot his mother tongue. He married the sister of a Wyandot chief and reared a large family. The boys were true Indians, but the girls married white men and became fine women. Mary Painter, taken from the Shenandoah in 1758, also at the age of nine, lived with the Indians until 1776. She was found among the Cher- okees by a man named Copple, who had likewise been a pris- oner. By a well-meant deception he induced her to go back with him to her people. She married Copple and they lived a while on the Painter farm near Woodstock, but yielded to the "call of the wild," and went West. They always used the Indian tongue in their household.
Though but one hostile visit to Pendleton can be identified as takng place after 1764, another war broke out in 1774, as we shall presently see, and did not come to an end until Wayne's decisive victory in 1795. During this long period there was always the chance that some war party might pass through the broadening zone of settlement west of the Alleghanies, and once more bring the tomahawk and
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the torch to the realization of people who knew from experi- ence what these things meant.
During the ten years of peace there was recorded in the deed book of the county a conveyance of 200,000 acres of land from the Iroquois, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians. The date of the transaction is November 4, 1768, and the tract lay in the angle between the Ohio and Monongahela rivers. Among the signatures are those of governors of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The payment was to be made in blankets, shirts. stockings, ribbon, calico, serge, thread, gartering, strouds, and callimancoe; also in knives, needles, tobacco, tongs, brass kettles, powder, lead, gunflints, vermillion, and finally ten dozen jewsharps.
We have treated this episode of frontier war at some length, because it is at once the most picturesque and the most lurid feature in the background of Pendleton history. Not even the four trying years of 1861-5 with their scenes of domestic guerilla war can go beyond the perilous years of 1755-9. That early period shows to us a young, sparsely set- tled frontier community, compelled to live in the shadow of the stockade: compelled to use watchful care, lest at any moment the stealthy foe lurking in the deep woods might burn the farm house, kill or maim the adults of the family regardless of age or sex, and carry away young children who though spared might yet be lost to the parents. It shows also an unconquerable will to maintain the foothold that was costing so heavily in danger, suffering, and disaster. Of those days of grim fortitude and final victory we have only fragmentary accounts. It is therefore not easy to form an idea that will do justice to the probable reality.
CHAPTER VII
A Time of Peace
The annals of Pendleton fall into three groupings. The first is the Pioneer Period, closing with the organization of the county in 1788. The second is the Middle Period, contin- uing to the close of the War of 1861. The third is the Re- cent Period, beginning in 1865 and continuing into our own time. The first of these periods has three natural subdivi- sions. The opening sub-period runs from the close of 1747 to the close of 1758; the second runs from the opening of 1759 to the organization of Rockingham in 1778: the third in- cludes the next ten years, during which time this region was a part of Rockingham.
The first stage of the Pioneer Period is brief yet vivid. It marks little more than the gaining of a foothold on the new soil. It is the story of a pair of weak settlements in a re- mote corner of a huge county. But for the fact that it tells of the actual beginnings of these settlements, and but for the further fact that it tells of frontier war, its annals might seem rather commonplace. Yet the two considerations we have named make the story one of interest and color.
The second stage, which we now take up, is one of peace except for a not quite vanished warcloud at the beginning and a risen warcloud at the close. But within the county these disturbances were not deeply felt. Population rapidly increased and became more diffused over the region. Land values rose and highways were extended. The church and the schoolhouse made their appearance. A local civil organ- ization took form, and the area embraced in the future county began to assume individuality. Natural conditions pointed unerringly to a separate administrative organization.
The shock caused by the ravaging of the infant settle- ments on the South Branch and the South Fork was rendered less heavy by the fall in the very same year of Fort Du- quesne. This post was the keystone of the French power west of the Alleghanies. When it fell the French resistance was utterly broken, and as a natural consequence the back- bone of the Indian resistance was broken. There was now a correct feeling that the Indian peril was practically a thing of the past, so far as the country east of the Alleghany divide was concerned.
Business confidence is a good index to public feeling, and
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we need no better index to the mood of the Pendleton set- tlers than is found in the renewed immigration that began in 1759, and in the land sales of 1761 and 1763. In those two seasons the Green syndicate alone sold 7073 acres at more than double the price paid by the pioneers of the Dyer set- tlement.
The estate of Peter Moser, killed in March, 1758, was ap- praised June 29, of the same year, only two months after the twin disasters of Upper Tract and Fort Seybert. The admin- istrator was Michael Mallow, and the valuation was fixed at $366.24. In 1761 we find mention of the "sail bill" of the George Moser estate. The executors in this instance were Elizabeth Moser, Daniel Smith and Philip Harper.
The will of Roger Dyer was proved by William Gibson. He left his homestead to his son James, his tract of 427 acres near Moorefield to his daughter Hannah Keister, and a be- quest of $66.67 to his grandson Roger Dyer. His wife Han- nah was named as executor. An inventory, taken August 14, 1759, shows an estate of $2099.71, inclusive of $82 30 in gold coin and $140 in other cash. There were several notes and bonds held against various settlers and other persons. . The public sale, which took place the same year, resulted in the proceeds of $364.04. The estate of William Dyer was $713.03. What these amounts would signify in our day we may better judge when we find a mare and colt selling for $10, a cow for $7.58, a heifer and calf for $6.75, an axe for 54 cents, and a spade for 58 cents.
Reference has been made to the sales of land by Robert Green and his associates. The parcels conveyed were 30 in number, and were situated in all three of the leading valleys. The aggregate price, no mention being entered in two of the transactions, was $2942.27. The average price per acre was 44 cents, and the maximum was $1.15. The last named fig- ure looks cheap enough to us now, yet at that time it would not strike one as particularly low, when the rawness of the country is taken into account and also the difference in the purchasing power of a given sum of money. Nine settlers on the South Fork were granted deeds on the same day in May, 1761. Four others secured deeds on a single day in May two years later. As some of these persons had already been here several years without any recorded locations, they appear to have lived on the Green surveys, either as squat- ters or as tenants at will. There is some appearance that the purchasing was done to quiet the title.
Immigration was now quite active, and was directed most heavily into the South Branch and North Fork valleys, owing to the early colonization of the South Fork and the meager
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supply of good land along that stream. Between 1761 and 1767 we find Ludwig Wagoner and Gabriel Pickens located near Fort Seybert. Postle Hoover was below Brandywine and Sebastian Hoover was above. Jonas Pickle was at the mouth of Brushy Fork and near him was Michael Wilfong. Robert Davis, who married the widow of Peter Hawes, was living on a purchase from Matthew Patton.
On the South Branch the names are more numerous. The Haigler, Harpole, and Wise families settled near the north line of the county. John Poage, an active and influential citizen, was at Upper Tract and owned land on the Black- thorn. Paul Shaver was a neighbor to Mallow. A little higher up the river were Eberr-an and Vaneman. Still fur- ther up were George Hammer and George Coplinger. Near by on Trout Run was Jacob Harper, and at the mouth of the same tributary was the Patterson family. On Friend's Run were Richardson, Power, Hornbarrier, and Cassell. A little above the site of Franklin was Henry Peninger. At the mouth of Thorn Ulrich Conrad had built a mill in 1766, or very soon afterward. Still higher up the river were Leonard Simmons and Matthew Harper. Gabriel Kile was well up the Blackthorn.
Turning to the North Fork we find the Scotts and Cun- ninghams joined by Justus Hinkle, Moses Ellsworth, John Davis, and probably the Teter brothers. From the mouth of Seneca downward the partners Daniel Harrison and Joseph Skidmore had picked out a dozen of choice tracts, embracing nearly a thousand acres.
During the ten years closing with 1777, we find Jacob Dickenson below Brandywine and George Puffenbarger on Brushy Fork. On the South Branch we notice Henry Fleisher at the present county line. On Dry Run was Henry Buzzard. On the Blackthorn were Christopher Eye and George Sum- walt. George and Francis Evick had come to the Evick Gap. George Dice was a neighbor to them, and Jacob Con- rad and George Kile were below the Ruddle postoffice. On the North Fork we now find the Bennetts above and Nelsons below the mouth of Dry Run. William Gragg is on the pla- teau between the Mouth of Seneca and Roaring Creek. Near him is Andrew Johnson and below the Seneca is Daniel Mouse. Mosee Thompson is elsewhere on the river.
Gristmills and blacksmith shops were multiplying, and the settlements were assuming a degree of stability. In 1769 Michael Propst conveyed a plot of ground for the erection of a Lutheran church, and what seems the earliest schoolhouse made its appearance on the land of Robert Davis.
The earliest mention of local public officials of a regular na-
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ture is in 1756 when William Dyer and Michael Propst were appointed road overseers in place of William Hevener. Later on we find Mark Swadley and Henry Stone acting in the same capacity. The first mention of an authorized road on the North Fork is in 1767, when Michael Eberman, Philip Harpole and Andrew Johnson were ordered to view a road from Joseph Bennett's to the mouth of the North Fork. About this time Jonas Friend and Henry Peninger were con- stables, and Matthew Patton and John Skidmore were cap- tains of militia, the date of Skidmore's commission be- ing August 19, 1767. But down to 1764 at least, we do not notice that any Pendletonian seems to have been drawn for the grand jury of 24 members.
These years of peace and development were interrupted in 1774. There now broke out that strife with the red man which is known as the Dunmore war. The period of quiet had greatly broadened the belt of settlement in and beyond the Alleghanies, and Pendleton was much more populous than in 1758. A damaging inroad by the Indians was there- fore scarcely possible. Augusta raised 400 men for the army under General Andrew Lewis, with which he fought and won the great battle of Point Pleasant. In one of the Augusta companies it is said every man was at least six feet in height. Pendleton men formed a portion of the Augusta contingent, and Captain John Skidmore was wounded at Point Pleasant.
We now devote a little space to the opening of the Revolu- tionary period.
The people of the thirteen colonies were overwhelmingly of British descent. They were proud of their ancestry, and so long as their liberties were respected they were not inclined to break the tie that linked them to England. This tie they regarded as little more than nominal. They willingly acknowl- edged their allegiance to the king of England, but did not freely recognize the authority of any lawmaking body except their own legislatures. They did not see why the statutes under which they lived should be made or passed upon by a legislative body representing only the British people. They were suspicious of every act of Parliament which included them in its provisions, but so long as no particular harm was done to their rights they remained quiet.
When the ignorant, stubborn George III became king and tried not only to rule as an autocrat but to control Parlia- ment by bribery, then it was that the Americans were thrown into a ferment. His attempt to make them pay taxes in which they had no say drove them into armed re- sistance. If the claim of the king were conceded, there was
no telling what else it might lead to. It had all along been expected of them that they would keep out of manufactur- ing, trade only with England, and be content with exchang- ing the products of their fields for the products of her work- shops. But the colonies were rapidly growing in population and wealth, and this shackling of industry was becoming in- tolerable.
The War of the Revolution was fought by the Americans to gain commercial freedom and to maintain their rights as British subjects. These claims did not necessarily lead to in- dependence. Independence was asserted and accomplished because the king was too blind and obstinate to recognize the rights of the Americans to the full exercise of the same privi- leges the British citizen possessed. Canada, Australia and South Africa remain British because their home government has learned wisdom from the lesson of 1783.
As the quarrel developed, the Americans were generally agreed that the British government was overleaping its pow- ers. They were not so fully agreed as to the expediency of political separation. Wealth is timid and conservative. The well-to-do merchants, professional men, and large landhold- ers were to a great extent unfriendly to independence. It is estimated that a third of the American people were of this opinion. Such men were styled tories and their opponents were called patriots. In New York and Pennsylvania the tories were as numerous as the patriots. In South Carolina and Georgia they were more numerous. In the other colo- nies the patriots were clearly in the lead. The American climate became too warm for the tories, and during the Rev- olution or at its close 200,000 of them went into exile.
The most unanimous of the Americans were the Scotch- Irish on the frontier. They stood by the cause of American independence almost to a man. It was they that Washing- ton had in mind when he said that as a last resort he would retire to the mountains of West Augusta and find in its men a force that "would lift up our bleeding country and set her free." By West Augusta he referred to the District of West Augusta in its original boundaries as described in a previous chapter.
The English and Germans are of the same general origin, and the German immigrants in America could not feel that they were under a very alien rule. The king of England was also king of Hanover, a country of Germany. He was in fact the grandson of a German-born and German-speaking monarch. Though the Germans have had many wars, they have not in modern times been a truly militant nation. They have fought from necessity and not from glory. The Amer-
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ican Germans could not forget that for a century their father- land had been most cruelly wasted by a rapid succession of civil, foreign and religious wars. It had lost three-fourths of its population and had been set back for two hundred years. It is therefore not to be wondered at that as British- American citizens these peace-loving people would sooner put up with injustice than go to arms. Being also clannish, un- familiar with the English tongue, and living much to them- selves, the quarrel did not strike them so forcibly as it did the Americans of British ancestry. So while many of the Ger- mans did good service in the American army, many others were tories.
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