USA > West Virginia > History and government of West Virginia > Part 9
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148 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.
Robert Thornton. And July 3d, 1787, his title was confirmed by the State. Parker died about the year 1800 and the lands descended to his daughter Mary, who wedded William Robinson, of Penn- sylvania. The title to the lands was disputed and the suit resulting therefrom continued until 1809, when the Parker heirs gained possession of the land, and December 11th, 1810, the town was laid out and named Parkersburg in honor of Alexander Parker.
13. Wheeling in 1810 .- A traveler who saw Wheel- ing in 1810, thus describes it: "Wheeling has but one street which is thickly built on for a quarter of a mile in length. The town has about 115 dwellings, II stores, 2 potteries of stoneware, and a market- house. And it had in 1808-9, a printing-office, a book store and library; the first two quit the town for want of public patronage; the last is still upheld by the citizens. The mail stage from Philadelphia to Baltimore arrives here twice a week by way of Pitts- burg and Wellsburg and thence westward; the mail is dispatched once a week on horses. The thorough- fare through Wheeling of emigrants and travelers, into the State of Ohio, and down the river, is very great in the spring and fall. Since the completion of the great turnpike, business and the carrying trade is very lively in and through Wheeling." Such was the chief city of West Virginia nearly a century ago.
14. Steam Navigation on the Ohio River .- Robert Fulton took up the steamboat where James Rumsey, the West Virginia inventor, left it. Genius, aided by the money of Chancellor Livingston, gave to the world
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FROM 1800 TO 1811.
the steamboat. August 7th, 1807, the "Claremont " left the wharf at New York and plowed its way up the Hudson bound for Albany. This boat was altered and called the "North River." The same year Fulton began the building of the " Raritan," designed for the. river of that name, and of the "Car of Neptune," for the Hudson.
15. Was the Ohio River Navigable for Steam- boats ?- The fourth steamboat was to be navigated on distant waters. Beyond the Alleghanies the Ohio river flowed away to the southwest through what has since become one of the most productive regions of the globe. Whether that river was navigable for steamboats was not known, but Fulton and Living- ston determined to ascertain. Nicholas J. Roosevelt was one among the most eminent civil engineers of his time and he was sent to explore the river. He,
A with his wife, reached Pittsburg in May, 1809. little flat-boat was secured and supplies for the journey provided, and the two went on board and began the descent of the river. It was mid-summer and at every angle or curve of the stream an ever-changing panorama of river, hill, plain and forest was presented to view. Six months passed away and the little boat lay at the levy at New Orleans, and those on board went to New York by ocean conveyance.
16. The Building of the Steamer " New Orleans." -Roosevelt's report demonstrated the feasibility of steam navigation on the Ohio, and in the spring of the year 1810 the great engineer was sent to Pitts- burg to superintend the building of the first steamboat
150 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.
on the western waters. Within the present. corporate limits of Allegheny City, Roosevelt laid the keel of his boat. The hull was 110 feet long and 24 feet wide. After nearly two years' labor the boat was completed at a cost of $38,000. She was launched and named the "New Orleans." The pilot steered her up the Monongahela and back and up the Alle- gheny. It was her trial trip and it was most satisfac- tory. All things were prepared for the voyage down the Ohio. Roosevelt and his wife were the only passengers aboard. There was a crew consisting of a captain, and engineer, two pilots, six hands.
On September 27th, 1811, the day of the steamer's departure, there was great excitement at Pittsburg. Almost the entire population thronged the banks of the Monongahela. There was heard many a God- speed from the people as the boat disappeared behind the first headlands. Onward sped the steamer at the rate of ten miles an hour. Short stops were made at Cincin- STEAMER "NEW ORLEANS." nati and Louisville and passengers and freight were taken on board at Natchez for New Orleans. It was the experimental voyage and the beginning of the greatest inland commerce of the world. From 181I. to 1818, fifteen steamers were built on the Ohio, and by the year 1820, forty had been built on west- ern waters, seven of which had been wrecked and thirty-three were in service.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE WAR OF 1812; NEWSPAPERS. From 1811 to 1825.
1. West Virginia in the War of 1812 .- When the second war with Great Britain was declared, Vir- ginia called upon her sons to defend her soil from the foot of the invader, and nowhere did that call meet with a more ready response than amid the hills and valleys of West Virginia where dwelt the sons of the Minute Men of the Revolution. There lived the descendants of the men who had seen service in the War for Independence and had withstood the storm of savage warfare for many years. From the summit of the Alleghanies to the banks of the Ohio, men mounted their horses, strapped on their knapsacks and turned their faces from home.
2. Their Gathering at the City on the James .- There was no distinction of the rich and the poor. Gentlemen who had occupied conspicuous places in . the halls of legislation, the plowman fresh from the fallowed field, officers, soldiers, citizens, all went with
one accord. Within a fortnight after the call to arms, fifteen thousand men were encamped within sight of Richmond, among them the largest body of cavalry- horsemen from the west side of the Blue Ridge-that, up to that time, had ever been reviewed on the Conti- nent. There were too many and in one morning, one
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152 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.
thousand of them were discharged and sent home. On their way over the Blue Ridge they met whole companies, some from the banks of the Ohio, still march- ing to the East. Command- ing one of these companies was Captain Peter H. Steen- bergen. Nearly a regiment of West Virginians marched to the West and served with General Harrison on the Mau- GEN. P. H. STEENBERGEN .* mee. Dr. Jesse Bennett, the first regularly educated physi- cian in Mason county, was the surgeon of the regi- ment. Major Andrew Waggener, of Berkeley county, was the Hero of Lundy's Lane, and the first men to double-quick up Pennsylvania avenue, after the British General Ross had fired the National Capitol, was a battalion of minute inen from the Virginia mountains.
3. Direct Tax Paid by the Counties of West Vir- ginia .- The collection of a Direct Tax by the General Government is only resorted to in cases of great emer- gency. The second Section of Article I, of the Federal Constitution, declares that " direct taxes shall be ap-
*General Peter H. Steenbergen was born July 12th, 1788, near Moorefield, in Hardy county. He was educated at Washington Hall, now Washington and Lee University, Virginia, and settled on the Ohio river in Mason county, now West Virginia, in 1811. When the second war with England came, he entered the army as captain of a cavalry company mustered in Mason county. He rose to the rank of colonel in the Virginia military establishment, and then to that of Brigadier-General, which he held for many years. He died July 31st, 1863.
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THE WAR OF 1812; NEWSPAPERS.
portioned among the several states which may be in- cluded within this Union according to numbers." The first time that Congress availed itself of this constitu- tional provision was to aid in the prosecution of the second war with England, when, on August 2d, 1813, an act was passed requiring the collection of $3,000,000.00. There were then eighteen States, and the amount apportioned to Vir- ginia, was $369,018.44. Of the DR. JESSE BENNETT .* counties now embraced in West Virginia, sixteen then had an existence, and each paid as follows: Monroe county, $1,030. 50; Greenbrier, $1,650.44; Kanawha, $2, 167 .- 50; Cabell, $1,546.50; Mason, $1, 130.50; Randolph, $5,465. 50; Harrison, $2,672.50; Wood, $1,338. 50; Monongalia, $2,992.50 ; Ohio, $1,907.50; Brooke, $1, 195.50; Pendleton, $1,428.50; Hardy, $2, 126.50;
*Dr. Jesse Bennett was born near Philadelphia, July 10th, 1769. After completing his medical studies, he removed West and set- tled on the Ohio river, six miles above the mouth of the Great Kanawha. Upon the organization of Mason county, in 1804, he was made Colonel Commandant, and as such was the custodian of the military stores belonging to the county. The same year he was visited by Harman Blennerhassett, who tried to induce him to join in the wild and visionary scheme in which he and Burr were then engaged. Bennett refused, but, fearing that the guns in his possession might be taken by force, he had them buried on Six-Mile inland until the danger was past. Dr. Bennett repre- sented Mason county in the Virginia Assembly of 1808-9, and was surgeon of Colonel Dudley Evans' 2d Virginia Regiment, in the War of 1812. He died July 18th, 1842.
1 54 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.
Hampshire, $3,795.50; Berkeley, $6. 147.22 ; Jefferson, $6,876.28-a total of $43,469.94, which the pioneer settlers paid to assist in securing the rights of Amer- icans upon the high seas.
4. First Newspapers in West Virginia .- The first newspaper published in West Virginia was The Potomac Guardian and Berkeley Advertiser, founded at Martins- burg in 1789 by Dr. Thomas Henry, a physician of Berkeley county. The second was the Martinsburg Gazette, established by Nathaniel Willis in 1789. The third was the Berkeley and Jefferson county Intelligencer and Northern Neck Advertiser, which was established in the year 1800, John Alburtis being the publisher. The first newspaper printed in Wheeling was the Repos- itory, which made its appearance in 1807. Following closely after it were the Times, Gazette, Telegraph and Virginian. In 1808, The Farmer's Repository, published at Charlestown, Jefferson county, made its appearance. The first newspaper published at Charleston, the present Capital of the State, was the Kanawha Patriot, published by Herbert P. Gaines in 1819.
5. The Founding of Lewisburg Academy .- This was the most important school in the early history of the State. Its founder was Reverend John McElhen- ney, who was one worthy of the institution and the in- stitution was one worthy of such a founder. He came as a minister to Greenbrier county in 1808, and the same year he opened a classical school which he con- tinued and which four years later, developed into the Lewisburg Academy, which was incorporated by Act
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THE WAR OF 1812; NEWSPAPERS.
of the Assembly in 1812. Dr. McElhenney con- tinued as president of the school until 1824, and was president of the Board of Trus- tees from 1812, to 1860 -a period of forty-eight years. From its walls went forth legis- lators, great debaters and scien- tists, to become active charac- ters in establishing western commonwealths.
REV. JOHN M'ELHENNEY.
6. Establishment of the Linsly Institute .- The estab- lishment of this institution at Wheeling dates back to the
year 1814. Its founder was Noah Linsly, who was
He was a
born in Bradford, Connecticut, in 1772.
graduate of Yale College and in 1798, came to Mor- gantown, then in Virginia, where he spent two years and then removed to Wheeling, where he died of hemorrhage of the lungs in 1814. In his will he made provision for the establishment of a school, to be free to such white children as the trustees might deem worthy. Samuel Sprigg and Noah Zane were named as exec- utors of the will and they hastened to apply to the Virginia Assembly for a charter for the school. This was granted and the school put in operation. It still continues its usefulness.
* Reverend John McElhenney was born in South Carolina in 1781, and was educated at Liberty Hall Academy, now Washing- ton and Lee University, Virginia. Entering the ministry, he came to Lewisburg and began a pastorate which contined more than sixty years. In 1808, he founded the Lewisburg Academy. He died January 2d, 1871, in the ninety-first year of his age.
156 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.
7. The National Road .- Virginia led in the work of constructing roads over the Alleghany mountains, and in the year 1802, the State began the construc- tion of a road from the mouth of George's Creek to the nearest western navigation. £ But before its com- pletion the National Government began the construc- ion of the most important highway ever made on the Continent. It began at Cumberland, Maryland, in 1808, and the last appropriation was made in 1844, to complete the survey of the route to Jefferson City, Missouri. The total cost of this great thoroughfare was $6,824,919. 33.
8. Completion of the Road to Wheeling .- Ten years passed away after work begun at Cumberland, before the road was opened to Wheeling. The road when opened to the Ohio River at once became a great commercial, military and national highway. In a speech delivered in Congress in 1832, it was stated that: "In the year 1822 a single house in the town of Wheeling unloaded 1,081 wagons averaging about 3,500 pounds each and paid for the carriage of the goods $90,000. At that time there were five other commission houses in the same place, and estimating that each of these received two-thirds the amount of goods consigned to the first, there must have been nearly five thousand wagons unloaded and nearly $400,000 paid as cost for transportation." There were no railroads at that time and the National Pike was for years the only thoroughfare connecting the East with the West. It was the most important road ever built by the National Government.
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THE WAR OF 1812; NEWSPAPERS.
9. Road Making early in the Century .- In the first decade of the present century many roads were constructed in the territory now embraced in the State. Among these were the following: from Mor- gantown to the mouth of Grave Creek-now Mounds- ville; from Dunlap's Creek on James River to Morris, -now Brownstown on the Great Kanawha; from the mouth of Elk river-now Charleston-down that stream to the Ohio river-now Point Pleasant; from Lewisburg in Greenbrier county to the Falls of the Great Kanawha. Thus were the highways of civilized men rapidly extended through the wilderness.
10. The Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs .- This is the most celebrated summer resort in the South-
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SCENE AT WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS.
ern States. The land on which it is situated was pat- ented by Nathaniel Carpenter, who reared his cabin near the Spring and removed his family to it in 1774.
158 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.
Soon after the Indians murdered all the family, except Kate, the mother, and an infant with which she escaped to a high mountain where she lay concealed until the Indians were gone and then made her way to Staunton to tell of the sad fate of her family. "Kate's Moun- tain" will ever be an object of interest to those who visit White Sulphur THE WHITE SULPHUR SPRING. Springs. William Hern- don was the first to make it a place of resort, but in 1818, James Caldwell became the owner of the property and with that year begins the history of the Springs as a national resort. Both Nature and Art have done much to render it an enchanted spot. The fountain is crowned with a stately Doric dome, sup- ported by twelve large pillars, the whole surmounted by a colossal statue of Hygeia looking toward the rising sun.
11. Steam Navigation on the Great Kanawha .- In the year 1819-the same in which the first steam- ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean-a steamboat called the "Robert Thompson " ascended the Great Kanawha for the purpose of ascertaining whether it was naviga- ble to Charleston. The voyage continued as far as . Red House Shoals, where two days were spent in a vain effort to pass the rapids, and the boat returned to the Ohio; the officers reported to the Virginia Assem- bly the result of the experimental voyage, and that
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THE WAR OF 1812; NEWSPAPERS.
body in 1820, made the first appropriation for the im- provement of the river.
12. Towns Established in West Virginia From 1800 to 1825 .- The Assembly increased the number of towns west of the mountains as rapidly as the in- creasing population demanded. Elizabethtown, laid out by Joseph Tomlinson at the mouth of Grave Creek in 1803, was named for his wife; Guyandotte in Cabell county, and Middlebourne in Tyler county were both laid out in 1810; Kingwood in Preston county was made a town in 1811, and became the county seat in 1818; Barboursville in Cabell county, was established in 1813; Bridgeport, at Simpson's Creek bridge, in Harrison county, and Buckhannon now in Upshur county, became towns in 1816; Wes- ton, in Lewis county, was established under the name of Preston in 1818, but the name was changed to Fleshersville and finally to Weston in 1819; Summers- ville in Nicholas county, and Fairmont, then called Middletown, now in Marion county, were made towns in 1820; Huntersville Pocahontas county, began its legal existence in 1821, and Harrisville, then in Wood, but now in Ritchie county, was established a town in 1822.
13. Doddridge's History of the Indian Wars .-- In 1824, Rev. Joseph Doddridge* published a book at
*Rev. Joseph Doddridge, author and minister, was born Octo- ber 14th, 1769, in Friend's Cove, Bedford county, Pennsylvania, and when but four years of age removed with his parents to a cabin home near the Western Pennsylvania line; and from there, later in life, to Brooke county, Virginia. He was sent to school in Maryland, where he received an excellent English education,
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160 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA,
Wellsburg, entitled "Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania from 1763 to 1783, Inclusive." It was the first work published which gave a view of the state of society, manners and customs of the first settlers of the Western country. It has been widely read, and it must form the basis of the intelligent study of Western annals, for without a knowledge of the character of the people who made pioneer history, it will be impossible to understand it properly, and without this correct understanding, an attempt to study our National History will result largely in fail- ure.
and later was a student in Jefferson Academy at Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania. Entering the ministry, he became pastor of three churches in what is now West Virginia, viz. : one at West Liberty, Ohio county, and St. John's and St. Paul's in Brooke county. Dr. Doddridge died at Wellsburg, Brooke county, November 9th, 1826. He was one of the most scholarly men whose name appears in the early history of West Virginia.
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CHAPTER XIV.
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES AND OTHER EVENTS.
From 1825 to 1842.
1. The First Constitution of Virginia .- In the year 1776 Virginia framed and adopted a Constitu- tion by which the people were governed for more than fifty years. It was the first document of the kind framed by an American State, and, prepared without a precedent, it was but natural that in it there should be some imperfections. Among these, the most important were the unequal representation of the counties and the limitation of suffrage to free- holders. The latter was imposed upon the colony in 1677 by royal instruction from King Charles II. to the Governor of Virginia "to take care that the members of the Assembly be elected only by free- holders, as being more agreeable to the customs of England," to which he might have added, "and more agreeable to monarchial institutions."
2. Dissatisfaction in What is Now West Vir- ginia .- The increase of population and the organi- zation of counties west of the Blue Ridge, by the year 1825, made the unequal representation of the several counties of the State more apparent; for, while each of a number of these western counties paid into the State treasury many times more than some
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162 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.
of the eastern counties, yet the representation of each on the floor of the General Assembly was the same. It was asserted that it was taxation without representa- tion, and great dissatisfaction was developed among the men who were felling the forests on the western slope of the Alleghanies and in the valleys toward the Ohio.
3. A Constitutional Convention .- There was a popular demand for a Constitutional Convention, and the Assembly, in 1827-8, passed an act providing that a vote should be taken upon the question. This re- sulted in a large majority in favor of the Convention, and that body assembled in Rich- mond October 5th, 1829. It was the most remarkable body of men that had assembled in JUDGE EDWIN S. DUNCAN .* Virginia since that which rati- fied the Federal Constitution in 1788. There sat James Madison and James Mon- roe, ex-Presidents of the United States; John Randolph
*Judge Edwin S. Duncan, the member from Harrison county, was born in Shenandoah county, Virginia, in the year 1790. He came to Randolph county in 1810, and was soon after elected to the House of Delegates. He served as chief staff officer in Colonel Booth's Virginia Regiment during the second war with Great Britain. In 1816 he removed to Harrison county. He was prosecuting attorney of Lewis county in 1816, a mem- ber of the State Senate in 1820; appointed United States Dis- trict Attorney for the Western District of Virginia in 1824; was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1829-30; was elected a Judge. of the General Court of Virginia and of the
164 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.
title of the "History of the Valley," by Samuel Kercheval, and to it we are indebted for much of our knowledge of the early history of the Eastern Pan- handle and of the South Branch Valley. The work is now very rare, although it was reprinted in 1851 at Woodstock, in the Shenandoah Valley. Historians place a very high value on it.
6. The First Railroad in West Virginia. - The first stone laid in the construction of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was put in place on July 4th, 1828, by Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, then the only sur- vivor of the signers of the Declaration of Independ- ence. From that time onward the work was prose- cuted vigorously, until, on the first day of December, 1834, the road was opened to Harper's Ferry, eighty- one miles distant from Baltimore.
7. Over the Mountains to the Ohio River .- On November 5th, 1842, the whistle of the locomotive
ROSBBY'S ROCK. TRACK CLOSED CHRISTMAS EVE, 1852.
ROSBBY'S ROCK, SEVEN MILES EAST OF MOUNDSVILLE.
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES AND OTHER EVENTS. 165
was heard for the first time at Cumberland City, in Western Maryland. Then work began on both sides of the mountains. The construction of the road was at that time the greatest triumph of engineering skill that had been witnessed in this or any other country. December 24th, 1852, the last spike was driven, and on the evening of January Ist, 1853, the President of the road with his guests from the city of Baltimore and the States of Maryland and Virginia, stood on the banks of the Ohio river at Wheeling, having been carried thither by the first through train from the Atlantic ocean to the Ohio river. The construc- tion of the road from Grafton to the Ohio at Parkers- burg was commenced late in December, 1852, and opened to Parkersburg May Ist, 1857. Such were the first railroads constructed in West Virginia.
8. The Maryland - Virginia Boundary. - Some years after the planting of the Fairfax Stone, Mary- land claimed that it should have been located at the first fountain of the South Branch of the Potomac, instead of at that at the North Branch, and as early as 1753, Horatio Sharpe, governor of that Colony, sent Thomas Cresap, the most prominent man in Western Maryland, to make a map of the region drained by the upper branches of the Potomac.
9. Virginia Prepares to Make a Defense .-- Through all the years from 1753 to 1830, Maryland continued to urge that the southwest corner of that State should be at the first fountain of the South Branch, and, in the last-named year, Governor Floyd of Virginia appointed Charles J. Faulkner, Sr., of
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166 HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT OF WEST VIRGINIA.
Martinsburg, to embody testimony on the part of Virginia. This he did, and his report, completed in 1832, stayed for a time the controversy which, how- ever, has been revived recently.
10. Construction of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. -This canal, though no part of it was in West Vir- ginia, yet exerted a great influence upon the trade of the eastern part of the State. May 29th, 1828, Con- gress appropriated $1,000,000 towards the construction of the canal. Hundreds of laborers were employed for a number of years, and the great waterway from the mountains at Cumberland, to Alexandria, below Washington City, was formally opened for traffic, October 10th, 1850.
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