USA > West Virginia > Braxton County > History of Braxton County and central West Virginia > Part 22
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THE DAYS OF RECONSTRUCTION. 1866-1867.
The depression and stringency following the war were soon overborne by the rising spirit of progress and the on rush of material prosperity. Condi- tions in May, 1866, are thus graphically portrayed in a Rockingham paper.
"The remarkable display of energy by the people of the Valley, since the close of the war, is the most forcible commentary that could be given of their character. Without a currency, almost destitute of money, their fields laid
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waste, barns and other farm houses destroyed, stock stolen and driven off, no surplus supplies on hand, and their labor system broken up, vet they have managed to rebuild their fences and barns, repair their premises generally, and (make) progress in improvements heretofore not enjoyed. Throughout the entire Valley steam saw-mills dot almost every neighborhood, factories and foundries are being built, and the slow and imperfect implements of agricul- tural husbandry heretofore used supplanted by the most improved labor-saving machinery.
"At Mt. Crawford, a large Woolen Factory is in process of construction ; also, an Earthen Ware establishment. In Harrisonburg, Messrs. Bradley & Co. have in successful operation their Foundry, and will shortly commence erecting a much larger one, on ground recently purchased for that purpose near the old building. At Port Republic and McGaheysville the spirit of en- terprise is fully awakened, factories, foundries and mills being put into opera- tion as rapidly as the workmen can complete their contracts. Carding mills arc, also multiplying throughout the county, and many other improvements are being inaugurated, which we have not space to enumerate."
The author remembers seeing many Confederates in uniform building and repairing fences around grain fields three or four days after the surrender of General Lée.
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CHAPTER VIII.
Early Commerce; West Virginia's Great Wealth in Native Ginseng; Its Value to the Early Settlers; Old Mills; Lumbering on Elk; Great Floods.
EARLY COMMERCE.
The first wants of the settlers of central West Virginia were gunpowder, lead, flint, salt and corn meal, the scantiest outfit of cooking utensils, a few dishes, knives, forks, etc., according to their ability to buy, and their op- portunities to exchange certain ar- tieles of commerce which they ob- tained in the forest, such as furs, bear skins, venison hams and gin- seng. The wants of the people were not great, but what little they pos- sessed were luxuries at that day.
The men dressed in tow linen and buckskin; the women wore lin- cn and cotton goods winter and summer, the products of their own toil. The men almost universally wore moccasins and fur caps. A lit- tle later the people began to tan their own leather, using wooden troughs for vats. Bear skins and decr hides were sometimes used as a part of their bedding, as well as the buffalo robe.
JOHN BROWN The communications over the mountains from the eastern settle- ment was at first by pack-horses, and later by wagons. As the settlements in- creased in numbers and the people became more domesticated and stable in their local societies and government, the commercial interests of exchange be- came greater, and increased as time went on. While ginseng at one time brought but twelve and one-half cents a pound, quinine sold as high as thirty- two dollars an ounce. Ginseng has since advanced to twelve' dollars a pound while quinine has been reduced to a few shillings an ounce until the late Euro- pean war when it has again advanced as high as thirty-five dollars a pound; however, this is only a temporary flucituation. In an early day, the great for-
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ests of West Virginia were a veritable bed of ginseng, black snakeroot, yellow- root and other valuable herbs of medicinal qualities. Still as the population grew and the people had greater road facilities, the necessities of the settlers increased and the people becanie enabled to supply themselves with articles such as hitherto had been denied them. There was nothing to bring money into the country except the articles above mentioned, and they, as a rule, had to be exchanged for various articles of strenuous domestic necessity.
The first live stock taken to market from the central and southern parts of the state was driven over the mountains on foot. The greater portion of the carly traffic was in hogs as the abundant masts of that day enabled the farmers to raise them with the use of hut little grain. The greatest trouble was to keep bears and other animals from destroying the hogs. A great many went wild in the woods and the boars became very large and savage, having wonderful tusks. To catch one alive required several men and dogs. The chase and fight with a wild boar was equal to the excitement of a bear hunt, and often the dogs were killed by the long sharp tusks of the boar. It was common at that day for farmers to mark the ears of their stock, and frequently the ear marks were altered. People would put their own mark on any nu- marked hog they could find and litigation became a very common thing, and was the subject of much controversy. Some marked by a crop in the left ear and a slit in the right; others by a crop in the right car and a slit in the left : some by a crop in the left ear and a swallow fork in the right ; others by a crop in the right car and a swallow fork in the left; some by two slits in the right car and an upper bit in the left; others by two slits in the left ear and an upper bit in the right; some by a slit in cach ear; some by a swallow fork, bits and half upper crops; some by swallow forks and half crops, and a vast number of other marks to which the car was subject. Two whole crops were considered a rogue's mark. Some had the ear-marks recorded in the Clerk's office.
HOG STEALING.
Old Uncle Ezra Clifton, one of the first settlers on the Holly river, had a very fine hog to stray off, and at last he found trace of it, and discovered that one of his neighbors named was feeding the hog under a cliff of rocks which stood above his cabin. He allowed the feeding to go on until one day he saw his neighbor starting to Bulltown to get a load of salt, then he knew that butchering time was at hand. He took two of his sons and his dog, and went up to the house and inquired of the wife whether they had scen anything of a stray hog, and she said, "Indeed, Uncle Ezra, we haven't scen a stray hog about, this fall." Uncle Ezra and the boys went up to the rock cliff and found the hog in a fat and fine condition, with quite a pile of corn cobs close by. The hog took fright at the men and dog and bounded down the mountain, and being large and fat and terribly frightened, happened to get in line with the door of the cabin and bounded in. As there was a door opposite the one facing the hill, the hog closely pursued by the dog, Unele Ezra
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and the boys, ran through the lower door and plunged into the river where the dog held him at bay until Mr. Cliffton shot him. He then proceeded to dress the hog. He had brought two horses and sacks to carry the meat in, and had left them concealed below the cabin until he had the pork ready for transportation. He then told Mrs. that he had hung the entrails on the fence, and to tell her husband when he came home that he might dress them for what lard he could get.
This same Mr. was a hunter and lick watcher, and went at one time with Colonel Newlon to watch a deer lick on Steer creek. Some time in the night, he stole the Colonel's pistol and hid it in a hollow beech trec. The Colonel swore out a warrant against him for stealing the pistol. Mr.
was at the time engaged to be married, and Charles Mollohan, the sheriff, hav- ing the warrant, went to the wedding and placed the intended groom under arrest. As he was starting away with the sheriff, the mother of the intended
bride said, "Now; .. , go on, and if you are guilty, take your medi- eine like a man (which was the whipping post) and if you are innocent, come back and be married if my daughter is willing to have you." It developed at the trial that the Colonel was unwilling to state positively that the man had stolen his pistol, but swore that either. his horse or his dog had stolen the pistol. Then the man was discharged and went back and married the girl. This was the same woman who later in life said, "Indeed, Uncle Ezra, there has been no stray hog here."
Some years after the Colonel had watched the deer lick, his pistol was found near the place, where it had been concealed at the root of a hollow beech tree. The stream has since been known by the name of the Pistol Fork.
It was a general custom to put bells on the stock. Some large, well-made bells could be heard three and four miles. The smaller bells called sheep bells, could be heard for a long distance. Some woodsmen became as familiar with the sound of their neighbor's cow bell as they did with the human voice. Israel A. Friend, the gun-maker, made a great number of bells. His make of bells always bore his initials, and were the finest on the market. It was not unusual on public days at the county scat to see Israel going up and down the street, rattling a great string of bells.
Indians often caught the bell cow, and took the bell off and allured some of the family to the woods by rattling the bell, and in this way many, not expecting danger, lost their lives. Another ruse of the Indian was to gobble like a turkey, causing the unsuspecting hunter to venture too near, and some- times the experienced hunter would turn the trick on the Indian. The stock bell has become a thing of the past. Often at this day thousands of cattle and sheep are driven to the scale pens and loading stations without the sound of a bell. The fur trade and ginseng have been from the first, great sources of revenue, being the first means of bringing money into the interior. Some of the more provident farmers would have a surplus of corn. They would dis- pose of this to families moving in, to travelers and hunters, and later to teamsters.
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The farmers, in addition to raising flax, began to raise a few sheep. The wool was carded by hand and spun on wheels made by some ingenious person. Tradesmen followed civilization. Some of the home-made wheels and looms were very crude implements, but they answered the purpose. Nearly every farmer raised a patch of flax. After the flax ripened, it was pulled and spread on the ground in swaths to cure and become brittle. It was then stored away in some out-building or shed until the following spring, and in the warm clear days of March or April farmers would break and scutch flax. Usually some ex- pert flax-breaker residing in the neighborhood would be employed. A flax break was a simple machine, consisting of a wooden frame about five feet long and eighteen inches wide, standing on four legs the height of an ordinary table. There were three slats or bars placed edgewise, extending the full length of the frame. These were made of strong oak, with edges shaved down thin. The three bars were placed close together at one end, and widened a little at the other. The break-head was made with two similar bars which fit into the interstices of the three bars beneath. This break-head was fastened at one end by a hinge, and the operator would stand by the side of the break, raise and lower the loose end with his right hand, and hold a bunch of flax with his left. This he would place across the machine, and move it as required until the wood fiber was broken up, leaving the lint free. First the seed was threshed off. One good hand with a break would keep two or three busy scutching. This was done by driving a broad piece of board into the ground or nailing it to a block with the lower end over which the flax was whipped, dressed down smoothly to an edge. The board was placed at a convenient height to suit the operator. The scutching knife was a flat blade made of hard wood. The operator would hold a bunch of flax after it had gone through the first operation in one hand across the board, and use the scutching knife with the other. The scutching was usually done by the young ladies of the household. It can readily be seen how natural it became for them in after life to hold a "kid" out at arm's length and give him a "good scutching," sometimes called a "flaxing." The flax after it was scutched, was ready for the hackle. This was the last process be- fore spinning. A hackle was made by driving a number of spikes into a block, and through the teeth or spikes the flax was drawn repeatedly until it was thoroughly combed out, leaving nothing but the fine fiber. Flax-breaking came the first warm days of spring when all nature rejoiced in the sunlight and warmth, when the air was balmy, the birds sang and the hens cackled and began to make nests. Flax-breaking was a day of festivity. Nearly all the wearing apparel of the family was made of flax. The men and boys wore tow liner shirts and trousers. Later the women made a cotton cloth with a check of blue out of which they made elegant looking garments for themselves-dresses, aprons and sun-bonnets. Table linen. bed sheets, sacks and towels were first mnade of home-spun linen. When the country hecame sufficiently cleared of wild animals to admit of raising a few sheep, the wool was worked by hand. After it was washed, dried, picked and made free of all burs and dirt, it was carded and made into short rolls ready to spin. The cards were made on
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boards about five by eight inches with a handle much the size and shape of an ordinary currycomb. The teeth of the cards were made of fine wire, and placed on one side of the card board. The other side of the board was made smooth by the use of which the rolls were made by rubbing the wool between them after it had been carded. The carding was usually done by the women, by the light of a pine-knot fire.
The ginseng industry mentioned in another place was a great source of revenue to the people. They not only obtained their groceries, hardware, salt and many other useful articles which they pushed up the river in canoes, but the trade circulated considerable money. Charleston was a good market for venison hams, bear skins, furs, vegetables, butter, eggs and poultry. Flat- boating on the Elk river required the finest poplar trees for gunwales, boat bottoms, siding, etc. The larger boats were built one hundred and sixty feet. in length by twenty-two in width, and were sided up about four feet above the gunwales. One of these barges would carry an immense load of staves or hoop-poles, but could not be loaded to anything near their capacity until they reached the Great Kanawha river as they were too heavy with a full load to be taken down the rapid swirls of the Elk. They were guided by means of two long sweeps or oars hung on a pivot at either end of the boat. Five men, three on the bow and two on the stern, consituted a full crew. One on the stern was called the steersman, and he gave the commands to the bow hands. It required on an ordinary tide, about twenty-four to thirty-six hours to make the run from Sutton to Charleston. The lumbermen of central West Virginia were a hardy and industrious set of men who earned more than they received out of their product and their labor. The lumbermen of the Elk were noted for the amount of strong coffee they consumed. The advent of railroads and commercial sawmills have consumed the timber, and stopped the operation of the boatmen forever. Peace to the memory of their heroic lives. After the Civil war, the population increased, money became more plentiful and rail- roads began to pierce the interior of the state. Before the introduction of rail- roads in the interior of the state, the people never thought of buying their flour and meat, but each farmer tried to produce enough for his own consump- tion with some to spare. But public works and the lumber trade have called men from the farms and reduced the country to want. Many, even farmers, rely upon the importation of flour and meat, and the amount of hay, straw and chop consumed is far in excess of the county's production, and in some counties what has been obtained for labor, timber and the minerals are being consumed by what the country requires for its own sustenance. Hence, with the introduction of the more modern improvements, agriculture in many coun- ties is seriously crippled.
Central West Virginia is a grazing section. Some of the finest horses, cattle and sheep have been sent to the eastern markets from the interior coun- ties. Harrison, Lewis, Gilmer and Braxton have fine grazing lands, and han- dle a great deal of stock. Nicholas has fine meadow land, and winters a great many cattle and sheep, but her lands are not as well adapted to grazing.
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Since the development of oil and gas in some of the interior sections, many have allowed to grow up in brush and briars such as were onee the finest graz- ing lands; but the stock that might be raised on the oil produeing lands would be insignifieant compared to the great wealth of the mineral production. A land that a few generations ago was the wild battle field of the savage and the frontiersman, is now checkered with railroads and eleetrie lines, as well as with publie buildings. From the pack-horse, the fur and the ginseng, great eom- mercial centers have grown up. The villages have grown into thriving towns, and the towns into cities, and her banks are filled with their surplus millions, and what is true of Harrison as well as many other counties of the State will doubtless be true of Lewis, Braxton and Gilmer.
Many thousands of acres of land in various seetions of the state are drawing oil rentals, the usual price being $1.00 per acre, paid quarterly. This has been a source of considerable revenue to the people, especially the farmer. Everything of a primitive character has been modernized, increased and be- come of greater utility to the publie. The simple methods of the early settlers, or even of the last generation, would be wholly inadequate to the needs of the present generation.
GINSENG.
Perhaps the largest pateh of ginseng ever discovered in the world, at least in the wild state, was found in Randolph county in 1840 by W. H. Wilson while surveying the line between Randolph and Pocahontas counties. The discovery was lost sight of until Thomas Woods, a seout re-discovered it. He told of the "find" to some friend in Webster county. They gathered a com- pany and dug the "seng." At the low price then prevailing. not perhaps one- twelfth of what it is now worth, they sold six hundred dollars' worth from the pateh, at fifty cents a pound, which at that day was perhaps the top price. This would indicate that they dug twelve hundred pounds, which, at the price of fifty cents an ounce ruling now, would place the value of that patch of gin- seng at this time at over nine thousand dollars. The ginseng which has been dug in West Virginia would, at the present prices, amount to a fabulous sum.
In 1909, James W. Foley came to Braxton from Monongalia county, and commeneed the cultivation of ginseng. He purchased ten acres of land on Buffalo mountain about one and a half miles from Sutton. Two aeres of the land had been eleared. Mr. Foley, with the help of his family, built a residence and cleared out the greater portion of the remaining eight aeres of woodland. He laid off a seng garden containing a little over one half aere, and a portion of this he planted in ginseng the first year, continuing to plant each year until the entire plot was planted, except a small portion which he planted in golden seal, commonly known as Yellowroot. He obtained the seed from the native plants. In the ginseng garden, the rows are twenty-two feet long and six feet wide. The ginseng stocks are planted 6 x 10 inches in the beds.
Yellowroot is now worth in the market about four dollars a pound. The
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first sale of ginseng Mr. Foley made was $106 worth of three year old roots, and the fourth year he sold $115 worth. The price obtained was $4.75 per pound. The fifth year, he will market one hundred pounds, and the price quoted is $9.00 for first-class roots. As he markets a portion of his oldest beds, he replants. Mr. Foley gathers his own seed. It requires all the seed he can raise to restock his garden. The pods average seventy-five or eighty seeds. They are quoted in the market at about one dollar a thousand. Native wild seng is quoted at twelve dollars a pound for first-class roots, being one-fourth higher in price than the cultivated seng. This garden is regularly laid off. There are three hundred posts placed regularly apart and joverlaid with poles or slats, over which he places brush for shade. He has grape vines grow- ing all through the garden and they now cover a considerable portion of the ground. Some of them are in bearing. The seng looks much thriftier where the shade is most dense. It is one of the few plants that perish in the sun- light. The white honeysuckle grows in the dark and secluded glens and per- haps would perish if exposed to the rays of the sun, At a place called "The End of the World," in Clay county, in the cliffs hidden from the sun a white honeysuckle is said to grow. 'The white-blooming series, a delicate and lovely flower, blooms only at midnight, when the sun is farthest from the earth. The seng stock, being green like other herbs and plants in the forest which sur- round it, one will have to look elsewhere for the cause of its nature to avoid the light of the sun. Mr. Foley speaks of three kinds of seng-the Japanese, the Korean and the American. The Korean is quoted in its native country as high as fifty dollars a pound, while the Japanese is comparatively worthless and is quoted in America as low as fifty cents a pound. The cultivated Ameri- can seng roots, at five years of age, average about five ounces. Seng roots weighing two ounces and up bring the highest prices. In Mr. Foley's garden there is one single seng stock having six leaves and two seed pods. This is the only instance in Mr. Foley's experience of a single stock bearing a double pod. It is a splendid sight to see this magnificent garden of seng while it is maturing its red berries. This garden is worth many hundreds of dollars. The cultivation of native ginseng might be made very profitable in a small way by many farmers. Without considering the matter it might seem incred- ible to some if we were to make the statement that the value of the wild ginseng has been many times greater in a commercial sense to the inhabitants of cen- tral West Virginia than all the magnificent timber that has stood as stately sentinels in the forest for a thousand years. Ginseng was the greatest source of income the common people had for a half century after the settlement of the country. While it took only forty pounds of seng to bring ten dollars at the early low prices that prevailed, it required a medium three-year-old steer to bring an equal amount; and while it required four pounds of seng roots to bring one dollar, which amount a boy could dig in a half day, it took a walnut tree with two thousand feet of lumber or a poplar with twice that amount, to bring a dollar. Those who sold their timber at the extreme low prices offered had so much on the clear, and those who undertook to manufacture theirs
.
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usually lost it all. While the timber lasted but a season, the seng-digger had his source of income last for fifty years or more. Skins and furs were the first articles of commerce. It was not the wild woodsman and professional hunter who derived a profit from this trade alone, but the farmer as well who eom- bined farming and hunting, to get sueh artieles as he required. Neither was it the professional seng-digger who derived most benefit from seng, but the man and his family who used their spare time. Ginseng has always been in demand and was eagerly sought by all the merehants who usually paid half eash and half in goods. The farmer and his small boys could at odd times supply the family with such artieles as they required and often pay their taxes with money derived from the sale of this product. A great many of the best eitizens and successful business men of central West Virginia bought their school books and made their first pocket change by digging the greatest of all the herbs known. For half a century or more nien and horses, wagons and eanoes loaded with ginseng were streaming out of central West Virginia to the Eastern markets. No estimate ean be placed upon the amount of seng that was dug, but it amounted to thousands of dollars annually, and may, by cul- tivation, continue to be a commodity of great value. D. S. Squires, in his diary, says that from June to November, 1859, he shipped four hundred and fifty pounds of ginseng and twenty-eight pounds of seneca. We note some single roots of very great size: S. Wise Stalnaker relates that he has paid as much as fifty cents for a single root. Sheridan Wolverton dug a seng root which brought him, at George Gillespie's store, $1.20. Peter Hamrie dug a ginseng root on Big run, a small tributary of the Elk river in Webster county, which weighed fourteen ounees, and sold it at Joseph Hamrie's store at the mouth of Leatherwood for $2.33 1-3. Bailey Stump of Gilmer county relates that he dug on Steer creek two roots which weighed twelve ounces each. John G. Morrison relates that he dug near the north slope of High Knob a root weighing twenty ounees' in the year 1848. It grew near the root of a very large walnut tree, and this tree he bought and shipped to market nearly fifty years later. John Frame, of near Sutton, is cultivating a large patch of gin- seng and yellow root.
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