USA > West Virginia > Hampshire County > History of Hampshire County, West Virginia : from its earliest settlement to the present > Part 5
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59
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ber of fifty, for resistance, and placed themselves under the leadership of John Brake, a German whose house was above Petersburg, in what is now Grant county. These enemies of their country had made his place their rendezvous. They met the militia from Hampshire, but no fight took place. Apparently each side was afraid to begin. There was a parley in which Colonel Vanmeter pointed out to the tories the consequence which must follow, if they persisted in their present course. He ad- vised them to disperse, go to their homes and conduct themselves as law abiding citizens. He left them and marched home.
The disloyal element grew in strength and insolence. They imagined that the authorities were afraid and would not again interfere with them. They organized a com- pany, elected John Claypole their captain, and prepared to march off and join the British forces. General Morgan was at that time at his home in Frederick county, and he collected militia to the number of four hundred, crossed the mountain and fell on the tories in such dead earnest that they lost all their enthusiasm for the cause of Great Britain. Claypole was taken prisoner, and William Baker, who refused to surrender, was shot, but not killed. Later a man named Mace was killed. Brake was overawed; and after two days spent in the neighborhood, the militia, un- der General Morgan, returned home. The tories were crushed. A number of them were so ashamed of what they had done that they joined the American army and fought as patriots till the close of the war, thus endeavor- ing to redeem their lost reputations.
The contrast between the conduct of the tories on the South branch and the patriotic devotion of the people on the Greenbrier is marked. Money was so scarce that the Greenbrier settlers could not pay their taxes, although willing to do so. They fell delinquent four years in suc- cession and to the amount of thirty thousand dollars. They
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were willing to perform labor, if arrangements could be made to do it. Virginia agreed to the proposition, and the people of Greenbrier built a road from Lewisburg to the . Kanawha river in payment of their taxes.
The chief incidents in West Virginia's history during the revolutionary war were connected with the Indian troubles. The state was invaded three times by forces large enough to be called armies; and the incursions by smaller parties were so numerous that the mere mention of them would form a list of murders, ambuscades and personal encounters of tedious and monotonous length. The first invasion occurred in 1777 when Fort Henry, now Wheeling, was attacked; the second. 1778, when Fort Ran- dolph, now Point Pleasant, was besieged for one week, the Indians moving as far east as Greenbrier county, where Donnolly's fort was attacked; the third invasion was in 1782, when Fort Henry was again attacked by Indians un- der the leadership of Simon Girty. The multitude of in- cursions by Indians must be passed over briefly. The custom of the savages was to make their way into a settle- ment, and either lie in wait along paths and shoot those who attempted to pass, or break into houses and murder the inmates, or take them prisoner, and then make off hastily for the Ohio river. Orice across that stream, pur- suit was not probable.
The custom of the Indians to take prisoners, and their great exertion to accomplish that purpose, is a difficult thing to explain. Prisoners were of little or no use to them. They did not make slaves of them. If they some- times received money as ransom for captives, the hope of ransom money seems seldom or never to have prompted them to carry prisoners to their towns. They sometimes. showed a liking, if not affection, for captives adopted into their tribes and families; but this kindly feeling was shal- low and treacherous; and Indians would not hesitate to burn at the stake a captive who had been treated as one of 4
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their family for months, if they should take it into their heads that revenge for injuries received from others called for a sacrifice. The Indians followed no rule or precedent as to which of their captives they would kill and which carry to their towns. They sometimes killed children and spared adults, and sometimes the reverse.
The year 1777 is called in border history the " bloody year of the three sevens." The British sent against the frontiers every Indian who could be prevailed upon to go. Few settlements from New York to Florida escaped. In this state the most harm was done on the Monongahela and along the Ohio in the vicinity of Wheeling. Monon- galia county was visited twice by the savages that year, and a number of persons were killed. A party of twenty invaded what is now Randolph county, killed a number of settlers, took several prisoners and made their escape. It was on November 10 of this year that Cornstalk, the Shaw- nee chief, was assassinated at Point Pleasant by militia- men who assembled there from Greenbrier and elsewhere for the purpose of marching against the Indian towns. Earlier in the year Cornstalk had come to Fort Randolph, at Point Pleasant, on a visit, and also to inform the com- mandant of the fort that the British were inciting the In- dians to war, and that his own tribe, the Shawnees, would likely be swept along with the current, in spite of his efforts to keep them at home. Under these circumstances the commandant of the fort thought it best to detain Corn- stalk as a hostage to insure the neutrality of his tribe. It does not seem that the venerable chief was unwilling to re- main. He wanted peace. Some time after that his son came to see him, and crossed the Ohio, after making his presence known by hallooing from the other side. The next day two of the militiamen crossed the Ohio to hunt, and one was killed by an Indian. The other gave the alarm, and the militiamen crossed the river and brought in the body of the dead man. The soldiers believed that
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the Indian who had committed the deed had come the day before with Cornstalk's son, and had lain concealed until an opportunity occurred to kill a man. The soldiers. were enraged, and started up the river bank toward the cabin where Cornstalk resided, announcing that they would kill the Indians. There were with Cornstalk his. son and another Indian, Red Eagle. A sister of Cornstalk, known as the Grenadier Squaw, had lived at the fort some- time as interpreter. She hastened to the cabin and urged her brother to make his escape. He might have done so, but refused, and admonished his son to die like a man. The soldiers arrived at that time and fired. All three In- dians were killed. The leaders of the men who did it were afterwards given the semblance of a trial in Virginia, and were acquited.
It is the opinion of those acquainted with border history that the murder of Cornstalk brought more suffering upon the West Virginia frontier than any other event of that time. Had he lived, he would perhaps have been able to hold the Shawnees in check. Without the cooperation of that blood- thirsty tribe the border war of the succeeding years would have been different. Four years later Colonel Crawford, who had been taken prisoner, was put to death with ex- treme torture in revenge for the murder of Cornstalk.
Fort Henry was besieged September 1, 1777, by four hundred Indians. General Hand, of Fort Pitt, had been informed that the Indians were preparing for an attack in large numbers upon some point of the frontier, and the settlements between Pittsburg and Point Pleasant were placed on their guard. Scouts were sent out to discover the advance of the Indians in time to give the alarm. But the scouts discovered no Indians. It is now known that the savages had advanced in small parties, avoiding trails, and had united near Wheeling, crossed the Ohio a short distance below that place, and on the night of the last day of August approached Fort Henry, and setting ambus-
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cades near it, waited for daylight. Fort Henry was made of logs set on end in the ground, in the manner of pickets, and about seventeen feet high. There were port holes through which to fire. The garrison consisted of less than forty men, the majority of whom lived in Wheeling and the immediate vicinity. Early in the morning of Sep- tember 1 the Indians decoyed Captain Samuel Mason with fourteen men into the field some distance from the fort, and killed all but three. Captain Mason alone reached the fort, and two of his men succeeded in hiding, and finally escaped. When the Indians attacked Mason's men, the firing was heard at the fort, together with the yells of the savages. Captain Joseph Ogle with twelve men sallied out to assist Mason. He was surrounded and nine of his men were killed. There were only about a dozen men remain- ing in the fort to resist the attack of four hundred Indians, flushed with victory. There were perhaps one hundred women and children in the stockade. .
In a short time the Indians advanced against the fort, with drum and fife, and the British flag waving over them. It is not known who was leader. He was a white man, or at least there was a white man among them who seemed to be leader. Many old frontier histories, as well as the testimony of these who were present, united in the assertian that the Indians at this siege were led by Simon Girty. It is strange that this mistake could have been made, for it was a mistake. Simon Girty was not there. He was at that time, and for nearly five months afterwards, at Fort Pitt, serving in garrison duty, and did not desert till February, 1778, when with Elliott, McKee and two or three others, he ran away and proceeded at once to the Indian towns in Ohio where he soon became a leader of the savages.
The commander of the Indian army posted himself in the window of a house within hearing of the fort, and read the proclamation of Governor Hamilton, of Detroit, offer-
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ing Great Britain's protection in case of surrender, but massacre it case of resistance. Colonel Shepherd, com- mandant of the fort, replied that the garrison would not . surrender. The leader was insisting upon the impossi- bility of holding out, when his words were cut short by a shot fired at him from the fort. He was not struck. The Indians began the assault with a rush for the fort gate. They tried to break it open; and failing in this, they en- deavored to push the posts of the stockade down. They could make no impression on the wall. The fire of the garrison was deadly, and the savages recoiled. They charged again and again, some times trying to break down the walls with battering rams, attempting to set them on fire; and then sending their best marksman to pick off the garrison by shooting through the port holes. In course of time the deadly aim of those in the fort taught the savages a wholesome caution. Women fought as well as men. The battle raged two nights and two days; but all attempts of the Indians to burn the fort or break into it were un- availing. They killed many of the cattle about the settle- ment, partly for food, partly from wantonness. They burned nearly all the houses and barns in Wheeling. The savages were preparing for another assault when Colonel Andrew Swearengen with fourteen men landed near the fort and gained an entrance. Shortly afterwards Major Samuel McCollochat the head of forty men arrived, and after a severe fight, all reached the fort except McColloch who was cut off, but made his escape. The Indians now de- spaired of success, and raised the siege. No person in the fort was killed. The loss of the Indians was estimated at forty or fifty.
In September of this year, 1777, Captain William Fore- man, of Hampshire county, with about twenty men of that county, who had gone to Wheeling to assist in fighting the savages, was ambushed and killed at Grave creek, below
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Wheeling by Indians supposed to have been a portion of those who had besieged Fort Henry.
The next year, 1778, was one of intense excitement on the frontier. An Indian force, of about two hundred, at- tacked Fort Randolph, at the mouth of the Kanawha, in May, and besieged the place one week. The enemy made several attempts to carry it by storm. But they were unsuccessful. They then moved off, up the Kanawha, in the direction of Greenbrier. Two soldiers from Fort Randolph eluded the savages; overtook them within twenty miles of the Greenbrier settlement; passed them that night, and alarmed the people just in time for them to flee to the blockhouses. Donnally's fort stood within two miles of the present village of Frankfort in Greenbrier county. Twenty men with their families took shelter there. At Lewisburg, ten miles distant, perhaps one hundred men had assembled with their families. The Indians apparently knew which was the weaker fort, and accordingly proceeded against Donnally's upon which they made an attack at daybreak. One of the men had gone out for kindling wood and had left the gate open. The Indians killed this man, and made a rush for the fort, and crowded into the yard. While some crawled under the floor, hoping to gain an entrance by that means, others climbed to the roof. Still others began hewing the door which had been hurriedly closed. All the men in the fort were asleep, except one white man and a negro slave. As the savages were forcing open the door, the formost was killed with a tomahawk by the white man, and the negro discharged a musket loaded with heavy shot into the faces of the Indians. The men in the fort were awakened and fired through the port holes. 'Seventeen savages were killed in the yard. The others fell back, and contented themselves with firing at longer rage. In the afternoon sixty six men arrived from Lewisburg, and the Indians were forced to raise the siege. Their expedition to Green-
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brier had been a more signal failure than the attempt on Fort Randolph.
The country along the Monongahela was invaded three times in the year 1778, and once the following year. Few settlements within one hundred miles of the Ohio river es- caped. In 1780 Greenbrier was again paid a visit by the savages; and in this year their raids extended eastward into Randolph county, and to Cheat river in Tucker county, to the very base of the Alleghany mountains. The Monongahela valley, as usual, did not escape, and ten set- tlers were killed. Governor Hamilton of Detroit, known as the "hair buyer," had encouraged the Indians by pay- ing as high as thirty dollars bounty for scalps of men, women and children, but no bounty for prisoners. The savages killed their prisoners in large numbers for the bounty on scalps. This made the war terrible in its fierce- ness. In 1778 and 1779 General Roger Clarke, at the head of a small but excellent army, mostly Virginians, carried the war into the enemy's country, and struck at British forts in Illinois and Indiana, believing that if the British were driven out of that country, Indians would have more difficulty in obtaining arms, ammunition and supplies, and their raids on the settlements would be less frequent. Kaskaskia and Cahokia, in Illinois, were captured, and then, after a memorable march in midwinter, Clarke fell upon Vincennes, Indiana. and after a severe fight captured the place, released nearly one hundred white prisoners, chastised the Indians, captured stores worth fifty thousand dollars, cleared the whole country of British from the Mississippi to Detroit; and, most important of all, captured Governor Hamilton himself, and sent him in chains to Richmond. This victory secured to the United States the country as far as the Mississippi; and it greatly dampened the ardor of the Indians. They saw for the first time that the British were not able to protect them.
In 1781 Colonel David Broadhead crossed the Ohio at
WEST VIRGINIA IN THE REVOLUTION. 71
Wheeling with eight hundred men; and, after a rapid march to the Miami, destroyed Indian villages and inflicted severe punishment upon the savages. The year 1782 is memorable on the border on account of the massacre of the Moravian Indians in Ohio, and the second siege of Fort Henry at Wheeling. The Moravian Indians, or Christian- ized Indians, with their missionaries, lived at peace with the white people; but it was suspected that they harbored hostile savages who harrassed the frontiers. An expedi- tion was sent against them; their towns were destroyed, and a revolting massacre almost exterminated the unfor- tunate people. The occurrence forms a dark page of border history.
The second siege of Fort Henry occurred in September, 1782. There were fewer than twenty men in the fort when the Indians appeared. The commandant, Captain Boggs, had gone to warn the neighboring settlements of danger. The Indians numbered several hundred, under command, as is said, of Simon Girty. In addition, there was a company of British soldiers commanded by Captain Pratt; and the whole force marched under the British flag, and appeared before the fort September 11. Just before the attack commenced, a boat, in charge of a man named Sullivan, arrived from Pittsburg, loaded with cannon balls for the garrison at Louisville, Kentucky. Mr. Sullivan and his party seeing the danger, tied the boat and made their way to the fort and assisted in the defense. The be- siegers demanded an immediate surrender, which was de- clined. The attack was delayed till night. The experience gained by the Indians in the war had taught them that little is gained by a wild rush against the walls of a stockade. No doubt Captain Pratt advised them also what course to pursue. When night came they made their assault. More than twenty times did they pile hemp against the walls of the fort and attempt to set the structure on fire. But the hemp was damp and burned slowly. No harm
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was done. Colonel Zane's cabin stood near the stockade. His house had been burned at the siege in 1777; and when the Indians again appeared he resolved to defend it. He remained in the cabin with two or three others, among them a negro slave. That night an Indian crawled up with a chunk of fire to burn the house, but a shot from the negro's gun crippled him and he gave up his incendiary project. Attempts were made to break down the gates, but they did not succeed. A small cannon mounted on one of the bastions was occasionally discharged among the savages, much to their discomfiture. On one occasion when a number of Indians had gathered in a loft of one of the nearest cabins and were dancing and yelling in defiance of the garrison, the cannon was turned on them, and a solid shot cutting one of the joists, precipitated the sav- ages to the floor beneath and put a stop to their revelry.
The Indians captured the boat with the cannon balls, and decided to use them. The procured a hollow log, plugged one end, and wrapped it with chains stolen from a neigh- boring blacksmith shop. They loaded the piece with powder and ball, and fired it at the fort. It is to be won- dered at that the British officer would have permitted his allies to make such a blunder, for he must have known that the wooden cannon would burst. Its pieces flew in all di- rections, killing and maiming several Indians, but did not harm the fort. The savages were discouraged, and when a force of seventy men, under Captain Boggs, approached, the Indians fled. They did not, however, leave the coun- try at once, but made an attack on Rice's fort, where they lost four warriors and accomplished nothing.
The siege of Fort Henry is remarkable from the fact that the flag under which the army marched to the attack, and which was shot down during the fight, was the last British flag to float over an army in battle, during the rev- olution, within the limits of the United States. West Vir- ginia was never again invaded by a large Indian force, but
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small parties continued to make incursions till 1795. The war with England closed by a treaty of peace in 1783. After that date the Indians fought on their own account, although the British still held posts in the northwest, under the excuse that the Americans had not complied with the terms of the treaty of peace. It was believed, and not without evidence, that the savages were still encouraged by the British, if not directly supplied with arms, to wage war against the frontiers. The United States government took vigorous measures to suppress the Indian depreda- tions, and bring the savages to terms. General Harmar invaded the country north of the Ohio at the head of a strong force in 1790. He suffered his army to be divided and defeated. The next year General St. Clair led an army into the Indian country, and met with one of the most disastrous defeats in the annals of Indian warfare. He lost nearly eight hundred men in one battle. . General Wayne now took charge of the campaign in the Indian country, and in 1794 gave battle to the Indians on the Maumee river near the Ohio and Indiana line, at a place called Fallen Timber, and utterly crushed the Indian confederacy. The savages never recovered from that defeat, and the frontiers were not again molested for nearly twenty years, and West Virginia was never again invaded by Indians.
CHAPTER VI.
COUNTIES AND BOUNDARIES OF THE STATE.
West Virginia's boundaries coincide, in part, with the boundaries of five other states, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mary- land, Virginia and Kentucky. Some of these lines are as- sociated with events of considerable historical interest, and for a number of years were subjects of controversy, , not always friendly. It is understood, of course, that all boundary lines of the territory now embraced in West Virginia, except the line between this state and Virginia, were agreed to and settled before West Virginia became a separate state. That is, the lines between this state and Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky and Ohio were all settled more than one hundred years ago. To speak briefly of each, the line separating West Virginia from Ohio may be taken first.
At the time the Articles of Confederation were under discussion in congress, 1778, Virginia's territory extended westward to the Mississippi river. The government of the United States never recognized the Quebec Act, which was passed by the English parliament before the Revolu- tionary war, and which extended the province of Quebec south to the Ohio river. Consequently, after the Declara- tion of Independence was signed, Virginia's claim to that territory was not disputed by the other colonies; but when the time came for agreeing to the Articles of Confedera- tion which bound the states together in one common country, objection was raised to Virginia's extensive ter- ritory, which was nearly as large as all the other states to- gether. The fear was expressed that Virginia would be-
COUNTIES AND BOUNDARIES OF THE STATE. 75
·come so powerful an 1 wealthy, on account of its extent, that it would possess and exercise an influence in the affairs of government too great for the well being of the other states.
Maryland appears to have been the first state to take a decided stand that Virginia should cede its territory north and west of the Ohio to the general government. It was urged in justification of this course that the territory had been conquered from the British and the Indians by the blood and treasure of the whole country, and that it was right that the vacant lands should be appropriated to the use of the citizens of the whole country. Maryland took this stand June 22, 1778. Virginia refused to consent to the ceding of her western territory; and from that time till February 2, 1781, Maryland refused to agree to the Ar- ticles of Confederation, On November 2, 1778, New Jer- sey formally filed an objection to Virginia's large territory; but the New Jersey delegates finally signed the Articles of Confederation, expressing at the same time the convic- tion that justice would in time remove the inequality in territories as far as possible. On February 22, 1779, the delagates from Delaware signed, but also remonstrated, and presented resolutions setting forth that the United States congressought to have power to fix the western limits of any state claiming territory to the Mississippi or be- yond. On May 21, 1779; the delegates from Maryland laid before congress instructions received by them from the general assembly of Maryland. The point aimed at in these instructions was that those states having almost boundless western territory had it in their power to sell lands at a very low price, thus filling their treasuries with money, thereby lessening taxation; and at the same time the cheap lands and the low taxes would draw away from ad- joining states many of the best inhabitants. Congress was, therefore, asked to use its influence with those states having extensive territory, to the end that they would not place
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