USA > West Virginia > Summers County > History of Summers County from the earliest settlement to the present time > Part 59
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Thus, in 1791, we are informed there were no white inhabi- tants in all the Kanawha Valley, and no idea of a fixed habitation. And ever afterwards, mounted on her famous horse, "Liverpool," she ranged all over the land, from Point Pleasant to Staunton.
"Never," says Professor Lewis, "under the impenetrable coat of mail of a Crusader beat a heart actuated by greater heroism and ardent love for humanity than that which throbbed within the bosom of Ann Bailey. She boldly sallied into the wilderness as if to challange the ferocity of wild beasts and the vengeance of savage men. Day and night she continued on her journeys, and slept in the wilderness, with only her faithful horse tied near as her sole companion."
On another occasion she journeyed from Charleston to Lewis- burg. She slept in a hollow tree, and tied her horse so that he constantly blew his breath on her, and thus aided in saving her from freezing. She frequently slept in a cave at the mouth of Thirteen Mile Creek, known to this day as "Ann Bailey's Cave." This cave was destroyed by stonemasons in recent years, by blast- ing out the rock, in the absence of the owner, Dr. Forbes, of lower Kanawha County.
On one trip from Point Pleasant to Charleston she was dis- covered, where Winifred now stands, by a band of savages, who gave chase.
It was Ann Bailey who volunteered to go from Fort Clendennin, Charleston, to Lewisburg and secure the necessary supply of powder for that fort, which was besieged by the Indians, and the supply had been exhausted. It was a trip through a trackless wil-
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
derness, beset with savage foes and wild beasts. The fort was surrounded by savage Indians. All the men in the fort refused to undertake the perilous and dangerous passage. She bestrode the fleetest horse. The commander aided her to mount. The gate of the fort opened, and she disappeared in the forest. She passed Kanawha Falls, Gauley, Hawk's Nest, the Sewell Mountains, the Greenbrier Hills, and finally the fort, where Lewisburg now stands, was reached. She immediately secured a supply of powder. She refused a return guard, but with two horses, one she rode, and the other lead, loaded with the precious burden of powder, she reached Fort Lee exhausted, having made successfully the most daring feat in the history of the West. The next morning the garrison sallied from the fort with plentiful supplies, and, after a fierce fight, drove off the besieging savages and saved the people of the fort, where the Capitol now stands, from certain butchery. She was then forty-nine years old.
This ride has been preserved in song. Charles Rabb, of the U. S. A., while encamped at Gauley Bridge in 1861, wrote "Ann Bailey's Ride; a Legend of the Kanawha." She was voted as a reward for her noble service the noble horse she rode on this ride. His name was "Liverpool."
John Bailey, the second husband of Ann, died about 1802 in the vicinity of Charleston.
Prominent among the people with whom Ann Bailey associated was Captain William Arbuckle, born at Balcony Falls, Virginia, on the James, ancestor of Hon. John W. Arbuckle, attorney and citizen of Greenbrier County. He was as great as Daniel Boone or Simon Kenton. He was among the first to enroll with General Lewis for the Point Pleasant campaign. Another was Jesse Van- bibber, one of the first settlers on the Greenbrier near Lowell. Then westward he went, and we find Vanbibber Rock at the Kanawha Falls, and Vanbibber hollows and licks in Green Sulphur District of Summers County.
After the treaty of 1795, which ended the Indian depredations in all the New, Kanawha and Ohio Valleys, Ann Bailey spent her days in the Kanawha and Ohio Valleys, especially in the region of Point Pleasant and Gallipolis. After the famous ride from Fort Lee to Lewisburg she appears to have lost all.
On the trip she was about to be overtaken. She abandoned her horse and disappeared and escaped in the underbrush in a hollow sycamore log. The Indians made a careful search, halted and rested on the log, finally departing, taking her horse. Later she came out
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and followed the trail. Coming up with their encampment, she waited for the cover of darkness, and, while they slept, she stole up, and, untying her horse, "Liverpool," she sprang on his back, and when a short distance she gave a scream, and rode rapidly to Charleston in safety. So often did she baffle the Indians in this respect that they came to the belief she bore a charmed life. The Shawnee women knew her as the "White Squaw of the Kanawha." They, on account of her recklessness, came to the conclusion she was insane, and regarded her as the "phantom rider," which appeared here, there and everywhere on their paths, and thus for many years she was conspicuous.
She would carry supplies from one fort to another, from Gal- lipolis to Staunton. Frequently her horse was so heavily laden that she would walk and lead him. She would bring coffee for one, drugs for another, powder for another, farming utensils for an- other, etc. She did an original express business. Outdating Alvin, Adams and William Hernden and Ephraim Famesworth by half a century. If it was hogs or cattle that she wanted, she would drive them through if she had to go to the banks of the Shenandoah for them, and it is tradition that she first introduced tame geese into the New River Valley, as well as the Kanawha. In compliance with an agreement for tame geese, she drove twenty 150 miles for Captain William Clenendin. One died by the way. She put its dead carcass in a bag, and delivered nineteen alive and one dead, keeping the contract to the letter to deliver twenty geese.
It is tradition that she drank and was profane. Professor Lewis denies this. After a careful study and research, and conversing with aged people, he asserts that she was not profane or addicted to the use of strong drink. She did not belong to any church. She observed the Sabbath. She was known to pray. "What more was wanted?" says Professor Lewis. Heroism, virtue, mercy, benevo- lence, observance of the Sabbath, dependence on Providence, which protected her through an eventful career, all blended to make up her character, the pioneer heroine of the Kanawha Valley.
She had a son, William, who grew to be an old man. She made her last visit to Charleston in the summer of 1817. She walked some seventy-five miles, then seventy-five years old. Jacob Warth says he met her six miles from Charleston, walking towards that place in 1817. This was some ninety years ago. She was clad in border costume.
It was her son William (Trotter) whom she had left with Mrs. Moses Mann in Augusta County, as heretofore set forth, at the
JOSEPH SWOPE departed this Life 2nd March 1819 in his GOWYear He was made of thejest. Setler's of this Country after having been for 9 Years a Prisonga
with the Shun wee.
OLD TOMBSTONE Standing in Old Swope (Swoh) Burial Ground on Big Wolf Creek.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.
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HISTORY OF SUMMERS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA.
age of seven, that married Ann Cooper, of Kanawha. He took her in a canoe to Gallipolis, and was the first Virginian married in that old French town. He was a practical business man, was Wil- liam Trotter. In 1814 he bought 240 acres of land on the Kanawha for $1,275, three miles from the mouth of the Kanawha. This was a part of the Washington survey, 10,900 acres, made for himself in October, 1770. He resided on this land for three years, his mother residing with him. Selling this land for $1,400, he passed the Ohio into Gallia County, where he repurchased.
One of the most famous of the "rides" of Ann Bailey was down the New River, from the Southwest Virginia region to the Kanawha, by which she passed through the territory of Summers County, long after the farm road had been hewn through the wilderness connect- ing Charleston, Lewisburg and Staunton, which was done largely by taxes paid in road labor by authority of the General Assembly of Virginia, at the suggestion of Captain John Stuart, the Green- brier clerk and historian. The New River Valley remained a howl- ing wilderness, with only the trails of the savage for highways. The rough country, cliffs, mountains, rivers and gorges, rendered the wilderness almost impassable, especially for a horsewoman, however accustomed she may have been. This region was, how- ever, traversed by this dauntless woman. She came down New River from towards the Narrows. Her direct route is unknown now, but it is possible she came by the mouth of the Greenbrier, turned off from the river, passing overland through Raleigh and Fayette, and striking the Greenbrier trail at the falls of the Kana- wha, one and a half miles below the mouth of Gauley, where the New and Gauley waters mingle and form the Great Kanawha. It is also likely that she traversed practically the same trail east from the Charleston settlement. Her mission was, as usual, one of mercy to the settlers in West Virginia. As to the details of these trips and missions, tradition does not supply. She was known as "Mad Ann Bailey, but she was never non compos mentis, but was evidently always a woman of good sense. She was ever op- posed to the removal of her son north of the Ohio. She had spent fifty-seven years in Virginia. Her companions in peace and in war were in that commonwealth. The mortal remains of her husbands were buried in its soil, and, therefore, at the age of seventy-six, it seemed hard to be severed and take up an abode among strangers. Her son appealed to her, and finally prevailed on her to go, and just overlooking the town of Gallipolis she built with her own hands a rude habitation. It consisted of a pen of fence rails. She remained
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there but a short time. Her son and friends came and prevailed on her to go to his home, where she consented to remain, provided he would build her a house near his own-a cabin in which she could dwell alone. This he did, where she dwelt the remainder of her days. For years she was a familiar figure on the streets of Gal- lipolis. Usually she walked the entire distance, and frequently came in a canoe, which she managed with Indian dexterity. On the streets she carried her rifle.
With increasing age came many increasing eccentricities, and she was known as "Mad Ann," but none ever dared to call her that name in her presence.
When spoken to concerning the correctness about her ability to shoot with her rifle, she would relate in the broadest English how she once sat on the back of her horse, "Liverpool," and shot a "hawk on a helm tree across the mouth of the Helk."
She died on the 22d of November, 1825, and she lies buried in the "Trotter graveyard," in an unmarked and nameless grave. She left a long line of descendants scattered West and South, number- ing several hundred.
[NOTE .- The facts of the history of Ann Bailey are largely se- cured through the courtesy of Professor Virgil A. Lewis, of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. He has made careful research into the his- tory, life and traditions of this noted woman, and has reduced the result of his labor into her biography published by him several years ago, a copy of which he kindly provided me. and from which I have quoted liberally, with his permission .- J. H. M.]
STORY OF ABE.
Abe was an old colored man, who had been held in slavery by John Miller, Sr., and his ancestors, the first settler on Lick Creek, on the part where the three forks, Slater's, Flag Fork and Lick Creek come together, having been inherited by John Miller from his father, Patrick Miller, and brought as a slave from Bath County, Virginia, when John Miller, Sr., came from that county and settled on Lick Creek, born more than 100 years ago. He was as black as the ace of spades, with a nose something like the shape of a chick- en's gizzard, very fond of hunting and watching the deer licks at night, of which there were a number in the neighborhood, there being one, the most famous in modern times, up the hollow on the side of Keeney's Mountain, above where Eli Taylor settled in the mouth of Vanbibber Hollow. From whom or how this hollow took
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its name, we are unable to ascertain, but we believe the original name was Vanvibber, and named after the settler at Lowell, who after- wards emigrated to Kanawha Falls. Many deer have been killed in my boyhood days at this lick. There was one in Ellis' Hollow, just below the Harrison Williams house, where Mr. Wood now lives, and one further down at the Gum Lick Spring.
Before the war Abe, who was never known by any other name -- and there is no tradition that he ever had any other-and his wife, Sarah, and Minta, two colored women, were made free and per- mitted to do as they pleased, Abe being given a place to live in up in the Ellis' Hollow, where he built a cabin, but would not permit any floor to be constructed except a dirt floor. He cleared out a patch and lived there until his wife died, when he was taken to the homestead to be cared for. On one occasion he had been out hunt- ing over the mountains all day, without success, wearing moccasins, a kind of footgear made out of dressed deer skins fastened over the foot and around the ankle by thongs, without heels and without soles to the bottom, being all of one piece. The old darkey landed in his cabin late, which was practically in the woods, and was soon overtaken by L. M. Alderson, who was known all over that region of the country as "Mims," the father of James W. Alderson and Peter L. Alderson and Mrs. Henry Shepherd, who was on that day also on a hunt. Finally, on finding a trail which he took to be the tracks of a hear, the mountains then being still infested with those animals, after following it for a long distance late in the evening, the trail led into Abe's cabin. It was "Uncle" Abe with his moc- casins making the tracks instead of a bear. Uncle Abe and the other two colored folks, which were all the colored people for miles around, except Phoebe, an old negress of Robert Miller's, who lived at the Thomas A. George place, and the slaves owned by E. J. Gwinn at Green Sulphur, died about the breaking out of the war, and were buried in the old Miller graveyard on Lick Creek.
Abe used in his hunting expeditions and lick watching an old flint-lock Revolutionary musket and flint-lock rifle. The musket had been used in the Revolutionary War, was about six feet in length and had a bayonet attachment, and it is a great curiosity, and is now in the possession of the writer. . With these guns he was very successful, he having with the rifle on one occasion, and with one shot, killed two wild geese flying high in the air in their yearly migration; and on another occasion, when sent out in the field to kill a mutton, he took such good aim with his rifle as to kill two with one shot. On another occasion, when watching the
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lick on Flag Fork below Williams' house with the old musket, he killed two fine deer with one shot, being located on a scaffold built up in the forks of a sapling, so that the deer could not scent him from afar.
These old colored people unknown to fame deserve to be re- membered for their faithfulness to their masters and their children and to history, as having assisted in making the "forests bloom as the rose," and preparing the way for a modern civilization and habi- tation, and they were faithful and worked without money and with- out price in slavery and out of it. They attended the "musters" and sold ginger cakes and cider once a month, and all profits were their own.
LEWIS' WIT.
Lewis was the name of a slave owned by Ephraim J. Gwinn at Green Sulphur Springs before the war. One day when going to mill he was met by "Devil Sam" McClung, of the Big Meadows. Mr. McClung spoke to Lewis with the usual "good morning" greet- ing, which was returned. Mc McClung remarked, "Lewis, I don't believe you know me; you don't remember me, Lewis," and Lewis replied, "Oh, yessah, I remembahs you. I read about you in the third chapter of the Pilgrim's Progress, sah."
Peter Maddy, at the beginning of the war, also owned two slaves, Cale and Gus, on Lick Creek, who abandoned him when the war came on. Captain Robert Gore also owned some negroes in the upper end of the county. The Packs, Grahams and Fowlers were the only other slave-owners at the beginning of the war.
JAMES THOMPSON.
James Thompson resided on Lick Creek, in Pipestem District, at the breaking out of the war. He was a man of tremendous size, being a powerful and muscular man physically, and was a captain in the Confederate Army. He was married, having a family of boys and girls. He was an ardent secessionist, and sought to serve out vengeance against those of opposite views in those stirring times. Parkinson Pennington was a Union advocate, and he and Thompson had had some personal differences. Thompson, after the declaration of hostilities, had Pennington arrested, calling to his aid some of his neighbors, and some of his own family and connections, and after walking a few miles they determined to dis- pose of Pennington without process of law, and proceeded to court-
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martial (drumhead) and to hang him by the neck to a dogwood bush until he was dead. This occurred about four miles east of Athens, in Mercer County, then known as Concord Church. The rope used was a piece of hickory bark, taken from a sprout cut on the roadside.
From this execution of Pennington in the early days of the Rebellion until after the close of the war, Captain Thompson kept himself heavily armed, and especially so at his own home, where he could possibly have resisted an attack by his enemies against great odds. Immediately on the close of the war, in 1865, Mr. Thompson was advised by his neighbors and friends to leave the country to avoid a suspected attack by the enemy, until the ex- citement of war and the killing of Pennington had subsided; but Thompson, being a brave and fearless man, would not listen to these pleadings and advice, but prepared himself for war, posting pickets on his own farm at such points as seemed necessary for them to observe the approaching enemy. This continued for a short while and up to the time of his death. These guards for some cause were removed one day, and the approach of some thirty armed men, consisting partly of those attached to the Union cause and partly of men who had just emerged from their hiding places at the closing of hostilities, not being observed until they were on the premises, advanced to his house and surrounded it. Thomp- son being at his stable at the time, was called by his daughter, Mrs. McCorkle, now Mrs. Charles Clark, and secured his weapons to defend himself ; but was implored by his good wife and daughter not to shoot or fight, but to make his escape by running away. Thompson, at his wife's request, dropped his gun, and started to make his escape, running down the lines of his enemies with his daughter, Mrs. McCorkle, at his side, and as near as possible for her to be to screen her father from bullets, even if it resulted in the taking of them into her own body. It was a long run and through cleared land; Thompson's house being set in the midst of a considerable clearing. He had succeeded, however, in getting through the first line of guards and apparently out of danger, when he ran upon a mere youth who was posted behind a tree, and who fired point blank into the body of Captain Thompson the fatal shot which killed him instantly. This occurred in the month of May, 1865.
Thus ended the life of a man who was noted for his kindness to the poor and needy, who never left his mansion hungry or tin- clothed. Unfortunately, no doubt, his aggressiveness in the cause
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of the South led him to make a mistake which cost him his life in the end. His widow lived for several years afterwards in the same neighborhood.
Captain Thompson was the father of Joseph Thompson, who still resides on Lick Creek-the father of Mrs. Mary McCorkle, who some years after the death of her first husband married Charles Clark, and they still reside in the neighborhood, on a part of the old Thompson plantation. Mrs. McCorkle is the mother of John McCorkle, who graduated at the Virginia Military Insti- tute, and is noted for his Western travels, having been a soldier in the Philippine Islands recently. Her other son, James Mc- Corkle, died in the city of Hinton a few years ago, leaving a widow and one son, the widow afterwards intermarrying with Sam G. McCulloch, of the city of Hinton, and the son is now a prosperous jeweler of the same town. Mrs. McCorkle was the aunt of Mrs. Nannie Mclaughlin, a daughter of Charles Clark ; Mrs. A. T. Maupin and Mr. Charles A. Clark, now in the West, and Mrs. Lucy Wise. of Hinton.
MATTHEW A. MANNING.
Hon. M. A. Manning died at his home in Talcott, this county, of heart disease, on December 13, 1900. Mr. Manning was born May 4, 1848, in Elkin, Roscommon County, Ireland. He emi- grated to this country with his parents when he was four years old, through the influence of Colonel Oliver Beirn and Patrick Beirn, who were distant relatives. His family located first in Monroe County, but afterwards removed to Nicholas County, where he resided until the breaking out of the late war, in which Mr. Manning enlisted on the Confederate side; although only a boy of eighteen years. He was a brave Confederate soldier. About 1871 Mr. Manning removed to Talcott, during the build- ing of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, engaging there in the mercantile business with the late T. F. Park, a cousin, under the firm name of Park & Manning, and at that place he resided un- til the date of his death, having married Miss Mary R. Campbell, of this county. He left surviving him two children, Frank A. and Miss Faye, and two brothers, James W. Manning, of Talcott, and Dennis G. Manning, of Indiana.
Mr. Manning was an enterprising and useful citizen, and his death was a great loss to his county, and especially to his imme- diate neighborhood. He had filled many positions of honor, and
LUTHER M. DUNN, First Postmaster of Hinton.
HON. M. A. MANNING, Lawyer, Statesman and Democratic Politician.
THE NEW YOFL PUBLIC LI ITTY
ASTOR, L. .. . .: TILDEN FOUNDAT. NE.
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was an active and earnest Democrat in politics, and took a great interest in political affairs. He had been chairman of the County Executive Committee and a member of the same through many successive campaigns. He was also chairman of the Senatorial Democratic Committee for many years, and was a member of that Committee at the time of his death. He was elected a jus- tice of the peace under the old Constitution, in which the justices composed the county court, and was a member of that body when the new Constitutional Amendments were adopted, and was again elected justice of the peace after the adoption of the new Constitution. He had held the position of postmaster at Talcott for a number of years. Under the first Cleveland administration he was chief of division in the Pension Department for four years. He also received another appointment under the civil service dur- ing the second Cleveland administration, but declined the appoint- ment, and never performed any services thereunder. He was pri- vate secretary to Senator Frank Hereford during a large part of his Senatorial career; was secretary of the Board of Education of Talcott District for a number of years, and was a member of the commission appointed by the circuit court to settle the dis- puted county line between Summers and Monroe. He was a law- yer by profession, and actively engaged in the practice up to the date of his death, having been in his office late the night before attending to legal matters. Everybody knew Mr. Manning, of Talcott.
He was a man of fine intellect and a magnificent fighter, a true friend and useful citizen, and generous towards his enemies.
He was a Master Mason in good standing, and his funeral was taken charge of by the Masonic fraternity. He was a devout be- liever in the doctrines of the Catholic Church and well versed therein. His remains were laid to rest with Masonic honors in the cemetery of the village overlooking the beautiful Greenbrier, where he had spent such a large portion of his useful life in the midst of the people with whom he lived so long, and for whom he had always stood. The largest concourse of people ever at- tending a funeral at that town was present, attesting the univer- sal regard and esteem of the deceased in that community. He had been a friend of the writer's from the time he came to the county, and they had worked side by side in many an earnest political campaign, and he knew him as well as any one living, and it is a pleasure to pay some tribute to the memory of a friend of his character who has gone before.
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