USA > West Virginia > Tucker County > History of Tucker County, West Virginia, from the earliest explorations and settlements to the present time; > Part 12
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David Closs built the next mill. It was on Horse Shoe Run, four miles from its mouth. This completed the list of five shingle mills in Tucker County. The first one ever in the county met an untimely end. While being taken around Horse Shoe Ford Hill, it, wagon, horses and all, rolled down the precipice into the river, near one hundred feet. None of the men or horses were seriously hurt, but the machinery and the wagons were badly wrecked.
The shook business, some fifteen and twenty years ago, was an extensive industry. Joseph Davis was the principal manager of the business, and the shop was at St. George. It did more for the town than anything else of the time. It built up the houses that were going to pieces, and revived business.
Although Tucker County has had and still has vast timber resources, and its thousand mountains are covered with valuable pines, oaks, poplars and hemlocks, and all this will bring a revenue into the county ; yet our real and perma- nent wealth is not in our timber. Men who deal in it and attend closely to their business have made money from it ; but such is the exception and not the rule. The large con- tractors may or may not make something ; but the laborer is almost sure to lose when it comes to the final reckoning.
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LUMBER INTERESTS.
He may have worked hard from Christmas to Christmas, and his family may have lived as economically as decency and comfort would permit, yet at the end of the year, when all store debts and doctor bills are paid, and the wear and tear of the furniture and the farm property has been made good, all the spare money is gone, and the laborer is left no richer than when he set in for the hard year of work.
The reason for this is to be sought in the fact that almost every man in 'Tucker County is a farmer. It is a general truth the world over that it is best for an agricultural man to stick to agriculture just the same as it is best, in usual cases, for any man to stick to his trade or profession. It may pay at times for a man to carry on two, three or a dozen projects at a time ; but those who try it fail oftener than they succeed. Especially is this true with farmers any- where, and the more so with those of Tucker County. A blacksmith or a carpenter may, if he sees fit, abandon his trade one, two or ten years, and again take it up and be none the loser, unless the time has been a loss to him. But not so with him who digs into the fertile soil for his bread and his fortune. His farm needs him every day and every hour. If he leaves it, it suffers from his neglect. If he engages as a laborer in the lumber business, as so many of the Tucker farmers are doing and have done, he fails to till his land as he should. His fences go to ruin, his sheds fall to pieces and weeds, briers, thorns and brambles fill all the nooks and corners of his fields.
Meanwhile, the man may be getting his wages, which are in ready money and for the time seem greater than he could make on his farm; but, everything his family uses must be paid for, and the expenses eat up the profits, and he works on, probably for years, and keeps just about even.
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HISTORY OF TUCKER COUNTY.
Then the mill on which he works is to be moved to find a new supply of timber, and he must either follow or quit the works.
If he is a wise man, he quits the bad contract, late, but better late than never, and goes back to his neglected farm. Or, if he follows the mill to its new site, he may as well set- tle down to a permanent rough and unprofitable life, drag- ging himself and family about from place to place, and living only a little better than the Arabs of Egypt.
If he goes back to his farm, he finds it grown up and di- lapidated, far worse than when he left it, and he finds him- self no richer in money than when he went astray in the lumber business. Had he staid on his farm and worked as hard as he did in the woods, he would have owned a neat, comfortable and complete home. His fences would not have been so hidden by briers that they were no longer vis- ible, and the apple trees would not look like a chaos of sprouts and scions growing out of a brush-heap. Where the plantain and smartweed were taking possession of every- thing in the yard, his wife's bed of flowers would have been in full bloom, and lilies and forget-me-nots would be blos- soming instead of the crash-leaved burr-dock.
He will then learn, as others must learn and are learning, that the little farms of Tucker must be cultivated if the peo- ple expect to prosper. The farmer who raises something to sell in the logging camps makes more than the man who works all the year in the woods. Our real wealth is in our farming land. Let the lumber be cut by those who can af- ford to do it. The farmer cannot afford to lose his time.
CHAPTER IX. THE WEST VIRGINIA CENTRAL AND PITTS- BURGHI RAILWAY.
THE opening of this new railroad has been and promises still to be a permanent improvement to our county. The object which prompted its building was the vast resource of timber, coal and iron which abound in that portion of our territory which lies beyond the Backbone Mountain, on the upper tributaries of the Black Fork of Cheat River. The knowledge that such resources existed is no new thing. As early as 1856, it was undertaken to build a railroad up the North Branch of the Potomac, and engineers were put to work on it. The following extract is from the Biography of Abe Bonnifield, and is quoted in connection with the railroad, and also as a description of the surrounding coun- try at that time :
In front of my father's door, and at the distance of three or four miles, rises the principal ridge of the Backbone Mountain. From the tops of the neighboring hills the course of the ridge can be traced to a vast extent. The summit of the mountain in this region is covered with beautiful groves of hemlock pine, sometimes called yew pine. In places their branches are so interwoven that they form a thick, dark shade, which, in the summer season, is most de- lightful, but in winter, when the sombre branches are drooping with snow, the prospect is gloomy beyond description. These hemlocks are as straight as an Indian arrow, and frequently rise to the height of one hundred and twenty feet, or more. This timber is valuable for building purposes. Square timber, plank and shin- gles made from it are of the very best quality; and the quantity of this timber is surprising. From the top of a single hill, enough of it may be seen to build a city.
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HISTORY OF TUCKER COUNTY
On this side of the mountain, just opposite my father's farm, lies a large body of rich land, which, on account of its being covered with sugar-maple, is called the Sugar Lands. The annual blooming of this large grove of sugar trees, appearing with the return of each successive season, afforded, for many years, a picture of sur- passing beauty. It could easily be seen from the distance of fifteen or twenty miles. Year after year for fifty long successive years, had the older inhabitants gazed upon its expanse of silvery gray, tinged with yellow and white. From the top of Stemple Ridge, a distance of some eighteen miles. It appeared to the very best ad- vantage, and gave to the extended landscape a soft and beautiful finish, on which the eye lingered with peculiar delight. But, alas ! the beauty, though it lasted long and gladdened many a vernal scene, has passed away and perished forever.
About fifteen hundred acres of the land was purchased by Wil- liam R. Parsons, and the sugar trees have fallen beneath the axes of his slaves. But, thank kind nature, it is usually the case, when one beautiful object disappears, another takes its place. Although the sugar trees are gone, the eye of the spectator is now greeted with green pastures and charming meadows, while the ear is saluted with the tinkling of bells and the lowing of cattle, and this delightful Sugar Lands promises fair soon to be the richest grazing plantation in Tucker County.
Some miles beyond the Sugar Lands, and also beyond the Back- bone, on the head branches of Cheat River, there is an elevated region of rich land, from time immemorial called the land of Ca- naan. Here there is a body of some hundred thousand acres of land unoccupied. However, it has quite recently come into mar- ket. The soil of this land is of the finest quality, both for grain and pasture, and is mostly covered with extensive forests of beech, sugar and pine. There are also several other large unoccupied traets of land in Theker County, now coming into market. A vast field of excellent stone coal has lately been discovered on these lands, making them an object of peculiar interest to speculators. From Piedmont, on the B. & O. R. R. a railroad will soon be built, whose terminus will be in these coal lands.
How such vast bodies of waste land, surrounded on all sides by rich settlements, could remain so long unsold, is a problem that
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THE W. V. C. & P. RAILWAY.
can be solved only by the consideration that the tide of emigration has ever rolled its waves to the far West, without stopping to ex- amine these beautiful little islands around which it flowed. The owners of these lands seem anxious to sell, and it is probable that bargains may be obtained. It is supposed that there is at this time [1857] plenty of unoccupied land in Tucker County for the accom- modation of 500 families.
The coal at the Sugar Lands was discovered about 1835. It was nearly twenty years before any similar discoveries were made on the other side of the mountain. But, finally, the true wealth of the country began to be known, and cap- italists saw that there was money in a railroad which would carry off this wealth. The work of surveying was well ad- vanced, when the war came on and put a stop to everything, and it was near twenty years before anything further was done in the matter. Then a new company took it in hand. The officers, on January 1, 1882, were: H. G. Davis, Presi- dent; S. B. Elkins, Vice-President. Directors : Alexander Shaw, James G. Blaine, S. B. Elkins, William Keyser, Thomas B. Davis, Augustus Schell, W. H. Barnum, J. N. Camden, John A. Hambleton and T. E. Sickles. A. Ebert was Secretary, C. M. Hoult, Treasurer, T. E. Sickles, Chief Engineer, and W. E. Porter, Superintendent. The offices were at Piedmont, W. Va., and 92 Broadway, New York City.
The company was organized June 25, 1881, under a char- ter of the State of West Virginia. It was authorized to construct a railroad from any point on the B. & O. R. R., along the waters of the North Branch of the Potomac River, to a connection with any other railroad in the State of W. Va. The company had power to buy and sell real estate without limit ; and it was authorized to manufacture lumber, mine coal and iron, and any other minerals. The following
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HISTORY OF TUCKER COUNTY.
extract is from the President's first Report to the stock- holders :
The present intention of the company is to extend its railroad for a distance of from fifty to sixty miles in all, through what is known as the "Cumberland or Piedmont Coal Basin ;" and it is ultimately intended, if deemed advisable and profitable, to extend its line southerly, so as to connect the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and the Richmond and Alleghany Railroad, and other railroads. Also, northerly to a con- nection with railroads leading to Pittsburgh.
The engineers estimated that three hundred and sixty millions of tons of coal can be mined from the company's lands. The coal fields which must be developed by this company embrace an area larger than the aggregate of all other bituminous coal fields east of the Alleghany Mount- ains,* embracing an area of 170,000 acres. The capital stock of the company was $6,000,000, of which $5,000,000 belong to and remain in the company's treasury.+ The rail- road was computed to cost not more than $25,000 per mile.
The average out-put of coal over the road in 1882 was es- timated to be 700 tons daily for three hundred days, sum- ming for the year 210,000 tons. The company's profit was forty-five cents per ton, for the year $94,500. Profits from other sources, $20,000. Total, $114,500. The interest paid on bonds was $50,000, leaving a clear profit for 1882 of $64,500. The profit for 1883 was estimated at $197,000.±
The President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary charged nothing for their services in the year 1882. The company at that time owned and controlled 37,752 acres of mineral and timber lands.
* President Davis' first report, page four. t In 1882.
: This is merely an estimation, made in 1882 for the succeeding year.
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THE W. V. C. & P. RAILWAY.
Up to January 1, 1882, thirteen and one-half miles of road had been completed.
In Owen Riordan's Report of January 3, 1882 he speaks as follows :*
I hereby submit to your consideration a report, with accompany- ing map, of the result of my opening and working of coal yeins in your employment since June 1, of last year (1881).
I worked on a portion of Grant, Tucker and Preston Counties, W. Va. Commencing at the Fairfax Stone, I opened on what I call the "Fairfax and Dobbin House Region"-which is about nine . miles long and eight miles wide-ten different veins of coal, the thickest being eleven and the smallest four feet, measuring in the aggregate fifty-two feet of coal.
These veins of coal are of different quality, some gas, some bitu- minous and one vein of good coking coal. They are so situated, one above the other, that any one of them, or all of them together, can be worked without interfering with any other.
This is the most remarkable coal region so far discovered in this or any other country. I have neither seen nor read in the reports of any other person of a coal region having as much coal in it as this ; and the whole of it is free from slate, bone-coal, or any other impurities. This is neither exaggeration nor delusion, as all these veins are opened, so that any expert can examine them. He will find them to be just as I have stated. There is a nine-feet vein of steam coal in this region that fully equals the Cumberland coal.
We opened on the second division of this West Virginia Coal Fields-which lies between the Dobbin and Kent roads and the mouth of Buffalo Creek-eleven different veins of coal, ranging in thickness from three to six feet. This coal is semi-bituminous in quality, except one vein opened at the head of Elk Run, of cannel coal, three feet thick. The coal in this region is also free from all impurities.
The coal area is a thick forest, almost covered with spruce and hemlock, the trees being of an enormous size, and good quality, making it as superior in its timber as in its coal.
* See the President's and Engineer's Reports of the progress of the Railroad, of Octo- ber 17, 1882.
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HISTORY OF TUCKER COUNTY.
In the President's Annual Report, dated January 9, 1883, the net earnings of the road, after paying expenses, and the interest on the bonded debt, were over $87,000. The op- erating expenses were 482 per cent. of the gross earnings. The interest paid was $32,600.
On page 4, of the Report of January 9, 1883, the follow- ing is found :
After careful surveys, it has been determined to make Davis the terminus of the road for the present. It promises to be the center of a great mining and lumbering interest, being near the junction of the Beaver and Blackwater, both of which drain a fine timber country, and both are well adapted to floating logs; besides, the site selected and vicinity are underlaid with the veins of coal of the Upper Potomac Coal Field.
The completion of the line to Davis, fifty-three miles from Pied- mont, will quadruple the capacity of the Company for doing a gen- eral transportation business ; besides, it will reach and pass through the Company's coking coal and fine timber lands in the Upper Po- tomac Coal Fields from both of which the Company expects to add largely to its business."
The work of the railroad in Tucker County, up to this time, 1884, has not been extensive, as the main work has been done on the east side of the mountain. The grade across the mountain does not at any point exceed eighty feet per mile, which is the lightest grade of any railroad crossing the Alleghanies.
The whole Canaan Valley must soon be developed. It is just opening up to the world, and in a few years it will no longer be a wilderness.
CHAPTER X. MISCELLANEOUS STATISTICS.
I Do not deem it best to over load a County History with statistics. Enough should be given to meet the wants of the general reader, and no more. In this book I have pursued, in this respect, the course just advocated. I have collected, not without care, a few tables and have inserted them. In making the selections and in the arrangements I have not followed any strict plan. In fact, I found it im- possible, had I been so inclined, to make out entire census tables, even from 1856 to the present time. Much of the data that would go to make up such tables, does not exist in any official manner ; or, at least, the search that I have made has failed to find it. I give what this chapter contains and offer no apology for its incompleteness or for its arrangement. Had I considered it of enough importance, I should have bestowed more time and attention to it. I did not even go to Randolph to examine records that relate to the census prior to 1856. What I have of such, is all I want ; for, I will repeat that it is not my aim or intention to make this book a series of tables and statistical figures. I am not certain but that I have given more space to the History of Elections and Officers than is demanded by the public upon whose patronage the financial success of this book depends. But, this latter subject will, more or less, interest every reader, while the former, that of the statistics, will be of interest to so few, except a small part of it, that those few will find occasion to examine for themselves
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HISTORY OF TUCKER COUNTY.
special books on the subject, and will there find much more satisfaction than could possibly be given in a work of this kind.
As remarked, it would be difficult to reduce to a system the statistics relative to Tucker. The Census Compendium of 1860 dismissed the county with a foot-note, saying that no returns were made. Thus I had to look elsewhere for what I have given of that date. The Compendium of 1870 was fuller, but it all, so far as our county is concerned, is easily told, and I have given only an epitome of 1860 and 1870. But I have bestowed more attention to 1880, because I consider it of more importance. I consider that our county is just starting into life. The returns of ten and twenty years ago are valuable to us only as curiosities, or as comparisons. They do not tell the world what we are, or what the resources of our county were at that time. They do not exhibit our true wealth-undeveloped wealth. This was unknown then, and there should be no pride, and surely is no policy, in publishing to the world, by census tables, how little we had and how weak we were only a few years ago. True, it is some satisfaction to see how we have grown ; and where there is an opportunity for exhibiting this in a proper manner, it has been done, but, in such mat- ters as promise no good, and result in no benefit, we have been silent.
Such parts of the past as is history, I have given. What is not history, romance, biography or anything of that kind, I have not gone to extremes to bring prominently forward. I have endeavored to show what we were, so far as we were anything, and what we are. The future must tell what we are to be. But, with us, the future is more than the past. This age is using the past only to judge by it what the
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MISCELLANEOUS STATISTICS.
future will be. Great minds read history only for this. The past is nothing to us, except the mere satisfaction of knowing it. There are greater changes going on in the world to-day than ever before. History did not prophesy them. It gave no hint that they would come. The loco- motive, the steamship, the telegraph, the telephone, and the marvellous machineries that work, as it were, with more than human intelligence, came into the world unheralded and unexpected. Not even a star guided the Magi of the present to them. They leaped, as Pallas, armed into the world's arena, and assuming the might of Achilles, cleared the fields of a universal Troy.
Still, I cannot think that history is useless or unneces- sary. There is still something to be learned from it; al- though, I verily believe that there is more to be gained from Mathematics and Chemistry than from History. We cannot judge, and depend upon it, from the past what the future will be. Because no nation has lived forever, is no reason why none ever will. Because no government of the people, by the people and for the people has ever stood firmly and successfully one hundred years, is no grounds from which to judge that such a thing is impossible. It may be that Confucius thought it impossible for a man to travel fifty miles an hour, because his experience and his old books gave him none assurance of such a thing in the past. No doubt Columbus considered it out of the ques- tion to cross the Atlantic without sails in ten days; and, he could not have found reason for thinking so had he read all the histories burnt at Alexandria, the description of Hiero's engine not excepted. Galilleo or Newton or Keplar or Kant or Hobbs or Tycho Brahe would have disbelieved it possi- ble to send a letter two hundred and eighty-eight thousand
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HISTORY OF TUCKER COUNTY.
miles a second. Archimedes and Copernicus gave nothing to foreshadow such a thing. Nor, would those old philoso- phers have believed that the voice of a man could be heard over a wire forty miles.
Yet, just such things as these men thought impossible, if they thought at all, are tearing the world upside down and building it anew, on a firmer basis than ever. Mathematics, called Philosophy, and Chemistry, are doing it. But they are inanimate, and work only by the directions of man. Why then could not man curb the lightning, and know and control the power of oxygen and hydrogen, expanded by heat seventeen hundred times its bulk when cold-why could not this have been done two thousand years ago?' or five thousand, for that matter ? Water existed, as did fire, and iron and electricity and all the elements that now exist; why then could not Tubal-cain build a steam engine, and an ocean telegraph connecting Rome and Carthage, across the sea, that they thought was in the middle of the world?
This question was hard to answer. It was hard be- cause the answer was unknown. Some of the abstractest problems in calculus are easy enough to understand when the answer is known ; but, to find the answer caused many a brain to falter and ache and doubt and despair, to resolve again and finally to triumph. Thus with the subject, why the ancients, or even the moderns, except the most moderns, failed to accomplish what is now being done by men with weaker minds than that of Mulciber or Minos or Dædalus or Plutarch or Quintilian or Euclid or Descartes or Benja- min Franklin. It seems now that things are accomplished with less effort than was formerly exerted to no good. Surely our inventors do not study more intently than he who stood thirty-six hours, working mentally on a sum of arithmetic,
S. J. MAXWELL.
MRS. O LOWTHER MRS WM SPESERT
W. B. MAXWELL R. R. MAXWELL.
C. H. MAXWELL
J. F MAXWELL
T. E. MAXWELL.
L. H. MAXWELL.
C. J. MAXWELL
HU MAXWELL.
PHOTOTYPE
S. CUTCKU1.37
PA .AD'A.
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MISCELLANEOUS STATISTICS.
and knew nothing of the heat or the darkness or the rain that passed by; or more intensely than he who was so ab- sorbed with his theorem that he knew not that an army with beating drums and martial music passed under his window ; or than he who, when the Roman soldier rushed into his study with drawn sword to kill him, cried, "Wait till I com- plete this demonstration," and when it was completed, died, as Socrates died, like a philosopher.
Physical and mental efforts, I doubt not, were as power- ful, or as near the limit of human possibilities, thousands of years ago as they are to-day. The men tried as hard to solve the mysteries, and worked as hard on their plans, and did as much as they could, and moderns can do nothing more. But the ancients, viewed from our stand-point, made almost no advancement at all. It may have taken them a thousand years to invent the bow and arrow. It seems to us that anybody could manufacture such an engine with a few days of study.
But, we must not forget ourselves in approaching this subject. The world is not, or man's mind is not, as it used to be. The oldest man in the world, at the age of nine hun- dred, if any man ever really lived that long, did not know as much as a school boy of to-day. I cannot imagine with what feelings Abraham, the Patriarch, must have looked upon the phenomena of nature, not knowing any of the reasons for what he saw. But, I need not appeal to my imagination in a case of this kind. His feelings upon see- ing the water flow down hill and the smoke rise skyward, must have been as mine when I contemplate the nature of force as it is manifested in magnetism, sunlight and the dis- sociation of atoms-things which are blank mysteries to me.
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