USA > West Virginia > Tucker County > History of Tucker County, West Virginia, from the earliest explorations and settlements to the present time; > Part 7
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HISTORY OF TUCKER COUNTY.
drew and Abraham Parsons, now of California, are sons of James Parsons. Job Parsons, and Solomon Parsons were sons of William Parsons.
The lands along the river, above St. George, have ever since their first settlement been in the Parsons family. This is the finest agricultural land in the county; and those who have owned it have always belonged to the wealthy class of our citizens. They have held nearly half the offices in the county. They are not and never were all of one political party. They have usually been nearly equally divided. Generally speaking, James Parsons' descendants have leant toward the Whig and Republican parties; while those of Thomas voted the opposite ticket. At present, altogether, there are more Democrats than Republicans. Judge S. E. Parsons first voted in 1859, and cast his ballot for the Whigs. Since then he has voted with the Democrats, and has always been a strong Union man. The others of his immediate relatives have not supported the Democratic ticket ; but nearly all the others of the name, including Jo- seph, Ward and Jesse Parsons, are Democrats.
The Bonnifield family came into notice very early in the history of Tucker, though not so early as those of Parsons and Minear. The first of that name in the county was Samuel Bonnifield. He came to the Horse Shoe from Eastern Virginia sometime before the commencement of the present century. Not much is known of his ancestry, ex- cept that they were of French extraction. The name in that country was Bonnifant ; but, being Anglicized, it was as it now is. There are still different spellings for it. Rep- resentatives of the family spell it Bonafield, as those in Preston County. 'Others drop an "n" from it.
Where Washington City now stands was the old Bonni-
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field homestead. Whether they owned the land or not is unknown. At any rate, they were engaged in cultivating tobacco there : and, there in 1752, Samuel Bonnifield was born. His father's name was Gregory, and his grandfather's was Luke .* Nothing of note occurred in Samuel's life until he was moved to ramble, and left his paternal roof. The next heard of him was in the summer of 1774. He was then in Fauquier County, Virginia.
It was in that year that there broke out a trouble with the Indians, called Dunmore's War. The Indians com- menced killing people along the frontiers. The only set- tlement in Tucker, that in the Horse Shoe, was broken up. The Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, decided to raise an army, march into the Indian country of Ohio, and burn all the Indian towns, so that these hives from which the savages swarmed, might be destroyed. Gen. Andrew Lewis and Governor Dunmore each was to raise an army and
* While searching for other historical matter, at Brownsville, Ohto, in the spring of 1884, I happened upon an old legend of the Bonnifield family, a little different from that of the Tucker County family. It is certain that the Bonnifields there and those in Tucker, Preston and in the West, all belong to the same stock, and I am inclined to credit the Ohio legend, which narrates the first coming of the Bonnifields to America. The story runneth thus : Very early in the history of America, probably about the close of the 17th century, three brothers named Bonnifield became desirons of leaving England for America. They belonged to the poor class, although intelligent, and had not money to pay their passage to our shores. At that time, it was a custom among those who had no money and who wanted to emigrate to the New World, to sell them- selves or mortgage themselves to the master of some vessel. He would then bring them over, and sell his clalm upon them for enough cash in hand to pay him for their passage. The emigrants were then bound in servitude to the purchaser until their wages amounted to the sum paid the master of the vessel. After that they were free.
The three Bonnifield brothers came to America in that manner, and were sold in Baltimore. One was carried to Virginia, one to Maryland and the third was purchased by a speculator and was taken to Florida. Those in Maryland and Virginia each had a family, and the families are still distinguished apart, and are nearly equal In the number of representatives ; but of him who went to Florida no tidings has ever been heard. Whether he died a victim to the revers of that sultry land, or whether in the wars of the Spanish, French and Indians he was killed, or, whether his family is now blended with the population of Florida, is unknown. All the Bonnifields in America, so far as is known, are the descendants of the two brothers who settled in Virginia and Maryland. Samuel Bonnifield belonged to the Maryland family, and those in Ohlo about Zanesville and Brownsville to the Virginia family.
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proceed to the mouth of the Great Kanawha, where they would unite and invade the Indian country. Dunmore col- lected his troops in the northern part of Virginia, while Lewis enlisted his from counties further south.
When Samuel Bonnifield reached Fauquier County, he found the most ambitious young men enlisting in Lewis' Army. Although young Bonnifield was not a citizen of Vir- ginia and had never seen war, yet he was no less ambitious and no less adventurous than the young soldiers of Virginia; and, he applied and obtained a place in the ranks as a common soldier.
The army marched to Camp Union, now Lewisburg, Greenbrier County, where it was joined by fifty men, under Even Shelby, who had come all the way from North Caro- lina to fight in the war. General Isaac Shelby, the Gov- ernor of Kentucky and Secretary of War, was also in the army, and with him Bonnifield formed an intimate acquaint- ance .* From Lewisburg, the army proceeded to Point Pleasant. Some went on foot, and some made canoes at the mouth of the Gauley River and floated down the Ka- nawha to the Ohio. Bonnifield was among the latter.
On the evening of October 9, eleven hundred men were encamped at Point Pleasant. That evening a large Indian army crossed the Ohio not far above, and lay hid in the woods, while some of the Indians gobbled like turkeys to decoy the soldiers from camp. The plan succeeded; and, before day the next morning, some men went out to shoot the turkeys. But, instead of turkeys, they found Indians, and only one man got away. He ran back to camp and
* Evan Shelby was the father of Isaac Shelby, and was a great fighter. In General Forbes' campaign against Fort Duquesne, he found an Indian spy sneaking around the camp, and Immediately gave chase to the rascal. The Indian ran for his life, but Shelby caught and killed him.
MRS DR BONNIFIELD.
DR. A. BONNIFIELD.
MRS ENOCH MINEAR
ENOCH MINEAR
PHOI- I
.CK .
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said that he had seen three hundred thousand Indians; but it is now thought that his estimate was three hundred times too large.
In a few minutes the battle commenced, and was fought hard all day. Bonnifield and Isaac Shelby fought side by side, and at least one Indian, who kept bobbing his head up from behind a log, got his eternal quietus from their rifles. The Indians and white men fought behind trees and logs, and it was the hardest and longest contested battle ever fought with the Indians in America. But about sunset the Indians found themselves grievously set upon by three hundred soldiers who had crept through the weeds and got in their rear. The whole Indian army fled, yelling and screaming. Bonnifield and some others ran after them and saw them crossing the Ohio on logs and rafts. In this they were not succeeding well; for the logs kept rolling so that they all fell off into the water and had to swim out.
The Virginian army crossed into Ohio and hurried on to help kill the Indians and burn the towns on the Scioto, where Dunmore, who had erossed the Ohio at Parkersburg, then was. The Indians were so badly whipped that they made peace without any more fighting. The Virginians lost one-fifth of their men in killed and wounded. The dead were buried, and the wounded were left in care of a com- pany of soldiers. Bonnifield was among those who took care of the wounded. He staid there all winter; and when he was discharged in the spring, he and a companion started home alone. They failed to kill any game, and came near starving to death. While wandering about in Greenbrier County, they came to a house where lived a man named McClung, and whose descendants still live there. He gave the famished soldiers all they wanted, but stood by them to keep them from eating themselves to deatlı.
7
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Bonnifield had scarcely reached Virginia when the Revo- Intionary War came on, and he at once joined the American army, and fought through the whole war. At the battle of Germantown he was with his old comrade of Point Pleas- ant, Gen. George Matthews. He was at the battle of Bran- dywine, and was near by when Lafayette was wounded. He was at Yorktown, and saw General O'Hara surrender the sword of Cornwallis. This ended his history as a soldier.
When the Revolution came to an end, in 1781, Samuel Bonnifield was twenty-nine years old. He now turned his attention to farming, having first married Dorcas James, a young lady of a respectable family in Virginia, and a rela- tion of the James family now in Tucker. Soon after his marriage, but in what year is unknown, he came to Cheat River, and settled in the Horse Shoe. This was before the commencement of the present century.
He farmed with success for some years, and while in the Horse Shoe, in 1799, his son, Dr. Arnold Bonnifield was born. About this time, the Horse Shoe was legally survey- od, and it was then found that the land whereon Bonnifield resided was not his, but belonged to James Parsons. With this discovery, Bonnifield commenced looking for another farm, and found one suitable at Limestone, and moved to it.
From this time on, he lived the life of a farmer, and raised a large family, whose descendants may now be found in half the states of the Union. He always manifested a disposition to roam the woods and be alone; and, in his old age, he became more and more attached to a hunter's life. He spent a large part of the fall and winter in the woods; and, though eighty years of age, he thought it no hardship to sleep by his camp fire, when snow was a foot deep, and
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his clothing was drenched from having waded creeks and runs all day. He was small in stature; but his strength seemed exhaustless. He died at the age of ninety-five, and was buried on Graveyard Hill, near the present residence of Dr. Bonnifield, on Horse Shoe Run.
The descendants of some of his relations subsequently found their way into Tucker County; but none are there now, all having emigrated to the West.
Dr. Arnold Bonnifield, a son of Samuel Bonnifield, has always been a citizen of the county, and is now its oldest resident, with the exception of George Long, of Dry Fork. He was concerned in all the early history of the county, after he became a man, until of late years. He was the first clerk of the circuit and county courts of Tucker County.
But his greatest influence has not been as a politician or soldier, but as a social reformer. From his earliest years, he showed a strong desire to become a scholar ; but, during his early years, hard work and few advantages made it a hard thing for him to pursue his studies. Mathematics was his favorite science; and he became master of all the branches of it, except the higher departments of the calcu- lus. The greater part of this was attained without the use of books ; for a rude edition of arithmetic, and a few leaves of algebra and geometry, were about all the instruction he had until his twenty-fourth year, when he attended a few sessions of school at Clarksburg.
While a boy, he was accustomed to solve his problems and demonstrate his theorems on a smooth stone, using a gravel for a pencil. In this manner he gained the greater part of his mathematical education. His early life was spent on his father's farm at Limestone, where he worked
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and studied until his twenty-fourth year. After his return from school at Clarksburg, he again devoted himself to farm work. At the age of twenty-six he married Elizabeth Mi- near, granddaughter of John Minear. Shortly afterwards, he moved from Limestone to his present home on Horse Shoe Run. He took a course in medicine, and practiced that profession until old age forced him to retire from it. While he practiced, he stood pre-eminently above all other physicians in the county.
He has been an extensive traveler, having visited the eastern and western states. He was in Missouri at an early day, and returned home on horseback, the journey from there home occupying a month of time. His influence on the destiny of the county has been exerted in a quiet way ; but that it has been material is to be seen in the fact that none are more favorably known, and none are held in greater esteem than he.
As late as 1840, there were very few settlements in the county, except along the river, and in the narrow bottoms of the larger creeks. The mountains were mostly unbroken wildernesses. Here and there might be seen the cabin of a settler who was opening up a farm among the hills. About this time, or more exactly, in the fall of 1836, the region about the head waters of Clover Run began to be settled. This is now Clover District. The first house, except imme- diately on the bottom land of Clover, was that built by Isaac Phillips, father of Moses Phillips, Esq. This was in 1836, when Moses Phillips was six years of age. The cabin was without " door, floor or chimney," as he has expressed it. But it was the commencement of a settlement that now contains a fair portion of our county's people. For as soon as it became known that Phillips' cabin had been built
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other settlers came into the neighborhood and took up lands and went to work. Thus, by 1840, some five families, and probably thirty children, were in the neighborhood; and the dense forests as well as the dens of panthers and bears, began to be broken up.
It was now felt that there ought to be some provision made for educating the children of the new settlement; for, although cut off from many of the conveniences of life, and destined to unceasing hard work, the pioneers of Tucker have never neglected the education of their children. Sometimes the advantages were few and far between; but, such as they were, they were made the most of. The children often got no more than ten months of schooling in their lives. Moses Phillips got only nine, and that was at the new school-house, which the five families built on Clover Run in 1840. One who attended there has thus spoken of it: "It was built of round poles, chunked and daubed. The earth inside, which composed the floor, was completely leveled off. A few rocks, thrown up at one end, on the inside, formed the chimney. A small hole was cut in one side, and paper was fastened over it. This was the window. The door was made of clapboards. Some of the scholars went to this school barefooted with- out missing a day."
This short quotation is inserted because it is a faithful description of the country school-houses of that day. They were rude and would be laughed at now ; but they an- swered their purpose, and have passed away only because they so enlightened the country that better buildings were demanded. Those who have aided in the settlement and progress of the Clover District, can now see that they have not labored in vain. From 1840, this region became an
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important part of the county, and its history, and the biography of its people will be given in the succeeding chapters.
Even before the settlements in the mountains west of St. George were commenced, cabins were built in the eastern part of the county. The Dumires seem to have taken the lead in this quarter ; and, ever since, they have been in the front, in the work of building up and improving the district about the upper tributaries of Horse Shoe Run. The family is now numerous, and exercises much influence on the county affairs.
The name is spelled in several ways; but all are traced to the same source. Dumire and Domire are both now used. Germany was the native country of this family, as well as of the Minears. Rinehart Dumire# spent his early years at sea. He was born in 1765. He went to China three times, and then joined a whaling ship and sailed for the Arctic Ocean. Such a voyage is now laborious and fraught with danger; but it was far more so then, and none but the stoutest constitutions could stand it. Dumire spent three years among the frozen islands and drifting icebergs, before he turned toward home. When he reached his country, after such a trip, one would suppose that he would not repeat the undertaking. But he again sailed for the North, and was absent three years in the dark oceans of eternal winter. A third time he went upon his danger- ous voyage to the North, and a third time was gone three years. All in all, he had now spent twenty-three years on the ocean. He had coasted along the shores of Europe, Asia and Africa ; six times had he doubled the Cape of Good
* The name Rinehart is spelled in two ways. One as above and the other Rhinehart. Being a proper name, the authority for its spelling rests upon those who use it most.
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Hope, crossed the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean, and visited the spice islands of the South seas.
He was yet a young man, only thirty-four years of age. This was in 1799. He resolved to emigrate to America. With his family, he reached his destination and selected him a home on Stemple Ridge, in Tucker County. This may not have been the first cabin built in that section ; but it was surely among the first. His sons, among whom were John, Daniel, Rinehart and Frederic, soon became men, and each commenced a settlement of his own. Meanwhile, the progress of the county was going steadily forward. The paths began to be widened into roads, and the people built better houses. The cornfields were enlarged, were better fenced and better tilled. Schools were growing more nu- merous. The teachers were paid from private subscriptions and the wages were from five to ten dollars a month. Churches were given some attention, and the people were not unlearned in good behavior and morality. Religions services were still held in private houses or in school- houses. Old and young alike attended the meetings, and the good influence of these associations had its effect everywhere, in training the young to refined ideas of hu- man existence. The meetings were conducted by pious men, called "class leaders," and regularly ordained minis- ters were few. But the people then were probably as good as they are now.
Very early in this century, Stephen Losh came to Horse Shoe Run, and settled where Rufus Maxwell now lives. A native of Germany, born in 1781, he lived a short time in Maryland, and then moved to Tucker. He found Holbert's house deserted and in ruins. Near abont were a few little fields, that Holbert had cleared. In one of these he found
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an apple tree, and built his shanty under its branches. The hut which he erected was made of buckeye logs. He improved the land around his cabin and planted a crop of corn. Before long, he found that he was on the land of Captain Parsons, and accordingly began looking about for another place. The nearest neighbor he had, lived at the mouth of Raccoon, about a mile distant, and Losh would have selected a site just above him ; but, a quarrel having meanwhile arisen between them, Losh thought it best to get farther from his troublesome neighbor. Accordingly, he se- lected him a site three miles further up Horse Shoe Run ; and in a short time, Michael Hansford took up the land on Hansford Run, where Losh had thought of settling. This land has ever since been known as the Hansford Place, and the run as Hansford or Mike's Run. He had a blacksmith shop there, the remains of which may still be seen, on the farm of Arnold Bonnifield.
Stephen Losh was connected with the War of 1812, al- though he was not a regular soldier. He had something to do with the wagon trains; and, in that capacity, he was in South Carolina, and visited Charleston. When he turned his attention to farming on Horse Shoe Run, he built a grist mill, and did a good business until his mill washed away. About this time occurred the "rainy summer," so called by the oldest citizens. It rained almost constantly from the first of June till late in August. Crops were drowned and chilled so that the following year was one of great searcity. Potatoes were made to answer for bread. Stephen Losh died on Horse Shoe Run, in 1874, at the age of ninety- three. He left several children, notably among whom was William Losh, Sr. He is still living, and has been a re- markable man. Fond of travel, he has gratified this pas-
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sion. He has visited the Western States several times, the last time after he was seventy-five years of age. He is minutely acquainted with Ohio from Lake Erie to the Ohio River on the South. He first went there in 1825, in com- pany with Nicholas and George Parsons. They went on foot, and explored thoroughly the country as they went. It was in the spring of the year and the young men felt that farmers ought to be at work. So, while passing through Gilmer County, when they saw a lazy young granger lying on the fence sunning himself, while his plow team stood idle in the furrow, they yelled at him : "Get up there, you infernal fool, and go to work; lounge around all spring, and next winter you will trot over the country with a sack under your arm, hunting something to eat." The young man lit off the fence in the twinkling of an eye, and grabbing up a hand full of rocks, commenced pelting the strangers, and neglected not to heap upon them various vile epithets, and called them all the ugly names he could think of. But they passed on, and were presently overtaken by a man on horseback, who wanted to know what they had done to the young granger to put him in such a terrible rage. They related what they had seen, and what they had said to him. The man asked if they were strangers in the country, and they told him they were. "Well," said the man, "you hit it exactly. That lazy scamp won't work in the summer, and buys bread on credit in the winter." William Losh re- mained in Ohio a long time, and hauled freight from Lake Erie to the Muskingum River. "But Nicholas and George Parsons soon came back, and ever after remained where they still live.
William Losh has always been a hard-working man. But, after the fall work was done, it was always his delight
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to spend a month or six weeks in the woods hunting. He has been, beyond a doubt, the best and most successful woodsman of Tucker County. The country beyond Back- bone Mountain, Canada, as it is called, has been his hunt- ing ground for years. No nook or corner of that uninhabi- ted wilderness is unknown to him; and deer and bear innumerable have fallen before the deadly aim of his rifle. In his younger days, no man was a better marksman than he; and, even now, though eighty-four years of age, very few can equal him. He has always been a peaceable man ; but no man ever imposed upon him with impunity. If Tucker County has produced a man, that with training could have pounded Slade or Sullivan, William Losh must be the man.
The peculiarities and characteristics of all his ancestors seem to have concentered in John Losh, son of William Losh, born in Ohio about 1831. He was the eldest child, and was a genius from his infancy. When he was a small child his parents moved to Horse Shoe Run, where William Losh, Jr., now lives. This was John Losh's home as long as he remained in Tucker. He spent his idle hours con- structing toys, curious traps and automatic flying machines, and wooden rats that would run across the floor, and leather bumble bees that would buzz and hum. He was of a light complexion, and had blue eyes.
When he became a man, he was as much of a rambler as his father and grandfather. His time was spent in roaming over the hills; and Canada, beyond the mountains, was his domain. Very few but him and his father had ever ven- tured into that wilderness. It is a wild country now ; but, at that time, it was unexplored, and the country along Black Fork, over one hundred square miles, had not the
,
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home of a human being on it. From the head of Black Fork to the Fairfax Stone was an unbroken forest. The timber was primeval. No ax had scarred the trees that stood so thick that their branches interlocked for miles, and some of the soil beneath had not been touched by a sun- beam for ages. Vast beds of laurel, in places, were so matted with the summers and storms of centuries that a hunter, who would pass that way, must walk on the tops, where the branches, that heavy snows had bent and pressed together, formed a rough gnarly floor, several feet above the ground. Beneath the laurel, there were lairs and dens of wild beasts. Bears and panthers had broken tunnels through the thickets in all directions; and what deadly battles and mortal combats were fought there, when these savage kings and tyrants of the wilderness crossed each other's paths, no human eye was there to witness.
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