USA > West Virginia > History of West Virginia > Part 14
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Henry. How, at the head of the Second Virginia Regiment, he repaired to Fort Washington, and marched with St. Clair to the disastrous field on the banks of the St. Mary, has been elsewhere told. Stowed away in the archives of the War Department at Washington, deposited there during the administra- tion in that office by General Knox, is a production in which is told a melancholy tale of sadness and woe. It is the official report of General St. Clair, written at Fort Washington after the return of the shattered army to that place, and bearing date November 9th, 1791. In it he says: "Colonel Darke was ordered to make a charge with a part of the second line, and to turn the left flank of the enemy. This was executed with great spirit and at first promised much success. The Indians instantly gave way and were driven back three or four hundred yards, but for want of a sufficient number of riflemen to pursue this advantage, they soon returned and the troops were obliged to give back in their turn." From the same sad recital we learn that Colonel Darke's Virginians made a second charge, not less gallantly performed, but with even more unfortunate results than the first. Of the Virginians who yielded up their lives on that fatal field, eighty are stated to have been from Berkeley county, one of the number being Captain Joseph Darke, the youngest son of the Colonel. From Fort Washington, Colonel Darke re- turned to Berkeley county, which he almost continuously represented in the General Assembly until his death, which occurred November 20th, ISO1, when he found a grave near the spot where early in life he had found a home. Darkesville, in Berkeley county, and Darke county, Ohio, commemorate his name.
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ADAM STEVEN, the other representative from Berke- ley, was long prominent on the frontier. July 20th, 1754, he received a lieutenant-colonel's commission, and was placed in command of Fort Cumberland. Early the next year he raised a company in the Shen- andoah Valley, with which he marched to the west with General Braddock, and participated in the battle of Monongahela. Returning, he commanded at Fort Cumberland until May, 1757, when that place was garrisoned by a detachment of Maryland troops, and Colonel Steven, at the head of two hundred Vir- ginians, proceeded, by way of Alexandria and thence by water, to the coast of South Carolina, there engaging in an expedition against the Creek Indians, who were then allies of France. Later, he served with the rank of brigadier-general on the frontier of Virginia. He entered the Continental service at the beginning of the Revolution as colonel, commanding the Sixth Virginia Regiment. He rose rapidly in the scale of promotion, ·receiving a brigadier-general's commission September 4th, 1776, and that of major-general February 12th, 1777. He won distinction on the field at Brandywine, but was tried by court-martial on a charge of intoxica- tion at the battle of Germantown, and being found guilty, was discharged from the army in 1778. Not- withstanding, he still retained the respect of the fron- tiersmen for whom he had rendered such valiant services, and they elected him to represent Berkeley county in the Convention of 1788. He died near Winchester, Virginia, in November, 1791, leaving a large landed estate, which was afterward the cause of much litigation. .
JOHN STUART, one of the delegates from Greenbrier
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county, was a distinguished representative of that Scotch-Irish stock that colonized the upper Valley of Virginia. He was born in Scotland in 1748, and came with his parents to Virginia when but four years of age. His father, David Stuart, was a partisan of the house. of Stuart and a friend of Robert Dinwiddie, the Gov- ernor of Virginia, with whom he came to Virginia in 1752. John Stuart rose to the rank of colonel in the border wars, and was as brave a soldier as ever faced an enemy. In 1769, at'the age of twenty-one, he came over the mountains and found William Hamilton plant- ing the first acre of corn ever cultivated in the Green- brier Valley. He halted near the present site of the town of Frankfort, in Greenbrier county, where, the next year, he reared his cabin as a Bethel over his first camping-spot in the wilds of West Augusta. . He com- manded a company at the battle of Point Pleasant, October 10th, 1744, and witnessed the murder of Cornstalk at the same place, November 10th, 1777. It was he who led the relief from Fort Savannah that saved Donnally's Fort at the time of the desperate attack upon it in 1778. Colonel Stuart was a man of culture and refinement, and for that day possessed an excellent education. It is to his "Memoirs" that we are indebted for much of our knowledge of the early settlements of the Greenbrier Valley.
GEORGE CLENDENIN, the other delegate from Green- brier, born probably in Scotland about the year 1746. He was a prominent frontiersman, one long engaged in the Indian wars, and was a soldier in General Lewis's army, with which he participated in the battle of Point Pleasant. In 1774 Major Thomas Bullitt, for services during the French and Indian War, received a
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patent for twelve hundred and forty acres of land, which he located on the Great Kanawha, at the mouth of Elk river. In 1786, Major Bullitt met George Clen- denin in Richmond, and to him sold a portion of this land, including the site of the present city of Charles- ton. In 1788, George Clendenin, accompanied by his brothers, a sister and his aged father, Charles, removed to these lands and reared the first structure ever built within the limits of the present capital of West Vir- ginia. It was a two-story, double-log building, and was bullet and arrow proof. It stood for nearly a century, and was long known in pioneer times as Clendenin's Fort. Kanawha county was organized in 1789, at which time George Clendenin furnished the books for the county, for which the court allowed him nineteen hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco. Here he con- tinued to reside until 1796, when he removed to Marietta, Ohio, where he died in 1797. He was the father-in-law of Return Jonathan Meigs, Governor of Ohio.
EBENEZER ZANE, a delegate from Ohio county, was born in Berkeley county, October 7th, 1747, and there grew to manhood, among his associates being William Darke, William Crawford and Adam Steven. At the age of twenty-three, alone, he left the parental home. Journeying toward the setting sun, at length on a bright morning in June, 1770, he stood upon the high bank of the Ohio, just above the mouth of Wheeling creek, where he gazed upon the landscape of island, hill and river. The founder of a future city was upon the spot on which it was to be reared. Erecting a cabin, he remained one season on the Ohio, and then returning to Berkeley county, induced a few resolute friends to 14
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accompany him. In the spring of 1772, he removed his family westward, but deeming it unsafe to take them to the Ohio, he left them at Redstone-now Brownstown, Pennsylvania-and in company with his brothers, Jona- than and Silas, proceeded to take possession of his rights on the Ohio. ' In the spring of 1773, he brought his family to his cabin, and at the same time was joined by several families from the South Branch of the Poto- mac. Thus was securely laid the foundation of the present city of Wheeling. His military services have
been recited in connection with the siege of Fort Henry. He received various marks of distinction from the Colonial, State and National governments. During Dunmore's administration he was disbursing officer of the Western Military Department, and later, under the Commonwealth, held several positions of a civil character. In May, 1796, he was appointed by Congress to open the National road from Wheeling to Limestone-now Maysville, Kentucky-and the next year the work was satisfactorily performed. As a com- pensation for this service, he was permitted to locate three sections of land, one at the crossing of the Mus- kingum-now Zanesville, another at the crossing of the Hockhocking, where Lancaster now stands, and a third on the east bank of the Sciota, opposite Chillicothe. In addition to these estates, he became the possessor of large tracts of land in Western Virginia. He died in 18II, aged sixty-four years.
CHAPTER XV.
THE WEST VIRGINIA PIONEER.
The Pioneers-Their Code of Morals-Traits of Character-Themselves and their Sons in the War of 1812-Descendants in the Mexican War-Soldiers from what is now West Virginia, enlisted under the " Ten Regiment Act"-Roll of the Same.
" A moment and the pageant's gone ; The Red men are no more ; The pale-faced stranger stands alone Upon the river's shore." Paulding.
WITH the close of the eighteenth century, the storm of savage warfare which had raged upon the frontier of Virginia for three-quarters of a century passed away. The war-whoop of the barbarian was no longer heard among the hills of West Virginia, and the val- leys were dotted with cabins, the homes of as hardy a race as ever braved the perils of pioneer life. Now they went forth to another conquest, not with the rifle, but with the axe to conquer the wilderness, thus in- suring to themselves and their posterity a rich inherit- ance. What else could have brought them? They were hundreds of miles from the marts of trade, and almost entirely isolated from society. Yet these men carved out a society of their own, and established a code of morals as rigid as any known in older lands. The records of their first courts contain many entries showing indictments for Sabbath breaking and pro- fanity.
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They were as brave men as ever dared the dangers of forest life. Inured to toil and privation and ac- customed to almost constant alarm of war, they developed a spirit of heroism and patriotism which was transmitted to their descendants. This is evi- denced by their records in two wars-that of 1812, and the war with Mexico.
When the first came and Virginia called upon her sons to defend her soil from the foot of the invader, nowhere was it responded to with more alacrity than amid the hills and vales of Western Virginia. There was not a mountain, a river, a valley of the West that did not send representatives to the field. From the summits of the Alleghenies to the shores of the Ohio, men mounted their horses, strapped on their knapsacks, shouldered their arms and turned their faces from home. There was no distinction of the rich from the poor. Gentlemen who had occupied conspicuous places in our halls of legislation, the plowman fresh from the fallowed field, officers, soldiers, citizens, all went with one accord. In a fortnight after the call to arms, fifteen thousand men were encamped within sight of Rich- mond, among them the largest body of cavalry- horsemen from the west side of the Blue Ridge-that, up to that time, had ever been reviewed on the Conti- nent. There were too many, and in one morning one thousand of them were discharged and ordered to re- turn home. On their way over the Blue Ridge, they met whole companies still marching to the East, and their course was only stopped when the Briton had gone and all danger was past.
But not only to the seaboard did these pioneers and their sons hasten. Nearly a regiment of West Vir-
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ginians marched to the West and served under General Harrison on the Maumee. There they assisted in the erection of Fort Meigs and participated in the battle of the River Raisin.
When the Mexican minister, as the representative of his government, officially notified Congress that in the event of the passage of the bill providing for the admission of Texas into the Union, war would follow, his declaration attracted but little attention. But when General Santa Anna equipped an army and began his march toward the Rio Grande, at the same time de- claring to the excited populace of the capital of the Montezumas, that before his return he would water his horse in the Potomac river, the Americans realized the truth of the declaration made by the minister before
leaving Washington. The declaration of war came, and Virginia, as ever before, was ready. Her military chieftains of a later day, then but novices in the pro- fession of arms, hastened away to study the science of war on the table-lands of Mexico. Among these were Stonewall Jackson, A. P. Hill, and others who won dis- tinction in after years, when Virginia's soil drank the blood of her sons, arrayed against each other in deadly strife.
Under the "Ten Regiment Act" of Congress, a company was enlisted in Western Virginia, in which it is believed every county bordering on the Ohio was represented. It rendezvoused at Guyandotte, in Cabell county, and thence proceeded to Newport Bar- racks, where it was mustered into service and attached to the Eleventh United States Infantry, Colonel Ram- sey commanding. Proceeding to New Orleans, it landed with General Scott at Vera Cruz, and marched
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with the advancing columns to the City of Mexico. In addition to these, others went from what is now the interior counties of the State, some of whom served in a company from Staunton, others in a company en- , listed at Christiansburg, Virginia. ,
PIONEER HOME ON GREENBRIER RIVER.
CHAPTER XVI.
INTRODUCTION OF STEAM NAVIGATION ON WEST VIRGINIA WATERS.
Nicholas Roosevelt sent by Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton, to Survey the Ohio --- Building of the first Steamer at Pittsburg-Prophetic View of Steam Navigation on the Western Waters --- The Steamer " New Orleans " the first on the Ohio-Her Experimental Voyage-Arrival at New Orleans-First Steam- boat on the Great Kanawha-First to Reach Charleston-First to Reach Mor- gantown-First that Reached Elizabeth, on the Little Kanawha-Second to Reach the same Place.
THE complete success attending the experiments in steam navigation on the Hudson and adjacent waters previous to 1809, turned the attention of its principal projectors to the idea of its application on the western waters. In the month of April of the last named year, Nicholas Roosevelt, a civil engineer of New York, pur- suant to an agreement with Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton, passed over the mountains to Pittsburg for the purpose of ascertaining whether the Ohio admitted of steam navigation. At that time but two steamboats-the " Clermont" and the "North River" -were afloat on American waters, both of which were running on the Hudson. Roosevelt descended the river from Pittsburg to its mouth, and reported to his employers the feasibility of the project.
Early in the spring of 1810, under the supervision of Roosevelt, the building of the first steamboat on the Ohio was begun at Pittsburg. While the work was in progress, the author of the " Navigator " was prepar-
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ing his work in that town, at which place it was pub- lished in 1811. Speaking of the building of the first steamboat and the probable success of the enterprise, he says :-
" It will be a novel sight, and as pleasing as novel, to see a huge boat working her way up the windings of the Ohio, without the appearance of sail, oar, pole, or any manual labor about her-moving within the secrets of her own wonderful mechanism, and propelled by power undiscoverable. This plan, if it succeeds, must open to view flattering prospects to an immense coun- try, an interior of not less than two thousand miles of as fine a soil and climate as the world can produce, and to a people worthy of all the advantages that Nature and art can give them ; a people the more meritorious because they know how to sustain peace, and live inde- pendent among the crushing of empires, the falling of kings, the slaughter and bloodshed of millions, and the tumult, corruption, and tyranny of all the world beside. * Indeed, the very appearance of the placid and unbroken surface of the Ohio invites to trade and enterprise ; and from the canoe, which the adventurer manages with a single pole or paddle, he advances to a small square ark-boat, which he loads at the headwaters with various wares, liquors, fruits, dry goods and small groceries, and starts his boat for the river traffic, stopping at every town and village to accommodate the inhabitants with the best of his cargo. This voyage performed, which generally occupies three months, and the ark sold for half its first cost, the trader returns doubly invigorated, and enabled to enlarge his vessel and cargo, he sets out again ; this is repeated until, perhaps, getting tired of this mode of
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merchandising, he sets himself down in some town or village as a wholesale merchant, druggist, physician, or lawyer, or something else that renders him respectable in the eyes of his neighbors, where he lives amid wealth and comforts the remainder of his days-nor is it by any known that his fortune was founded in the paddling of a canoe, or trafficking in apples, cider- royal, peach brandy, whiskey, etc. From the canoe we now-1810-see ships of two or three tons burden, masted and rigged, descending the same Ohio, laden with the products of the country, bound to New Or- leans, thence to any part of the world. And now the white sail of commerce is to give place to vessels pro- pelled by steam."
The work is completed. The steamer "New Orleans," of three hundred tons burden and keel one hundred and thirty-eight feet, was launched at Pittsburg, and in March, 181 1, left that place on her experimental voyage. Late at night on the fourth day she reached Louisville, having been but seventy hours descending upwards of seven hundred miles. The novel appearance of the vessel, and the rapidity with which it made its passage over the broad reaches of the river, excited a mixture of surprise and terror among the inhabitants along the banks, whom the rumors of such an invention had never reached. The unexpected arrival of the vessel before Louisville, on a still moonlight night, and the extraor- dinary sound which filled the air as the pent-up steam escaped from the valves, produced general alarm, and multitudes arose from their beds to ascertain the cause.
Proceeding, she experienced great danger, in which she was nearly lost, at New Madrid, during violent earthquake shocks at that place. She reached Natchez
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in December, and for the first time took on freight and passengers, which she delivered in New Orleans a few days later. She then entered the New Orleans and Natchez trade and never returned to the Ohio. The following is subjoined from a statement made for the year 1812, by Captain Morris, who was one of her pilots.
"The boat's receipts for freight upwards has averaged the last year, $700 ; passage money, $900 ; downwards, $300 freight, and $500 for passengers. She performs thirteen trips during the year, which at $2400 per trip, amounts to $31,200. Her expenses are twelve hands at $30 per month each, equal to $4320; Captain's salary, $1000 ; seventy cords of wood each trip, at $1.75 per cord, equal to $1586; total expenses being $6906. It is presumed that the boat's extra trips for pleasure, or otherwise, out of her usual route, has paid for all the expenses of repairs ; and with the profits of the bar-room, for the boat's provisions, in which case there will remain a net gain of $24,294 for the first year. The owners estimate the boat's value at $40,000, which produces an interest of $24,000, and by giving $1894 more for furniture, etc., we have a clear gain of $20,000 for the first year's labor of the steamer " New Orleans." This is a revenue superior to any other establishment in the United States, and what is equally gratifying, arising out of a capital whose application is of singular benefit to the whole community, and particularly so as it respects the navigation of the western waters."
Because of the extensive manufacture of salt in the Kanawha Salines, steam navigation was soon introduced on the Great Kanawha river-it is believed before its introduction on any other tributary of the Ohio. In the
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year 1819-the same in which the first steamship crossed the Atlantic-a steamboat which was little more than a barge with an engine placed upon it, called the Robert Thompson, ascended the Great Kanawha for the pur- pose of ascertaining whether it was navigable- to Charleston. She ascended from Point Pleasant to Red House Shoals, which, after two days' effort, she failed to pass, and returned to the Ohio. Her officers reported the result of the voyage to the Virginia Assembly, and that body, in 1820, appropriated funds for the improve- ment of the river. The work, under the direction of John Bosser, began at Elk, Johnson's, Tyler's, and Red House Shoals, and continued for two years, when the funds were exhausted and the work was suspended for four years. In 1825 another appropriation was made and the contracts completed in 1828. The second steamboat on the Kanawha was the "Eliza," which succeeded in reaching Charleston in 1823. She was built at Wheeling for Andrew Donnally and Isaac Noyes, at a cost of $35,000.
Before the year 1820, several steamers had ascended the Monongahela, but the first to reach Morgantown was the " Reindeer," on Sunday, April 29th, 1826.
The first steamboat on the Little Kanawha, that reached Elizabeth, the county seat of Wirt, was the "Sciota Belle," in the year 1842. She was built by `Shanklin & Sons, at Parkersburg, and only made one voyage on the Little Kanawha. The second steamer to reach Elizabeth was the "Lodi," in 1847.
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CHAPTER XVII.
THE . BOUNDARY LINE BETWEEN MARYLAND AND WEST VIRGINIA.
The Claim of Maryland to a Portion of Virginia-Its Revival in 1832-Governor Floyd appoints Charles J. Faulkner a Commissioner on the Part of Virginia- His Historical Research-His Report in Full-Historical Value of the Same.
ABOUT the year 1830 Maryland set up a claim to a considerable tract of territory on the northwest border of Virginia-now the northern border of West Vir- ginia-including a part of the Northern Neck. She urged the claim with much earnestness, and Governor John Floyd appointed Charles J. Faulkner, of Martins- burg, a commissioner to collect and embody testimony on behalf of Virginia, on this interesting question. He worked industriously for several months and then submitted the following report:
" MARTINSBURG, Nov. 6, 1832.
"SIR: In execution of a commission addressed to me by your excellency, and made out in pursuance of a joint resolution of the General Assembly of this State, of the 20th of March last, I have directed my attention to the collection of such testimony as the lapse of time and the nature of the inquiry have ena- bled me to secure touching ' the settlement and adjust- ment of the western boundary of Maryland.' The division line which now separates the two States on the west, and which has heretofore been considered as fixed
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by positive adjudication and long acquiescence, com- mences at a point where the Fairfax Stone is planted, at the head spring of the Potomac river, and runs thence due north to the Pennsylvania line. This is the boundary by which Virginia has held for near a century ; it is the line by which she held in 1786, when the compact made by the Virginia and Maryland com- missioners was solemnly ratified by the legislative authority of the two States.
" An effort is now made by the General Assembly of Maryland to enlarge her territory by the establish- ment of a different division line. We have not been informed which fork of the South Branch she will elect as the new boundary, but the proposed line is to run from one of the forks of the South Branch, thence due north to the Pennsylvania terminus. It is needless to say that the substitution of the latter, no matter at which fork it may commence, would cause an important diminution in the already diminished territorial area of this State. It will deprive us of large portions of the counties of Hampshire, Hardy, Pendleton, Randolph, and Preston, amounting in all to almost half a million of acres-a section of the commonwealth which, from the quality of its soil, and the character of its popula- tion, might well excite the cupidity of a government resting her claims upon a less substantial basis than a stale and groundless pretension of more than a cen- tury's antiquity. Although my instructions have di- rected my attention morc particularly to the collection and preservation of the evidence of such living wit- nesses 'as might be able to testify to any facts or cir- cumstances in relation to the settlement and adjustment of the western boundary,' I have consumed but a very
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inconsiderable portion of my time in any labor or inquiry of that sort, for who indeed, now living, could testify to any " facts or circumstances" which occurred nearly a century since? And if such individuals were now living, why waste time in taking depositions as to these "facts," in proof of which the most ample and authentic testimony was taken in 1736, as the basis of royal adjudication ? I have consequently deemed it of more importance to procure the original documents where possible, if not, authentic copies of such papers as would serve to exhibit a connected view of the origin, progress, and termination of that controversy with the crown, which resulted, after the most accurate and laborious surveys, in the ascertainment of these very "facts and circumstances " which are now sought to be made again the subject of discussion and inquiry. In this pursuit I have succeeded far beyond what I had any ground for anticipation, and from the almost for- gotten rubbish of past years, have been enabled to draw forth documents and papers whose interest may survive the occasion which redeemed them from de- struction.
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