USA > West Virginia > Wood County > Sketches of Wood County : its early history : as embraced in and connected with other counties of West Virginia : also brief accounts of first settlers and their descendants : including accounts of its soils, timber, minerals, water, and material wealth > Part 4
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MR. MALCOME COLEMAN.
prevent them getting back their craft over a fall, above which they were lying. While in this condition, John Coleman and Elijah Pixley re- turned to the garrison for flour and salt. The third morning after their departure, Mr. Malcomb Coleman rose very early and prepared their breakfast, anxiously expecting their return. While invoking a blessing on their simple meal, the sharp crack of a rifle was heard, and a shot passed through his shoulder. So little fear had he of the Indians, that he said: "Can John have returned and shot me by .cident ?"
Before he could learn the fact a second shot passed through his head and he fell dead by the side of his companion. Mr. James Ryan made his escape from the Indiaus and regained the garrison. On the day that Mr. Coleman was murdered, Mr. Joshna Dewey made a visit to the camp for the purpose of seeing his friends, but to his horror he fonnd his old friend murdered, scalped, stripped of his clothing, and the camp plundered. He was the first to reach the garrison at Belle- ville and give the painful intelligence. At once a party of seven men left the garrison and descended the Ohio in a canoe, for the camp on Mill creek, but the Indians had taken the pirogue and its load with the camp equipage and made safe their retreat. After interring Mr. Coleman at that place they returned. This calamity was severely felt and spread a deep gloom over the entire settlement. He had been long regarded as a patriarch in the community, blending the gaaces of the Christian with the fulfillment of all the active duties of life. Many of his descendants reside in the lower part of this and Jackson county. The Rev. H. R. Coleman, of the Kentucky Conference of the M. E. Church, South, is one of his great-grandsons and a worthy rep- resentative of this heroic family.
Mr. Peter Anderson, of whom we have spoken, married one of his daughters and became the head of a large family of children, and many of his descendants still reside in that vicinity. Mr. Anderson was born near Cumberland, Md., in 1757. In his early youth his pa- rents removed over the monntains and settled near West Liberty on Buffalo creek in this State. At the age of twenty-nine he aud his brother Andrew settled at Belleville, where he resided until his death in 1838. His generons bearing and social qualities, combined with his superior judgment, caused him to occupy a prominent place in that community. Soon after the formation of Wood connty, he was commissioned, 4th May, 1801, and filled the office of Justice of the Peace acceptably, uutil his great age caused him to resign.
In the summer of 1791 a small garrison of Virginia troops were stationed at Belleville and another one at Parkersburg, under the di- rection of Col. Clendenen. These two garrisons of troops were de- signed for the protection of these frontier settlements, and check the raids of Indians from the Northwestern territory, who at that time were committing many depredations on these frontiers, and in the back settlements of Virginia. We have no means at hand to as-
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MOSES HEWETT.
certain the number of men sent to either of these garrisons, nor are we in possession of the results of their operations. We have stated the faet of their being here with the hope that some one else will fur- nish further information.
Some time in the month of May, 1792, while living at Neal's Sta- tion, on the Kanawha river, Mr. Hewett rose early in the morning and went out of the garrison in search of a stray horse, little expect- ing Indians to be near, as none had been in the vicinity for some time. When sauntering along at his ease in an obseure cattle path, about a mile from the station, all at onee three Indians sprang upon him from a large tree with their tomahawks raised. So sudden had been the onset, and so completely was he in their grasp, that resistance was rain, and probably would have eost him his life. He therefore quietly . surrendered, thinking that in a few days he would find some means of escape. The Indians immediately made their retreat for their towns in Ohio, crossing the Ohio river below Belleville to the dividing ridges between Hoeking and Shade rivers. On their way the Indians treat- ed their prisoner with as little harshness as could be expected, sharing with him in their daily meals. After they had reached a place of comparative safety from pursuit, near their villages, they made a halt to hunt and left their prisoner at their camp, having placed him on his back, confining his wrists with stout thongs of raw hide to sap- lings, and his legs raised at a considerable elevation and fastened to a small tree. After they had been gone a short time, by his great strength he released himself from their confinement, took the two small pieces of venison then in the eamp for his supply of food, and without any weapons he started for the Big Muskingum settlement. The Indians pursued him, but he evaded their search, and after nine days of wandering he came to the garrison of Wolf creek mills on the Big Muskingum river, nearly naked and famished. He soon re- covered his strength and returned to his family.
About the year 1797, he, with his family, removed from this county and settled in the valley of Big Hocking, Ohio, near the town of Ath- ens, where he became a valuable and useful citizen, respected for his moral worth and good practical judgment. He was elected to and filled the office of trustee in the College of Athens with ability. For many years he was a member of the M. E. Church and zealous in the discharge of Christian duties. He there ended his days in 1814, aged 47 years. His widow died at that place on the 15th of September, 1834, aged 70 years, 7 months and 7 days.
The nine children born to them, we understand, are all dead. Ot their descendants, we are wholly uninformed. Thus it is many times that the descendants of a generation are lost in the onward course of time.
In the spring of 1794 a party of Indians surprised the family of Mr. Armstrong, residing in the narrows opposite to the head of Blenner-
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ARMSTRONG, CAPT. JAMES NEAL.
hassett Island, then known as Backus Island, in this county. Mr. Armstrong and his wife and two children were murdered and scalped and three of the children were carried away prisoners. What be- came of them we have never been able to ascertain. The attack upon this family and the bloody tragedy attending the same was the last of the Indian depredations in this county of which we have any cor- rect knowledge. Yet during the Indian war upon the frontier settle- ments, many tragic scenes of cruelty and suffering were enacted, of which no accounts have been given so as to fix .with certainty the names of the sufferers or the dates of their occurrence.
In closing this chapter we would state that much has been omitted, owing to not having proper data for the statements to rest upon as facts.
Before any permanent settlements were made in this county, or in the territory which composed it, Capt. James Neal, with a party of men, descended the Monongahela and Ohio rivers in the fall of 1785, to the Little Kanawha river. Their purpose when starting was to go to Kentucky. But having landed on the south side of the Little Ka- nawha, about a mile from its month, and likeing its location, they con- cluded to encamp there. During the winter of 1785 and 1786 they erected a block. honse, which was afterwards known in the history of this county as Neal's Station. This was the first block-honse and sta- tion built in this county. Between that date and 1796 several block- houses were built in this county, as well as on the opposite side of the Ohio river in the county of Washington. These houses became the place of rendezvous of the few inhabitants who had settled here, while the Indian war was carried on, up to the year 1795, when the treaty of peace was made at Greenville, Ohio, after the victories of General Wayne.
As intimately connected with and forming a starting point in the history of the first settlement made in this county, before its organi- zation, we will here state that Capt. James Neal, as a deputy survey- or of Samuel Hanway, the surveyor of Monongalia county, in the spring of 1783, surveyed the settlement right and pre-emption claim of Mr. Alexander Parker, of Pittsburg, Pa., assignee of Mr. Robert Thornton, to the land on which the city of Parkersburg is now loca- ted, as also other settlement rights within the boundaries of this coun- ty. Being thus acquainted with the surveys and titles to the lands on the northeast side of the Little Kanawha river, is probably the reason why he afterward made his settlement and erected his block. house and station on the south side of the river, as above stated.
In the preceding chapters of these historie sketches we took the reader far back in the eighteenth century, to the House of Burgesses and its colonial records, at the city of Williamsburg, Va., in the year 1738-the time when, in answer to the wants and demands of the peo- ple, the counties of Augusta and Frederick were set off and formed,
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BRIEF REVIEW.
from its vast wilderness territory, and the residue of that vast western wilderness territory was declared to be the "District of West Augus- ta." Then, briefly, we sketched the slow progress of settlements west- ward, ansid dangers, privations and sufferings, as the years passed on; with the divisions and sub-divisions of this vast wildernessinto coun- ties, up, through and over the Allegheny Mountains, and down their western slopes, to the waters leading to the great Mississippi Valley. as the unfolding necessities of those years demanded. Also we briefly reviewed the trouble arising from the claims of the European Govern- ments in this country, and the policy pursued by them for maintain- ing their rights of discovery, by alliances made with the Indians in- habiting the then vast wilderness; together with the policy adopted by the House of Burgesses, under colonial representatives, in settling and surveying these heavy, dense forests of her western domain.
Our object being to group in the mind of the reader the slow pro- gress made, the many dangers, difficulties, privations and sufferings endured by those bold, hardy and enterprising pioneers of the eight- eenth century, who penetrated and passed these mountain fastnesses and made homes for themselves and their posterity in the wilds of this great inland world, known as the District of West Augusta.
Having thus presented this bird's-eye view, and the many troubles interwoven along the pathway, we now come to the first individual settlers and settlements in this, which, years afterwards, became Wood county. To go back and get the names of many of the first settlers in what is now Wood county and the exact dates of their settlements, is a task which cannot now be fully accomplished. Even those whose names and posterities have come down to ns, it will be a difficult un- dertaking to be exact and do them full justice. They have long sinee passed from earth away to that undiscovered bourne, their history un- written, and the daily struggles through which they passed, to remain untold. These difficulties are further enhanced by the fact that the de- scendants of these carly pioneers, to a great extent, have lost the dates and the traditionary traces of their progenitors, which go back to those distant years, in the history of our county or its first settlements. In. addition to these difficulties we may also add that many of the first settlers have passed away, leaving no descendants to perpetuate their names, or chronicle the events in their earthly pilgrimage. The stirring events in in their lives, with their sympaties and cherished hopes are gone to the dark shades of forgetfulness.
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CHAPTER VI.
FIRST SETTLEMENT.
While engaged in revising these sketches and reviewing the brief out- line pages of our history, with many of the names of friends of other years, we have felt how unreal are the remembrances of earth. The ever-present is fading and forever disappearing in the past, and the past is soon buried and forgotten in the charnel-house of oblivion-the dream- less abode of the untold and unnumbered myriads of earth; those whose days have been spent, and whose active energies no longer appear apou the theatre of time, but have passed beyond its curtains to the shoreless unknown.
()wing to these circumstances and considerations, our best efforts to make up and present a history of those early years of the settlements here made, and give faithful mementoe: of those who broke through the barriers of the wilderness and opened u . homes { { themselves, and as- 'sisted in the formation of settlements, wall of nect ity be imperfect and may in some cases subject the writer to errors. These deficiencies and errors will most cheerfully and readily be corrected when pointed out.
Again, in speaking of, and referring to those early settlers and the me- mentoes we may give of them, dates will not always follow in chronolog- ical order. We shall speak of them generally as associated together in neighborhoods, thus passing from point to point in these early settle- ments, made from time to time. The original boundaries of Wood county being very large at the time of its first formation, in 1800, and remained so for upwards of thirty years, causing us in these chapters to speak of those whose residences are now outside of our present county bounds- ries, though during their lives they were included in and were citizens of this county. The present inhabitants of this county, many of them, . have but a limited idea of the territory once embraced in Wood county.
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THE FAMILY OF CAPT. NEAL.
There were no permanent settlements made in what was or now is Wood county while the same was embraced in and forined a part of Mo- nongalia county, though in those years several "tomahawk" rights were made and entered. The persons making "tomahawk" claims were gen- erally hunters and trappers, and generally sold their claims or tomahawk titles. After the devision of Monongalia county and the formation of Harrison (named after Benjamin Harrison, then Governor of Virginia), out of its northwestern portion, numerous entries and settlement were made on the Ohio river.
From the best information we have been able to obtain of the first set- tler in the county is that of Capt. James Neal. He had been a citizen of Green county, in that portion of Pennsylvania which had been supposed to belong to the colony of Virginia. Capt. Neal had served his country faithfully during the War of the Revolution, as a captain, and had re- ceived an honorable discharge from the Continental army, and had been paid for his services in the Continental curreney of those times and re- turned to his home in Greene county.
The first knowledge we have of Capt James Neal being in any portion of this county is in the spring of 1783, when, as a deputy-surveyor for Samuel Hanway, surveyor of the county of Monongalia (which at that time ineluded all the territory of this county), he surveyed for Alexan- der Parker, Esq., of Pittsburgh, the "tomahawk" entry and pre-emption right, made by Mr. Robert Thornton, which had been sold and assigned to said Parker, of the lands on which the present city of Parkersburg is now situated. This "tomahawk" entry was made by Mr. Robert Thorn- ton in 1773, while the territory of this county formed part of the District of West Augusta. (A more full account of this entry, &c., will be given in a future chapter on Parkersburg).
In relation to Capt. James Neal, we are informed by bis descendants that he was of Irish descent, and that the original name was O'Neal. At the commencement of the Revolutionary War, for reasons satisfactory to himself, he dropped the O from his name, and ever after wrote his name and was known as James Neal.
Capt. James Neal finding himself, as others who had served their eoun- try in that day, comparatively poor, and being a man of great energy of character, he, for the purpose of bettering his condition, in the fall of 1785, with a party of men, left that county for the purpose of looking out and securing a home in the State of Kentucky. In a flat-boat he and his party descended the Monongahela and Ohio rivers to the mouth of the Little Kanawha, and ascended that river u short distance and landed on the south side of that stream. . He here eneamped and exam ined the country around, and being well satisfied, coneluded to make it his future home. During that fall (1785), he and his party erected & bloek-house, which was afterwards known in the history of Western Vir- ginia by the name of Neal's Station. For many years thereafter, this station became an important place of safety from the raids of the Iu-
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THEIR SETTLEMENT.
dians while on their predatory war-paths against the settlements of West- ern and Northwestern Virginia. Here the early settlers to this county, during the Indian War, retreated and took up their residence and dwelt in safety, while the traveler, passing through or visiting the county, sought it also as a place of safety and protection. After elearing some land and miking other necessary improvements at the station, he, in the spring of 1786, returne.I to Green county, in Pennsylvania.
For the purpose of giving the reader a elear idea of Capt. James Neal and his family, we shall here insert a portion of his private history. Early in the winter of 1734-5 (before his coming to this county as stated above) soon after the birth of his youngest son, the late James II. Neal of this county, Capt. Neal was inade to mourn the death of his excellent wife. Iler maiden name was Hannah Ilarden (a .sister of the late Col. John Harden of Kentucky, who lost his life by the treachery of the Indians, while engaged as a Coinmisssioner of the United States Government in negotiating a treaty of peace with them). By this marriage he was the ' parent of six children, three sons and three daughters. T'ha names of his sons were Henry. John and James Harden ; his daughters' names were Hannah, who intermarried with Col. Hugh Phelps, late of this county; Nancy, who interniirried with Mr. Daniel Rowell, who, with his family, resided in this county for many years, and then removed to the far West; and Catherine, who intermarried with Mr. Joseph NicCoy. They, after residing in this county a few years, removed to the territory of Indiana. Of them and their deseendanta we have no definite knowledge.
On the return of Capt. James Neal to Green eouuty, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1780, he sometime during that year. married his second wife, Miss Mary Phelps, a sister of Col. Hugh Phelps, his son-in-law. Early in the spring of 1787, Capt. James Neal, with his family and all his children, both single and married, moved to the station and became permanent settlers in this county. Under these eireumstanees we have placed Captain James Neal as the first permanent settler, and the one who opened up the way for the future settlements in this county to be successfully commenced during the troubles attending the Indian war.
His life showed him to be endowed with great energy and enterprise, possessing a noble and generous disposition, courteous in his bearing, and charitable in the bestowment of favors. His great experience caus- ed him to be looked up to s counsellor and leader in the settlement .- He held the office of Justice of the Peace while this territory was em- braeed in Harrison county, with a license to solemnize the rites of mat- rimony among those desiring to form that saered relation i- life. Also, in addition to the above, he was commissioned Captain of the Frontier Rangers, for the defense and safety of these border settlements. He soon had his children with their families severally settled around and near him, so as to be in reach of the station in times of danger. On the 16th of January, 1721, a daughter was born to him by his second wife, whom he named after her mother, Mary, being among the first white
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. JOIN NEAL.
children born between Grave Creek and Point Pleasant, in the State of Virginia. In 1796 he mourned the death of his second wife. who was buried near the station, on the banks of the Little Kanawha river. .
After this sad and melancholy event in his history, he measurably re- tired from the active duties of public life. Ile took no. active part in the organization of the County Count, in 1800. The early records of the Court show that he was appointed Commissioner for the examina- tion of surveyors. as to their qualifications for that office, and he was also appointed to the performance of other important duties in the county. From what we have been able to learn, he devoted mnuch care and attention to the raising and education of his infant daughter, Mary. She inherited an active, inquiring mind, and its mental unfold- ings gave him pleasure. On the 25th of March, 1811, she was united in marriage with Mr. Scarlet G. Foley, and became the mother of a large family of children. She died at the home place which her father had given to her, two and a half miles South of Parkersburg, on the 1st day of September, 1870, in the eightieth year of her age. The author of these sketches is indebted to her for much information, as to the early Bettlers of this county.
In closing this brief notice of Capt. Jame's Neal and his eventful life, much might be said and written of him as filling up a wide space in the early settlement of this county. His active energies and enterprise in meeting the wants and overcoming the difficulties and privations attend- ant upon the first settlement of this county, then known as the wilder- ness of the far West, surrounded with a savage foe, secured for him the respect and esteem of his fellow citizens. In February. 1822, he died at his residence, on his place, at Neal's Station, honored by a large cir- cle of relations and friends, in the 85th year of his age, and his remains were interred in what is now known as Tavenner's grave yard.
In the preceding chapter we gave a brief account of the tragic death of Captain James Neal's eldest son, Henry Neal, by the Indians, on the . Little Kanawha river, opposite the Burning Springs, then in this coun- ty. His death, and that of Mr. Triplet, at that time, and under such circumstances, caused a deep gloom to fall over the settlement, and led to greater caution on the part of the few inhabitants. Ifis memory has been perpetuated by the descendants of Captain Neal, by honoring them with his name.
Mr. Neal Rowell, a son of Daniel Rowell, remained in this county for some years after the removal of His father and family to the Western country. He studied medicine under the late Dr. Creel, of this county .- After completing his medical studies he married in Kentucky, and settled near Florence, Alabama. In the practice of medicine he was successful, and he has accumulated a handsome fortune. He resides at his country residence, three miles from Florence, which .he has named "Alban Woods," where he is spending the evening of a well spent life, in peace and tranquility.
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FAMILY OF JOHN NEAL.
The late Mr. John Neal, (the father of several of the Neal familied in Parkersburg), was the second son of Capt. James Neal. He was born in Green county, Pa., the 10th of May, 1776. At the time his father, with his family, settled at Neal's Station, in this county, he was & youth of eleven years. Like others born amid the stirring events of the War of the Revolution, he inherited the self-reliant spirit of those times, which gave to him firmness of purpose and decision of character-a self- reliance in his own energies and enterprises in meeting the vicissitudes of life. In 1796 he was united in marriage with Miss Ephlis Hook, a half-sister to the late Mr. Charles Bryant, of Wood county. (She was generally known by the name of Aunt Eva Neal). To them thirteen children were born; one of them died in infancy. The others lived to be married and settled in life and have families.
We will append the following briet record of these several children : First, Hannah, born 31st May, 1797, was married to Abram Sam- uels, Esq. To them twelve children-(seven sons and five daughtere) were born; all married and have families, excepting the two young- est daughters. The oldest of these daughters is the wife of T. J. Cook, Esq. Mr. Abram Samuels died in the summer of 1852. His widow died on the 14th of July. 1873.
Second, Elizabeth, born the 7th of January, 1799, married 13th of February, 1815, to Mr. Derrick Pennybaker, who died that year.leav- ing one child. She remained his widow until her death, the 12th of March, 1875. Miss Hannah, their danghter, was nnited in marriage to Geo. W. Kincheloe, Esq . on the 13th of June, 1837. To them two daughters were born. He died in the Spring of 1840. . Miss Lu- cy, the eldest; is the present wife of the Hon. J. M. Jackson, and Miss Ione is the wife of P. D. Gambriil, Esq.
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