USA > West Virginia > Barbour County > The history of Barbour County, West Virginia, from its earliest exploration and settlement to the present time > Part 22
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MAP OF AUGUSTA COUNTY.
RESIDENCE OF MELVILLE PECK.
CHAPTER XVIII.
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SETTLEMENTS AND INDIAN TROUBLES.
The territory embraced in what is now Barbour County did not become DISTRICT OF COUNTY. PENNSYLVANIA West Augusta and its 3 Counties, YOUGHIDGHE M Pittsburg Ril youghioghany, River. Monongalia NF 014 and Ohio. Mongna Yough ilo ghany hey State Line the home of white men until settlements had been planted in all the border- ing territory. The present counties of Randolph, Upshur, Lewis, Harrison, Taylor, Preston and Tucker were colonized before Bar- bour. It is, therefore, proper to speak briefly of the advent of the pioneers into the surrounding country before the earliest history County Line . Wheeling WEST OHIO M 0 TA y River ONVyhoVW 1776 AUGUS of this county is taken up; otherwise the settlement of Barbour could not be pre- sented as it should. Ran- dolph was the scene of the N' GALIA CO earliest colonization. The 6100 Square 224 Morgantown COUNTY first white men's homes on the waters of the Monoga- Cheat River hela were in Tygart's Valley WINDOWS AS = in 1753, and they built their cabins, one on the site of Bayer A Nuller's Foot (Clarksburg! fay Stone Beverly and the other two miles above, the latter named Little Kanawha David Tygart from whom the river was named, and Tygart's Rive the former, Robert Files (or Foyle) from whom Files Creek received its name. Nearly thirty years elapsed after settlements were plant- DISTRICT OF WEST AGUSTA 1776. ed on the upper waters of the Potomac before the tide. of emigration crossed the Alleghanies and took possession of the valleys of the West. That range of mountains was for a,
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third of a century a barrier which the white man did not cross. The country beyond the mountains, was called "the waters of the Mississippi," because the streams having their sources on the western slope flowed into the Mississippi, while those rising eastward of the summit found their way into the Atlantic Ocean. It was usual from about 1760 to 1780 for the Vir- ginia records to distinguish between the eastern and the western country by designating the former "Hampshire County," and the latter "the waters of the Mississippi," because Hampshire included the most important settle- ments between the Valley of Virginia and the summit of the Alleghanies, and did not include any territory on the western side except about eighty square miles in the present county of Tucker. The country beyond the mountains gradually became known from reports of hunters and others who crossed from very early times. It is proper that mention should be made of the routes and trails by which the explorers and settlers found their way over the Alleghanies into the valleys of the Monongahela and its tributaries. The subject has been much neglected by writers who have pretended to cover the field, they having given their attention to the great highway west from Cumberland to Pittsburg, losing sight of other paths of great importance. Before proceeding to a consideration of some of them, a due regard for the cause of history requires that a brief account of the highway west from Cumberland be given, by which settlers to the lower Mononga- hela found their way.
About 1750, the Ohio Company, a wealthy corporation engaged in trading with Indians and dealing in western land, employed Colonel Thomas Cresap, who lived fifteen miles east of Cumberland, to survey a path by which traders could carry their merchandise to the Ohio River. Cumber- land was then called Will's Creek, and the company had a store and fort there. Colonel Cresap offered a prize to the Indian who would mark out the best route from Cumberland to the site of Pittsburg. An Indian named Nemacolin received the prize. Part of the way the path followed a buffalo trail by which those animals had crossed the mountains for ages. Traders with pack horses traveled that path from that time, by the hundreds, although they had a path to the Ohio before that. Two years before (in 1748) three hundred traders reached the Ohio, some by way of the Kanawha, some by Cumberland and some by other routes. In 1754 George Washing- ton widened the Nemacolin trail and took wagons over it as far as the Youghiogheny. This was the first wagon road over the Alleghanies into the Mississippi basin. The next year, 1755, Braddock with his army widened the path and moved wagons and artillery over it to within nine miles of Pittsburg. He was defeated and the road remained unfinished. The National Road west from Cumberland now follows nearly the route of the old Nemacolin trail. After Braddock was defeated, his road remained a quarter of a century without a wagon, loaded with merchandise, passing
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over it. Goods were still packed on horses. The first wagon load of mer- chandise reached the Monongahela in 1789.
Prior to that time a project had been set on foot for opening a canal from tidewater, along the bank of the Potomac, and up the North Branch of that stream to the base of the Alleghanies. The terminus of the canal was located in the present county of Grant, where the Northwestern Pike now crosses the North Branch. From there a road thirty miles long was to lead across the mountains to the waters of the Monongahela. The exact point of intersection was not definitely determined, but the most practica- ble route led downHorse Shoe Run to Cheat River at the Horse Shoe, in the present county of Tucker. From the point determined upon, a canal down the river was designed to be continued till the stream became navigable. The prime mover in this scheme was George Washington, who in 1775 was about to organize a company to build the canal, but the Revolutionary War came, and nothing more was done till the war closed. Then he again took up the scheme. He believed that easy and adequate communication should be opened between the Atlantic coast and the great valleys west of the Alle- ghanies; because, as he argued, if those valleys should remain cut off from the East by the mountain barrier, the settlers who were flocking there by thousands, would set up an independent government and seek an outlet down the Ohio and Mississippi, and their commercial interests would lead to political ties which would bind them to the Spanish Colonies then in the Mississippi Valley. He, therefore, urged that two canals be built, one by way of the Potomac and the Monongahela; the other by the way of the James and the The heads of Cheat must At this course Dividing, A.545 Canal Route B Kanawha. In 1784, the year after peace was Je. B declared with England, he crossed the Alle- Great Yough River ghanies and visited the Monongahela on a Route Gledes of Great Yough tour of observation, as well as to look after Difficult Crook th Branch do good to Portalge ... McCullauch's Savage River large tracts of land which he owned in the 1 Green Blades will LitH. youghRiver West. He visited Morgantown and ascended story Five Cheat River and crossed the Alleghanies to ibrams Creel Truit Staunton. The wisdom of America's great- Newcreek George Creek est man is shown no more in his success in Pattersonactas @Cumberland war and in his foresight in politics, than in WASHINGTON'S MAP. his wonderful grasp and understanding of the laws governing trade, and the effect of geography on the history of a country. And with equal foresight he mapped the most practicable routes for highways. The survey made forty years after, for a canal from Alexandria to the Monongahela, followed almost the identical line marked by Washington, including the roads across the mountains. The canal was never built further than Cumberland because the invention of railroads checked canal building. Washington was opposed by the Maryland Assembly in his canal schemes, but when, in 1784, he
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SETTLEMENTS AND INDIAN TROUBLES.
again took up the work, Maryland joined Virginia, and in December of that year both made appropriations for opening a road " from the highest prac- ticable navigation of the Potomac to that of the Cheat River or the Monon- gahela."
Having thus spoken of the highways and the proposed highways between the Potomac and the Upper Valley of the Ohio, it remains to be shown that those were not the only paths across the mountains. The paths yet to be mentioned were more local, but, within a narrower sphere, were of no less importance. So far as Randolph, Tucker, Barbour and Upshur Counties were concerned, the paths amounted to more than the great high- ways through Pennsylvania, for the early settlers came over the trails of which there were three important ones and a fourth (Mccullough's) of lesser importance. The Mccullough trail passed from Moorefield to Patterson Creek, up that stream to Greenland Gap in Grant County; crossed a spur of the Alleghanies to the North Branch, following the general course of the Northwestern Pike to the head of the Little Youghiogheny, in Garrett County, Maryland; thence to the Youghiogheny, west of Oakland, and on to Cheat River, near the Pennsylvania line. But a branch of it led down Horse Shoe Run to the mouth of Lead Mine Run, where it intersected another path to be spoken of later. Another trail led up the North Branch of the Potomac striking the face of Backbone Mountain near where Bayard now stands; thence reaching the summit near Fairfax Stone. Passing to the western slope, it descended to the mouth of Lead Mine, ten miles east of St. George. It reached Cheat River at the mouth of Horse Shoe Run, three miles above St. George. Thence one branch led down Cheat, across Laurel Hill to the Valley River below Philippi, and thence westward to the Ohio. The other branch followed up Cheat, reaching the head of Leading Creek, in Randolph County, and after joining the Seneca Trail, near the present village of Elkins, passed up the river to its source, where dividing, one part led down Elk River, one down the Little Kanawha and a third crossed to the Greenbrier. The majority of the settlers on Cheat, above and below St. George, came to the country over the North Branch Trail, as did many of those on Leading Creek, and the early settlers on the Buckhannon. There is no record of the marking of the trail near Fairfax Stone. It was there at the earliest visit of white men, and was no doubt an Indian trail antedating history. The first white man to follow the trail was probably William Mayo in 1736. He ascended the North Branch that year and dis- covered the tributaries of Cheat. History does not say how far westward and northward he followed the stream; probably not far. In 1745 other explorers, following the same route, reached the present territory of Tucker County, and a map made of the region soon after is fairly accurate.
Twenty miles south of Fairfax Stone, another path crossed the Alle- ghanies, the most important in West Virginia north of Greenbrier. It was
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SETTLEMENTS AND INDIAN TROUBLES.
called the Seneca Trail, or the Shawnee Trail. The latter name was given it because it was traveled by Shawnee Indians, notably by Killbuck's bands in raiding the South Branch Settlements. It was called the Seneca Trail, because, after crossing the Alleghany Maryland Mountains at the head For of Horse Camp Creek, Clover R St. Georse North Branth Patferson C. Mt. Storm it passed down Seneca Horse Shoe R Fairfax Stane Parsonsa Creek, in Pendleton Backboneht Maysville Petersburg County, to the North Fork. The Shawnee aghan Shaver Mt. QHer C. Rivers dy Fork >>>> Trail, or a continuation a Bolington Rec of it, was an old Indian war path, perhaps used Elkin. centuries ago. It came Beverly Shawnee Trail C ndy ››› ›››› Trail Leading C. Trail It. Mille (" Person C.me. from Pennsylvania, 11711 passed through Mary- Huttonsville Senaca. Pattia ET Rich Ohpupp North Fork land, crossed the Poto- South Branch mac at the mouth of Elkwate Franklin South Branch x10y pound North Fork Trail the South Branch, xfork M ???? >>>> >> >>>>>> ascended that stream to Moorefield where South South Fork of Cheat Mt. the Mccullough Trail Shenandoah Mt. struck off; thence it INDIAN TRAILS Alleghany Mts >>>> >>> >>>>>>forth Fork mt. ascended the river to Greenbrier "'>>>> yaog sababys the mouth of the North Fork; up that stream EARLY TRAILS CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES. to the mouth of Seneca; thence across the mountains and the tributaries of Cheat to Tygart's Valley at Elkins. From there it became one with the trail, coming by way of Fairfax Stone. The Shawnee Trail was the chief highway between Tygart's Valley and South Branch for a century. In the early times, hundreds of pack horses, loaded with salt, iron and merchan- dise, passed over it every year, and many a drove of cattle went by that route to the eastern markets. During the Civil War it was frequently used by soldiers. Many of the horses and cattle captured by the Confederate Generals, Jones and Imboden, were sent across the mountains by that trail. General Averell who had command of the Federal forces in this part of West Virginia, found it necessary to post strong pickets on the path. A wagon road has since been made following the same general course, and the old trail is no longer used, but sections of it remain, deeply worn through the wilderness of pine and laurel. A century will not suffice to destroy the old highway over which Indians passed before a white man
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had seen the valleys of the West. Killbuck's Indians retreated by that trail after the Fort Seybert massacre in 1758.
Thirty miles south of the Shawnee Trail was another path leading from the South Branch of the Potomac into Pocahontas County, and thence into Tygart's Valley. It was a branch of the Shawnee Trail, and instead of crossing the mountains at Seneca, it continued up the North Fork to. Dry Run in Pendleton County; passed up Laurel Creek into Highland County, Virginia, and crossed the mountain on the general route of the Staunton and Parkersburg Pike, coming into Tygart's Valley probably at the mouth of Riffle's Run or Becca's Creek, where it joined the trail up the valley already described. Many of the settlers in the upper end of Randolph came over this trail. Thus the routes by which immigration entered the upper valleys of the Monongahela were three: that down Horse Shoe Run, in Tucker County; that by way of Seneca Creek, and that through north- ern Pocahontas County. The majority of the settlers on Cheat, Tygarts', Buckhannon and the upper West Fork, traveled these trails. A few worked their way up the river from the vicinity of Brownsville, Pennsylvania.
A study of the physical features of the country lying between Cheat River and the Potomac, stretching fifty miles along the Alleghanies, will show why so few paths crossed from the valleys on the east to those on the west. The tract, embracing more than 1000 square miles, was and is one of exceeding difficulty to the traveler. Between Fairfax Stone and the head of the South Branch, the Alleghany Mountains and the parallel and crumpled ridges lying on both sides, are pushed together in rugged and stupendous masses; broken and cleft; steep and bleak; cut by ravines; bat- tlemented by crags and pinnacles; and had all the thickets been removed, the region would still have presented serious obstacles to the passage of the emigrant and explorer. But, added to the rocks and cliffs, the whole country along the upper tributaries of Cheat and over to the Greenbrier, was one unbroken wilderness of pines and tangled laurel. Nearly a century passed after the settlement of the country on both sides before roads were constructed through this wilderness, even in the most favored places; and to this day there are scores of square miles with scarcely a cabin. The dense beds of laurel even yet appall the hunter.
Settlements in Randolph.
Having seen some of the difficulties in the way of the early settlers in reaching central West Virginia, it is proper to speak of the settlements made immediately around the borders of the territory now in Barbour; and first, mention should be made of Randolph County, on the south, for there was the first settlement on the waters of the Monongahela in West Vir- ginia, and there occurred the first massacre by Indians in West Virginia. Robert Files and David Tygart, located with their families at and imme-
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SETTLEMENTS AND INDIAN TROUBLES.
diately above Beverly in 1753. Files had six children, and Tygart several. There was no war with Indians at that time, and the pioneers apprehended no danger, even in that remote place. But exposed frontiersmen and their families were never entirely free from danger in those days. During the summer of 1753 they had not raised bread enough for their use and were preparing to return to the South Branch to spend the winter, when a party of Indians, who had been on a thieving expedition in the vicinity of SITE OF FILES' CABIN. Moorefield, came over the Shawnee Trail (as is supposed) and discovered Files' cabin. They murdered seven members of the family, but one son, who was absent when the attack was made, fled to Tygart's and alarmed that family in time for all to escape. No other set- tlement was made in Randolph for eighteen years, 1772. It is believed
that David Tygart was among those who settled the valley a second time, but of this the evidence is not conclusive. Among the settlers, whose names became identified with the history of Tygart's Valley were Benjamin Hornbeck, Darby Connolly, John Stewart, John Crouch, Jacob Riffle, Matt- hew Whitman, John, David and William Haddan, Jacob Stalnaker, John White, RANDOLPH COUNTY COURT HOUSE 1789. Jacob and James Westfall, William Cur- rence, Jonathan Smith, Samuel Wamsley, Colonel Benjamin Wilson, John McLain, John Nelson, James Ralston, James Crouch, Jonathan Buffington, and Jonas Friend. Nearly all the land in Tygart's Valley was located in 1772, or earlier, but few patents were obtained for it till ten or fifteen years later.
In 1774 the Dunmore War came, and two forts were built in Randolph, Westfall's at Beverly, and the Currence fort near Huttonsville, ten miles above. The settlers escaped without being visited by Indians till 1777. By that time three other forts had been built in Tygart's Valley. Friend's fort at the mouth of Leading Creek; Wilson's fort, at the mouth of Wilson's Creek, four miles below Bev- erly, and Haddan's fort, at the mouth of Elkwater, twenty miles above Beverly. Late in the fall of 1777 Indians murdered the family of Darby Connolly, about three miles above Haddan's fort. Their com- mon grave is to be seen in a field to this day. The GRAVE OF THE CONNOLLYS savages also murdered John Stewart, his wife and child, and carried away as a prisoner a girl named Hamilton. Colonel
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Wilson with thirty men pursued the Indians five days in rain and snow, but could not overtake them .* The next year the Indians came again and murdered Lieutenant John White. Again Colonel Wilson pursued them into Gilmer County, but failed to inflict any punishment. In 1780 savages came again and raided Tygart's Valley, above the mouth of Elkwater, where they set an ambuscade and attacked a party of men on their way to Greenbrier County. The fight occurred about a mile above Haddan's fort. John McLain, John Nelson and James Ralston were killed, and James Crouch was wounded. Soon after this Mrs. John Gibson was murdered and her children carried into captivity, probably by these same Indians who escaped without punishment. The next year, 1781, a large body of Indians, after passing through the present county of Barbour where John Minear, Daniel Cameron and Jacob Cooper were murdered, fell upon the settlement on Leading Creek in Randolph, and a general massacre was . the result. Half a dozen grown persons were killed, and between twenty and thirty children, besides several persons taken prisoners. Among the the killed were Mrs. Jonathan Buffington, Mrs. Benjamin Hornbeck, Mrs. Daniel Dougherty and all their children, Alexander Roney, and others. Laden with prisoners and plunder, the savages set out for the Ohio, but they were not to escape unpunished. A man whom they had shot at in Barbour, but had missed, fled to Clarksburg, and gave the alarm. In the meantime Colonel Wilson of Randolph, with as many men as he could raise on short notice, went in pursuit. There was some doubt whether all the Indians had retreated, and Colonel Wilson's men became uneasy for their own families, and refused to proceed until the safety of their own wives and children was assured. Only four men were willing to go forward. They were Colonel Wilson, Richard Kittle, Alexander West and Joseph Friend. It was useless to follow the Indians with so small a number, and Colonel Wilson returned home. Meanwhile the scouts sent out from Clarksburg discovered the trail of the Indians on Isaac's Creek, in Harrison County, and Colonel William Lowther, of Hacker's Creek, Lewis County, raised a company and fell upon the savages on a branch of Hughes River in Ritchie County, and defeated them with slaughter, capturing everything they had except one gun, and liberating the prisoners, except one who had been accidentally killed by the fire of Colonel Lowther's men.
In 1782 between twenty and thirty Indians under the leadership of Tim- othy Dorman, a renegade Englishman, penetrated Randolph County, after having burnt the fort at Buckhannon, and shot Jacob Stalnaker. They then proceeded to the present county of Pendleton where they murdered Miss Gregg.
*While Colonel Wilson was pursuing the Indians, his own family nearly fell victims to another party of savages, who had entered the lower part of Tygart's Valley. Mrs. Wilson escaped on a wild horse across the river to Wilson's fort, with two small children in a sack slung across the horse, and a third in her arms.
TOWN OF PHILIPPI.
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SETTLEMENTS AND INDIAN TROUBLES.
Tygart's Valley was not again invaded for nine years, and then only once. On May 11, 1791 they murdered Joseph Kinnan near Elkwater, and carried his wife into captivity.
Settlements in Upshur.
The first settlement in what is now Upshur County has special interest for Barbour, not only because of its proximity, but because the first white men ever to set foot on Barbour County's soil, so far as known, took up their abode in Upshur, and became that county's first settlers. Through them we obtain our first glimpse of Barbour at a time when no human being claimed it as his home.
In the interval between the close of the French and Indian War and the beginning of Pontiac's War, the large garrison kept at Fort Pitt (Pittsburg) had little to do, and four soldiers, perhaps becoming weary of doing noth- ing, deserted and set off into the wilderness. This was in 1761, and they were not heard of for a year. But it was subsequently learned that they had been roaming about the mountains of Pennsylvania, and had finally taken up their abode in the Glades in Western Maryland. Their names were John and Samuel Pringle, William Childers and Joseph Lindsay. In 1762 they strolled into the settlement of Lunice Creek, Grant County, where they were recognized as deserters, and Lindsay and Childers were arrested, but the two Pringles escaped to their camp in Maryland where they fell in with John Simpson, a trapper and trader, who employed them to attend his traps. They remained there two years, and until hunters from the South Branch began to frequent that wilderness. Fearing discovery and arrest, they decided to move further west, and Simpson went with them. They passed down Horse Shoe Run, no doubt following the old Indian trail, and crossed Cheat River at the Horse Shoe. Here a quarrel arose between Simpson and one of the Pringles, and they divided the packs, and parted company. The route of Simpson to the Valley River is not definitely known, except that he arrived at the mouth of Pleasant Creek, the present boundary between Bar- bour and Taylor Counties. The geography of the county renders it prob- able that he descended Cheat River seven miles to the mouth of Bull Run. ascending that stream to the top of Laurel Hill, and descended Sandy Creek to the Valley River. He traveled to the head of Simpson Creek (which he named) and thence made his way to Elk, and descended it to the site of Clarksburg where he made a camp. He remained there a year without seeing a human being, and then returned to the South Branch and sold his furs. He again took up his abode at Clarksburg and remained till the country about him began to be settled, which was about 1772, with settle- ments in neighboring sections somewhat earlier.
The Pringles, after they separated from Simpson, continued their jour- ney to the Valley River, reaching it below the mouth of the Buckhannon.
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