USA > West Virginia > Barbour County > The history of Barbour County, West Virginia, from its earliest exploration and settlement to the present time > Part 23
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Continuing up the river till they reached the mouth of the Buckhannon, they ascended it to the mouth of Turkey Run, a short distance below Buck- hannon, and there took up their abode in a hollow sycamore, on a farm afterward belonging to Webster Dix. They remained there three years and until their ammunition was exhausted. John Pringle returned, with furs, to the South Branch, leaving Samuel at the forest camp with only two loads of powder.
One of these he wasted in an effort to kill a deer, but was so fortunate as to kill a buffalo with the other. When John returned he reported that there was peace, and they went back to the South Branch. The next year Samuel Pringle and several prospective settlers visited the Buckhannon Valley and in 1769 a number of families settled there. Among them was John Jackson with his two sons, George and Edward .* They settled at the mouth of Turkey Run.
Other settlers were, John Hacker, who located where Bush's fort was afterwards built; Alexander and Thomas Sleeth near the mouth of Turkey Run; William Hacker, Thomas and Jesse Hughes, John and William Radcliff, John Brown, John and Benjamin Cutright and Benjamin Rule. That fall, 1769, after their corn was raised they returned to the South Branch for their families. When they came back they found that buffaloes had devoured their corn. They worked hard and prospered, but in 1773 the colony nearly starved because of the scarcity of corn. Settlements followed in all the country surrounding Barbour. In 1770 Booth's Creek was colonized by Captain James Booth and John Thomas; Simpson's Creek was settled in 1772 by William Lowther and others. He had married a sister of Thomas, Jesse, Job and Elias Hughes.
Indian warfare was very severe in the years following 1777 in the region about Buckhannon, and in 1782 the settlement there was broken up, and Timothy Dorman and his Indians burned the deserted fort.
The Settlements of Tucker County,
Emigrants traveling from the South Branch in search of new homes in the West, would naturally reach Cheat River before arriving in Barbour,
*John Jackson was the great grandfather and Edward Jackson the grandfather of the Confederate General, Thomas J. Jackson. (Stonewall.) Hc was an Englishman by nationality, but was born in Ireland, 1719. While yet a boy he moved to London with his father and two uncles. In 1748 he settled in Cecil County, Maryland, and seven years later marricd Miss Elizabeth Cummins, an Englishwoman, and when they settled in Upshur County, Mrs. Jackson, with money she had inherited, bought part of the land on which the town of Buckhannon was built. She died in 1825 at Clarksburg, aged 101 years. John Jackson had died in 1804, aged 85 years. Both John Jackson and his son, Edward, were soldiers in the Revolutionary War. At George Jackson's house the first court in Harrison County was held, July 20, 1784. At that court Col. Benjamin Wilson was elected Clerk, Colonel William Lowther was recommended as Sheriff, Henry Ilaymond as County Surveyor, Col. Benj. Wilson, Colonel of the militia, Henry Delay, Lieutenant Colonel, Wm. Robinson, Major, John P. Duval, County Lieutenant. After one day the court adjourned to the house of IIezekiali Davisson, Clarksburg.
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provided they pursued the Horse Shoe Run trail. Consequently, the region about St. George was settled several years before the first colony was planted in what is now Barbour. So far as now known, all of the early colonists in Tucker entered the country over the Horse Shoe Run trail. This locality receives its name from a bend in Cheat River, and the Horse Shoe contains some of the finest lands along that stream. Eight or nine years elapsed after the Pringles passed that way in 1764 before another white man came .* The next man who came was Thomas Howell whose home was on the South Branch. He had been taken prisoner by Indians during the French and Indian War, and had been carried beyond the Ohio. After several years he determined to make his escape and rejoin his friends on the South Branch. From his description of the route he traveled, in connection with the known location of Indian trails at that time, his journey can now be traced with tolerable certainty. It seems that he followed the Indian trail up the Little Kanawha and crossed to the head of Tygart's Valley River (probably at the mouth of Elkwater, twenty miles above Beverly). He supposed that he was then on the headwaters of the South Branch, and with this belief he followed the stream downward two days, when it turned abruptly to the west and broke through a range of mountains. This was evidently in the vicinity of the site of Elkins. t Being now satisfied that the stream was not the South Branch, he turned east- ward and came to Cheat River, probably near the mouth of Shaver's Fork, where the town of Parsons now stands. Concluding that this was surely the South Branch he descended the stream. The bottoms were covered with forests of oaks, walnut, sugartrees and sycamore, some of the later of enormous size. ¿ He was doomed to disappointment again; for, when he passed the Horse Shoe, he observed that the river bore off to the north- west, breaking through mountains after mountains, and in the distance skirting the eastern base of Laurel Hill and disappearing from view. The direction was wrong and it could not be the South Branch. He crossed to the mouth of a large creek coming in from the east, and ascended that. It was Horse Shoe Run. He followed an Indian trail and it lead him to the South Branch, where, as tradition states, he died in a few days from over- feeding after a month of almost unbroken famine. But before he died he
*This may not be strictly correct, for it is probable that both the Pringles and John Simpson subsequently visited the Horse Shoe in passing to and from the South Branch; and that the Buckhannon colonists also traveled that trail as early as 1767 and 1768.
tThe fact that Howell followed the river from near its source to that point without finding inhabitants is proof that it was before 1772, or early in that year, as the country about Beverly was settled in 1772.
¿A sycamore opposite the mouth of Horse Shoe Run, still standing within the memory of persons now living, had a hollow more than eleven feet in diameter.
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told of the fine valley which he had discovered, and the route by which it might be reached. *
Among those who listened to Howell's narrative was Captain James Parsons, a prominent citizen who lived near Moorefield.t He noted care- fully the route, and soon set out to see the country. He was pleased with it and afterwards located claims covering nearly all of the Horse Shoe and the adjacent lands as far as Holly Meadows, and settled his three sons on the lands, but he never became a resident of that part of the country him- self. The first settlement was made in the Horse Shoe in the spring of 1774. In April of that year the land, as far as Holly Meadows, was surveyed by Joseph Cresap, who lived near the mouth of the South Branch. tt
The Parsons family did not occupy the country alone. About the time of their coming, another land hunter entered the country. This was John Minear, a hardy German, born in 1730, and emigrating to America in 1767
*On the muster roll of Captain John Ashby's company, dated October 21, 1757, the name of Thomas Howell is found. (See Virginia Historical Magazine for 1895. ) It is not improbable that he was the man who made the journey detailed above. Captain Ashby's company served in the South Branch Valley, and on Patterson Creek, in the present County of Mineral, in the French and Indian War. Soldiers were frequently killed or captured during that period by Indians, and it is not improbable that Howell was captured in that vicinity while serving as a soldier.
¡James Parsons was an officer in the Hampshire militia. He is first mentioned in history in connection with an occurrence in 1756. Indians broke into the settlement on Lunice Creek, near Fort George (now Petersburg, Grant County) and killed Jonathan Welton and wounded and captured others. They retreated across the Alleghanies to Cheat River, at Dunkard's Bottom, near the Pennsylvania line. Captain Parsons, with a squad of men, overtook them in the night. He crawled up to reconnoitre, and seated himself upon a pole just outside the light of the fire. Presently an Indian began rebuilding the fire, which was burning low, and needing more fuel, he walked a short distance away and took hold of the pole on which Captain Parsons was sitting. The Captain quietly raised himself aud permitted the Indian to pull the pole from under him, which the savage did without discovering that anyone was near. The white men were, all this time, lying nearby with guns cocked ready to fire. Captain Parsons gave the signal, and a deadly volley was poured into the camp, killing several Indians, and also, by accident, a white prisoner. It was on that occasion that Samuel Bingamon, a powerful man and a noted Indian fighter, pursued an Indian, caught him and beat him to death. In 1774 a company of soldiers from the South Branch took part in the Dunmore War. Captain Parsons was of the number, but whether he was at Point Pleasant or marched by way of Wheeling with Lord Dunmore is unknown. He was present at Camp Charlotte when the treaty was made, as was his neighbor, Captain Michael Cresap, who lived near the mouth of the South Branch.
ftA considerable number of surveyors and settlers were in the party, and while at work in the llolly Meadows, some hunters from Tygart's Valley discovered them and mistook them for Indians. They hurried home, collected a company of men and returned to the Holly Meadows to attack the party, but fortunately discovered them to be white men, This was in a time of peace. The settlements on Cheat River, at and near the Horse Shoe, may be considered to date from April, 1774.
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with his wife and children, the eldest of whom was David, twelve years old. He was a man of good education, of great energy, of sound judgment, and he has left his imprint upon the history of West Virginia, being the leader and mainstay of the Cheat River colony in its early years, and being the first white man to lose his life within the present borders of Barbour County. A detailed account of his death will be found in the following pages. He was a landowner on the Sonth Branch, in the present County of Hardy, before he visited Cheat River. Having examined the new country, he organized a company of colonists and led them across the Alleghanies. Among those who came with him were, Daniel Cameron, Philip Washburn, (John Minear's son-in-law), Andrew Miller, Jacob (?) Cooper, Salathiel Goff, Robert Cunningham, Henry Fink, Stephen Radcliff, and others whose names are no longer remembered.
John Minear planted his colony in the Horse Shoe. He claimed the land, but subsequently he disposed of his claim to James Parsons, who also laid claim to it, and Minear's colony moved down the river two miles, and located near and below where St. George now stands. But that was two years later, in 1776, and intervening events of great importance must be mentioned. The settlement in the Horse Shoe was made in the spring of 1774. That summer the Dunmore War came, and John Minear built a fort in the Horse Shoe, on land now included it the Tucker County Poor Farm. It was a stockade enclosing an acre or more, with a log house near a spring. There is no record that anyone was killed in the colony by the Indians that year, but the savages prowled about the set- tlement, and on different occasions persons venturing out were pur- sued and narrowly escaped. Becom- ing weary of constant watching and anxiety, the colony abandoned the THE HORSE SHOE FORT BUILT IN 1774. Horse Shoe in the fall of 1774, and returned to the South Branch. From that time until the spring of 1776 there was not a white man within the limits of what is now Tucker County, so far as known.
There was no Indian war in 1776, and John Minear conducted his col- ony back to Cheat River, and made the site of St. George the center of the settlement. His land covered the site of St. George and extended a mile. down the river. . On the opposite side was the land of his son Jonathan Minear, two miles below. Jacob Cooper settled four miles below St. George at the base of Miller's Hill. Daniel Cameron located on the east side of the Cheat, opposite Miller's Hill. Salathiel Goff's claim was just east of John
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Minear's. Stephen Radcliff built his cabin on Horse Shoe Run, six miles above St. George. The location of other settlers is not now known. In 1777 the Indian war began again, and a fort was built at St. George, on the site of the present court house. This fort was on the same plan as that built in the Horse Shoe, but the palisaded space was smaller, enclosing not more than a quarter of an acre. A mill was built about the same time to grind grain, and soon a saw mill was added. This is believed to have been the first grist mill and saw mill built in West Virginia, MINEAR'S FORT AT ST. GEORGE 1777. between Laurel Hill and the Alle- ghany Mountains. The site of Minear's mill at St. George was long for- gotten, but in 1875 a flood cleared out the accumulation of gravel from the channel of Mill Run where it flows through the town, and on the bedrock the old logs of the mill dam were brought to view .*
In 1781 Virginia had begun issuing patents for land west of the Alle- ghanies. Before that date the settlers had no legal titles to it, except so much title as a "tomahawk right," or "corn right" might give them.+ In April of that year John Minear, Andrew Miller, Salathel Goff, Daniel Cam- eron and Jacob Cooper went to Clarksburg to meet the land commissioners and obtain patents. While returning and just before crossing the Valley River below Philippi, and half a mile above the mouth of Hacker Creek, they were fired upon by Indians in ambush near the trail. The savages had hung a leather gun-case over the path to attract attention, and it had
the desired effect. The men halted and Minear, suspecting the truth, exclaimed, "Indians!" and wheeled his horse in the narrow path. At that moment the Indians fired, and he fell. Cameron and Cooper were also killed. Salathiel Goff and Andrew Miller sprang from their horses and fled, both hotly pursued. Miller ran up the hill, and Goff toward the river. The former was so closely pressed that he despaired of getting away, but he gained the top of the ridge, ran through a thicket of brush where the Indians lost sight of him, and made his escape back to Clarksburg. Mean- while other Indians were pursuing Goff whose course of flight took him toward the river. Arriving on the bank, and his pursuers that moment
*In 1884 the writer examined the old dam,and found the logs to be in a sound condition, more than a century after they had been placed there. The ax marks on them were plainly seen. The dam had been buried beneath gravel so long that the oldest inhabitant could not remember when it oceurred. An old cant-hook used on the saw mill is still in existenee and is still doing service on a country mill in that vicinity, a venerable relic of a former century.
t See page 23 of this book.
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being out of sight, he threw off his coat to facilitate his swimming. But as he leaped down the bank, a cracking of brush near by announced that the savages were at hand. On the impulse of the moment he threw his coat into the river, and crawled under a hollow bank for concealment. The Indians were by that time on the bank above him. He heard their voices, and once caught a glimpse of a reflection in the water, made by the gleam of the sun on a gun or tomahawk. Then he saw their images mirrored distinctly in the water beneath him, and he gave up hope. But an unexpected circumstance saved him. His coat was floating off down the river and it caught the eyes of the Indians, and they began moving off along the bank, following the garment. Whether they succeeded in recov- ering it, will never be known. Goff did not wait to see, but at the first opportunity he crawled from his place of concealment and made his escape, leaving the savages a hundred yards below.
SCENE OF THE MURDER OF MINEAR, COOPER AND CAMERON 1781.
The accompanying sketch shows the site of the murder as it is to day. The narrow space between the hill and river was an admirable place for an ambuscade, and it is to be wondered that any of the men escaped, for the Indians numbered between twenty and thirty. The hill up which Miller made his escape is very steep. An examination of the river bank at the present day discovers no underground hiding place for a man; but there is record evidence that the bank has fallen into the river since then. Trees which formerly stood there, and particularly a corner tree to a tract of
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land, have been undermined and have fallen into the river. It is, therefore, reasonably certain that the bank was undermined and hollow at the time of the ambuscade and that Goff found a hiding place under the overhanging roots of a tree." The men were shot about where the smallcabin (belonging to Hugh Culverson) now stands. There is a tradition that some of the Indians lay concealed in a hole made by a tree falling by the roots, between where an old oak stump now stands and the foot of the hill. It is probable that another party of the Indians were in the rear of the men at the time of the attack; otherwise Goff and Miller would have fled back on the trail instead of taking what to them seemed the only avenues of escape, the one up the hill; the other toward the river ..
When news of the tragedy reached St. George, David Minear with a dozen men proceeded to the place and buried the dead. Many years after- ward some men who were digging in that vicinity exhumed the bones of the three men. A very old man was present who had been acquainted with Minear and Cameron, and he identified the skeletons by the teeth. Minear had two front teeth missing. So had one of the skulls. Cameron chewed tobacco, and his teeth were worn short. So were they in one of the skulls. The bones were reinterred in a grave between a white-oak tree and the foot of the hill, and was marked by plain stones. The stump of this tree is yet to be seen. The oak was spared many years after the land about it was cleared, because it marked the graves, and also the spot where the Indians lay in the root-hole when they fired ..
Lewis Wilson, who is still living in his eighty-second year, remembers distinctly when the grave-stones were there and when the oak had old blaze marks on it, pointing to the graves. The grave-stones were subse- quently pulled up and used in the foundation of a cabin built near the spot by Richard Male. +
The Indians continued their journey toward St. George after they had scalped the dead, but meeting James Brown and Stephen Radcliff, and being unable to kill or capture them, the savages concluded that it would be useless to proceed in the hope of surprising the settlement on Cheat, and they turned south and massacred the settlers on Leading Creek an account of which has already been given.
Sometime after the killing of Minear, Indians paid a visit to Cheat River and murdered Bernard Sims, son of John Sims, who lived on the land
*Salathel Goff was afterwards President of the first County Court of Randolph County.
+Richard Male gave this land to his two sons, Wilmer and Hezekiah. They died soon after, leaving each a widow. Their father-in-law, wishing to secure them a home, built them a cabin exactly on the line dividing their two tracts of land, giving as his reason for it, that by so doing, one daughter-in-law could not drive the other out; but if they could not live in common and at peace, each could retire to her own side of the house and the same roof would cover both. This cabin long ago disappeared. but the rocks used in its fondation are visible. The land now belongs to Alexander Norris, except a lot of one acre belonging to Hlugh Culverson,
RESIDENCE OF ALSTON GORDON DAYTON,
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of James Parsons, four miles below the present town of Parsons. He had smallpox, and when the Indians discovered that he was afflicted with a disease greatly feared by them, they fled without scalping him, yelling as they ran: "Smallpox! Smallpox!"*
The troubled times on the borders, and the many murders by the Indiaus, induced the Governor of Virginia in 1782 to send troops. The num- ber sent to Monongalia County was only seventy, and they were militia from Hampshire County. At that time Monongalia embraced the present counties of Tucker, Randolph, Harrison, Barbour, and northward to Penn- sylvania, and westward to the Ohio. Seventy soldiers were too few. These seventy were divided into squads, and before June 30, 1782, had been stat- ioned in Tygart's Valley near Beverly, on the West Fork, near Clarksburg, and on Cheat River near St. George.t It is stated in General Irvine's report that in Monongalia County he only had 300 effective men. Į
There were several visits by the Indians to the Cheat River settlement, the dates of which cannot now be fixed. Without giving the date, it can be stated that on one occasion an alarm of Indians was sounded and the set- tlers fled to the fort. A family living at the mouth of Clover Run, half mile from the fort and on the opposite side of the river, were working in a cornfield, and in the haste of the older members of the family to reach the fort, they forgot a boy, eight years old, in the field. When he called he was answered, as he supposed by his parents, and was thus decoyed into the woods, out of sight of the fort, where the Indians took him prisoner and carried him to the Ohio. He never got back. §
The night following the capture of the boy, Indians appeared four miles below the fort at the house of Mrs. Cameron, widow of Daniel Cam- eron who had been killed with John Minear and Jacob Cooper. The savages approached the cabin in the night. The widow with two small children was alone. Looking through a crack in the wall, she discovered in the vague shadows, an Indian's head and shoulders above the garden fence, as he stood motionless, apparently listening to detect the whereabouts and meaning of some uncertain sound. She quietly lifted her sleeping babies from their cradle, and carrying them in her apron, ran into the woods and
* The date of the killing of Sims is uncertain. While Withers gives no date, he leaves it to be inferred that it occurred about 1779. This was probably just ten years too early, as there is a well founded tradition in Tucker County that he was killed the day before Jonathan Minear met his death, 1789.
t In Colonel John Evans' official report to General Irvine at Pittsburg, June 30, 1782, he says the troops were sent to "the Horse Shoe:" but that was then and for many years afterward, the common name for all the settlements on Cheat River for miles above and below. The fort was at St. George and no doubt the troops were stationed there.
# Two years before that. in 1780, the militia enrollment in what is West Virginia, was given in Jefferson's Notes on Virginia as follows: Monongalia 1000, Greenbrier 502, Hampshire 930, Berkeley 1100; total 3532.
¿ A pet crow which was with him in the field, followed him as far as the Ohio River where the Indians, actuated by superstitious fear, shot it.
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reached the fort in safety. The Indians burned the house that night .*
In 1787 Indians came into the settlement and stole five horses from Henry Fink. The settlers barricaded themselves in the fort for several days. Believing that the savages contemplated an attack on the fort, which then contained only six men, the others having gone to Winchester for salt, great pains were taken to impress upon the enemy the belief that the place was well defended. The men would change their clothes fre- quently, and walk out where the Indians, who were concealed on a bluff across the river, could see them. The trick had the desired effect, and the Indians made no attack.
In 1789+ Indians again invaded the Cheat River settlements, and in March drove the settlers into the fort. After some days the enemy were supposed to have departed, and the people returned to their farms. Among them were Jonathan Minear, son of John, and Philip Washburn, brother- in-law of Jonathan. Their land was two miles below the fort, on the oppo- site side of the river, at the mouth of a creek known to this day as Jona- than's Run. Indians waylaid them and killed Minear and took Washburn prisoner as he was carrying a load of fodder to feed the cattle. The sav- ages had siezed him before he suspected their presence. At the same instant they fired upon Minear and broke his leg. He tried to reach the river, but was overtaken on the bank, and while running around a beech tree, propping himself with one hand against the tree, he was tomahawked. į The firing was heard by a settler on the opposite side of the river, and men from the fort went in pursuit of the Indians, under the leadership of David Minear, brother of Jonathan. The savages retreated up a steep ridge below Jonathan's Run, and the ridge is still known as Indian Point. They hurried to the Valley River in what is now Barbour, and there the trail was lost. The white men hunted for the trail all next day, and late in the evening found it, and after following it a mile or two, discovered the camp of the enemy. It was subsequently ascertained that the Indians, who seemed to think that pursuit from St. George was not to be feared, had spent the day hunting for the cabins of settlers in the vicinity of the Valley
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