CHAPTER XVIII :0: SETTLEMENTS AND INDIAN TROUBLES. The territory embraced in what is now Barbour County did not become the home of white men until settlements had been planted in all the bordering territory. The present counties of Randolph, Upshur, Lewis, Harrison, MIDDLE Hughes River Little Kanawha *Nuller's Fort (Clarksburgk Cheat River GALIA C MARYLAND Taylor, Preston and Tucker were colonized before Barbour. It is, therefore, proper to speak briefly of the advent of the pioneers into the surrounding country before the earliest history of this county is taken up; otherwise the settlement of Barbour could not be presented as it should. Randolph was the scene of the earliest colonization. The first white men's homes on the waters of the Monogahela were in Tygart's Valley in 1753, and they built their cabins, one on the site of Beverly and the other two miles above, the latter named David Tygart from whom the river was named, and the former, Robert Files (or Foyle) from whom Files Creek received its name. Nearly thirty years elapsed after settlements were planted 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 DISTRICT OF WEST AGUSTA 1776. The third of a century a barrier which the white man did not cross. 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 Virginia 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 settlements 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 Monongahela 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. Cumberland 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 Washington 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 over it. Goods were still packed on horses. The first wagon load of merchandise 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 practicable route led down Horse 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 Alleghanies; 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 Kanawha. In 1784, the year after peace was declared with England, he crossed the Alleghanies and visited the Monongahela on a tour of observation, as well as to look after large tracts of land which he owned in the West. He visited Morgantown and ascended Cheat River and crossed the Alleghanies to Staunton. The wisdom of America's great. est man is shown no more in his success in war and in his foresight in politics, than in 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, hẹ The heads of Cheat can Difficult Crook Stony McCul Sandy Creek Great Yough River Gledasof Creat Yough (aroon Blades River Leat Crea Cumberland New Creek again took up the work, Maryland joined Virginia, and in December of that year both made appropriations for opening a road “from the highest practicable navigation of the Potomac to that of the Cheat River or the Monongahela." 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 highways 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 discovered 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 Alleghanies, the most important in West Virginia north of Greenbrier. It was 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 Mountains at the head of Horse Camp Creek, it passed down Seneca Creek, in Pendleton County, to the North Fork. The Shawnee Trail, or a continuation of it, was an old Indian war path, perhaps used centuries ago. It came from Pennsylvania, passed through Maryland, crossed the Potomac at the mouth of the South Branch, ascended that stream to Moorefield where the McCullough Trail struck off; thence it ascended the river to 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 merchandise, 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 |