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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,
between Laurel Hill and the Alle-

MINEAR'S FORT AT ST. GEORGE 1777.

ghany Mountains.

The site of Minear's mill at St. George was long forgotten, 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 Alleghanies. 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.t In April of that year John Minear, Andrew Miller, Salathel Goff, Daniel Cameron 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. Meanwhile 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 occurred. An old cant-hook used on the saw mill is still in existence and is still doing service on a country mill in that vicinity, a venerable relic

of a former century.

†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 recovering 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.

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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

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 afterward 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 subsequently 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 foundation are visible. The land now belongs to Alexander Norris, except a lot of one acre belonging to Hugh Culverson.

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