U.S. Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ -- USGenNet Inc. -- Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statementon the following page: ----------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER IX. LIFE OF THE PIONEERS Conditions of living among the pioneers were simple in the extreme. There were no social castes, neither were there persons of great wealth or extreme poverty. All were the owners of four hundred acres of land which might be worth a hunting dog and a captured rifle or it might not; it depended partly upon the location but far more upon the extent of the clearings. It was impossi- ble for a man to have a house much better than those of his neighbors; if he did, it was because he was more in- dustrious or a better workman. If there was an aristoc- racy of fine houses it was not a bad sort of aristocracy. The furniture in one log house could not be far su- perior to that in other cabins nor could there be a much greater quantity of imported utensils, for the lim- ited transportation facilities prevented settlers from bringing more than the barest necessities. The settler usually walked all the way across the mountains with his goods on packhorses. Only the sim- plest tools could be brought. The ax was of course indis- pensable; so also was the mattock for grubbing, the hoe for cultivating and a small plow point for stirring the ground. The frow was necessary in splitting shingles for the roof of the house. An indispensable tool was the auger, which was used for boring holes for pins to fasten various parts of the house together in the total absence of nails of any kind. A few pots and pans and spoons and skillets and an oven made up the kitchen furniture. The spinning wheel, or such parts of it as could not easily be made in the woods, and a pair of wool-cards made the re- mainder of the furniture. There were also a supply of salt, some ammunition, seeds of various kinds including sometimes some flower seeds, and corn for bread in greater or less quantity, depending upon the amount of other goods brought and the number of pack horses. Upon arriving on the land selected by the settler for his future home, he chose the best possible site for his cabin near a spring. He then began to fell trees nearby and cut them into the proper lengths for the side and end walls of his cabin. If there were neighbors, they would assist the newcomer in his house-raising, which would often be completed within a day or two. The first dwell- ing was extremely rude and hurriedly made. The logs composing it were untouched by the ax except near the ends where they were notched and roughly fitted to- gether. The space between the logs was blocked up with short pieces of rails and small stones, and the wall was made tight by daubing all the crevices with mud. The chimney was built of rough stones half way up the end of the house, and for the remainder of the distance there was a crib of sticks. Both stones and sticks were cemented together with clay mortar. After the first year the settler usually erected a more pretentious house of tulip poplar logs hewed square and notched so carefully that only a small crack was left be- tween them. The cabins of the pioneers reflected the conditions under which they lived. When John Hacker first came to Hackers creek the whites and the Indians were at peace, and the first cabin he built is said to have been crudely built of logs, and with the cracks chinked with slabs and mud. The chimney stood at the end of the house on the outside. Later the houses were built of logs which had been nicely squared so that there were only small crevices to be filled up, and the chimney was placed on the inside of the house to prevent the Indians' tearing away the stones from the mud mortar which held them and gaining an entrance through the fireplace, which af- forded a far larger opening in the log wall than the door. With the chimney on the inside of the house, the in- habitants were protected on all sides by a wall of logs which the Indians could destroy only by burning-. Some of the great interior chimneys took up nearly all the space in one end of the cabin, and afforded openings for two fire places on the ground floor and one on. the sec- ond floor. The third development was the fortress-like cabin which could readily stand a siege provided the de- fenders were numerous and active. A second floor was added, which was sometimes made to project about a foot beyond the walls of the lower rooms. From it the settlers conducted their principal defense. They were en- abled to gain a wider field of fire, and at the same time shoot down upon any of the warriors who might attempt to force an entrance through the doorway or set fire to the house. The door of the cabin was built especially strong so as to resist any attempt to force it open. It was com- posed of two thicknesses of heavy boards hewn out and fastened together diagonally with wooden pins. The door was hung on ponderous iron or wooden hinges that reached nearly across it. Space was sometimes left for windows, but heavy shutters were provided. The floor was made of puncheons, that is, thick boards split out of white oak trees in the same manner that shingles are made. They were afterwards smoothed with an ax or drawing knife. No nails were used in the construction of the houses except perhaps for the door. They were too scarce. The roof was held in place by timbers laid on the clapboards. Sometimes a log was placed on the roof just above the door, so fixed that it could be released from the inside upon the heads of Indians who tried to gain entrance. Secure within the walls of such houses the frontier settler could bid defiance to a small band of savages until help should arrive from the other settlers. The early homes of the settlers were not uncomfort- able. In summer the greased paper in the windows was taken out, and the air was free to circulate. In winter even with the greased paper in the windows the air was also free to circulate through the house, especially through the loft or second story where the boys of the family slept. The snow frequently sifted through the spaces between the rough shingles or was blown through the cracks in the end of the house. The deerskins under which they slept would be covered with snow in the morning after every snow storm. On the lower floor it was comfortable on the long winter evenings when the hickory logs roared in the huge fireplace. The family sat around the fire doing some simple tasks to while away the time. The hunting dog toasted his nose at the very edge of the fireplace in front of the group. The furniture of the earliest settlers was extremely simple. Chairs were frequently only blocks of wood which had been hewn into shape. Beds consisted of poles laid upon a framework built in the corner of the house and supported by one block or post. As might be ex- pected they were exceedingly uncomfortable. Deerskins were the coverings universally used. Bishop Francis Asbury wrote in his journal an account of a trip to Clarksburg, in 1788. After an all day's ride he came to a cabin where the settler agreed to take him in. All the beds were already occupied. "I lay along the floor on a few deerskins with the fleas," he says, and continued fur- ther, "Oh, how glad I should be for a clean plank to lie on, as preferable to most of the beds, and where the beds are in a bad state the floors are worse. This country will require much work to make it tolerable." The tables consisted of two or three slabs with one end stuck into the crack between two logs and the other end supported on two legs in the middle of the cabin. Wooden platters and bowls were used almost to the ex- clusion of other ware, and the settlers drank from gourds. Pewter ware was considered unusually elegant. Most of the early blacksmith shops had copper moulds for mak- ing pewter spoons. China ware was slow in being adopt- ed by the pioneers. It was many years before the old "ironstone china" made in England and considered ele- gant by the newcomers from east of the mountains found a place on the tables in the Trans-Alleghany region. It was too easily broken, and besides it dulled the hunting knives of the pioneers. Cooking utensils were few and simple. The meat was generally prepared in a frying pan or roasted by placing a piece of meat on a sharp stick and holding it over the coals. A cooking pot for boiling vegetables and meat, a tea-kettle and a covered oven consisting of a large pan with an iron cover, completed the list of vessels found in most of the cabins. The food was nearly always well cooked. The pioneers delighted to have it said of them that they set good tables. Corn and game were the staple articles of food for every frontier household. The venison was sometimes cured for emergency use in the winter by "jerking" it. The process consisted of cutting it into narrow strips and drying it before the fire. It was carried on every journey along with the johnny-cake, and eaten raw. Corn pone and johnny-cake were the only kinds of bread used for breakfast and dinner, and the children of the settlers who came from the centers of a higher civiliza- tion sometimes forgot the taste of wheat bread. It is re- lated that once when John Hacker made a trip to the South Branch for salt and ammunition, he brought some biscuit on his return, and gave it to a small child. The child looked at it a moment, then evidently thinking it some strange toy, he began rolling it on the floor. It is said that the father wept to think that his children had been so long in the wilderness that they had forgotten the taste of bread. The evening meal was perhaps the simplest of all. The staple dish was mush and milk when it was possible to procure the milk. Mush was also eaten with maple syrup, bear's grease or gravy. Hog and hominy was a substantial dish. Vegetables and fruits seem to have been used only in the summer, fall and early winter, owing to the limited supply grown and the inroads made upon the stock of provisions by large families of hungry children. "Few settlers had land in cultivation more than sufficient to raise food for their own consumption," says an early resident of northwestern Virginia, writing of conditions in 1792. "Generally by spring there would be no bread in the country and people lived on greens, of spontaneous growth, which were daily gathered by women and children until they could raise vegetables. It was some time before we had tillable land enough to raise wheat. Butter we could not indulge in. with our maple sugar at six cents a pound and a few eggs was all we could market to get money to pay taxes." Coffee and tea were unknown, and were not re- garded with favor for many years. They were con- sidered at first as slops which did not "stick to the ribs." Tea made from wintergreen or pennyroyal leaves, sassafras roots, and spicewood twigs was generally to be found on the tables. In the early spring when the sap in the maple trees was running, the settlers drank prac- tically nothing but sugar water, which could be had within a few feet of the door of every cabin by boring a hole in a sugar maple tree, inserting a short length of sumac bush hollowed out for a spile, and setting a wooden trough under it. Cane sugar was unknown in western Virginia for many years. The substitute was maple sugar. Many of the farmers left regular sugar groves where they built a temporary shack and made sugar during the nights of early spring. Candles were made from tallow either by dipping a string several times in melted fat or by pouring the fat in candle moulds which one settler in every community generally brought from the east. Soft soap was made from waste pieces of fat which were thrown into the "soap-grease barrel", and later re- duced with the aid of crude potash leached from wood ashes. Matches were unknown anywhere, and fire was made by striking steel against flint and catching the sparks on a piece of "punk" or half-burned rag. When the housewife was in a hurry for a fire she usually sent one of the children to the nearest neighbor's to borrow a few blazing chunks. The family medicine chest was pre- pared from the products of the forest, and consisted of a great variety of herbs and roots. Poultices for gun- shot wounds and burns were made from scraped pota- toes, elm bark and the leaves of various plants. Snake bites were treated with a decoction of white plantain boiled in milk taken internally, and by applying salt and gunpowder and binding a portion of the snake to the wound. The dress of the pioneers was extremely simple. The characteristic part was the loose hunting shirt, of linsey-woolsey, coarse linen or dressed deerskins. So universally was the hunting shirt worn by the settlers that the British called the Virginia bordermen "Shirt Men." Breeches were worn by the first comers, but the conditions of life in the woods caused a change in the costumes of the rangers not altogether to the liking of the female population. This was nothing more nor less than the adoption of the most characteristic portions of the Indian dress. They early discarded breeches and lengthened the leggings until they reached far up the thigh and fas- tened to the belt by means of strings. The Indian breech clout, a piece of cloth a yard or more long and eight inches wide passed around the waist, one end passing under the belt in front, the other behind. The ends, which stuck out as flaps, were sometimes orna- mented with a crude sort of embroidery. When the belt to which the clout was attached passed over the hunting shirt, the thighs and part of the hips were bare. A coonskin cap and moccasins of deerskin completed the costume. As a whole it was well adapted to life on the frontier, especially in summer. The leggings fit- ting closely did not impede the legs in running, and the shirt of wool or linen was as comfortable as can well be imagined. Jesse Hughes is said to have always worn a costume colored with bark of chestnut-oak. Attired in it he was as inconspicuous as he could possibly make him- self against the forest background. In summer the set- tlers frequently appeared without their leggings, because they deemed them unnecessary. Long afterwards men working on farms wore only a very long shirt, claiming that it was the most comfortable garment that could be worn. Shoes were very scarce, and they were a subject of comment whenever worn. Deerskin moccasins, which were universally worn by the pioneers, were perhaps the most comfortable covering ever devised for the feet in the summer. In winter they were very cold, on ac- count of the absence of thick soles as well as the porous character of the skin. They were frequently lined with fur or dried leaves to keep the feet warm. In wet weather the pioneers claimed that the wearing of moc- casins was "only a decent way of going barefooted." The spongy leather was no protection from rain or heavy dews no matter how heavily they had been greased with bear fat or mutton tallow. When the snow was melting few of the settlers cared to go outside their houses. The pioneers suffered much from rheu- matism, which they believed was caused by wearing moccasins. The dress of the women was simple and unadorned linsey-woolsey dresses with short skirts and numerous petticoats. Store dresses were practically unknown and calico could be had nowhere in the west. Very few jewels were worn for years after the first settlements, and the commonest toilet articles of milady's boudoir today were unknown to the women of a century and a half ago. The settlers also adopted the arms of the Indian. The tomahawk and the scalping knife hung from the belt of every ranger, who understood thoroughly the use of both weapons in combat with the savages. The chief reliance of course, was on the rifle, with which every pioneer had had long practice, both in the hunt and in fighting Indians. The guns of the pioneers were principally smoothbore firelocks of rather large caliber, the bullets weighing about forty to the pound. Some, however, were of smaller caliber, like those sometimes found now among the old hunters who have become ac- customed to the muzzle-loader and refuse to give it up for the breech loading rifle or shot gun. Most of the Indians were owners of guns, these having been fur- nished by traders, by the French at the time of the French and Indian wars, or by the English throughout the Revolution, from the time of the bloody year of the three sevens onward. The guns in the hands of the settlers were more accurate than those of the sav- ages on account of the fact that the settlers regularly cleaned and oiled them, and the Indians only cleaned theirs by discharging them every few days. The firing arrangement of all flintlock guns was imperfect. Many on both sides met death because of the failure of their guns to discharge when the enemy was almost upon them. Sometimes the guns would "flash in the pan," and whenever there was a rain or a thick fog the prim- ing was likely to be dampened, in which case the guns refused to work. In carrying on warfare with the Indians the fron- tiersmen took scalps, just as the savages did, partly to show their prowess and partly because they knew that the red man without his scalp had no hope of entering the happy hunting-ground. They not only cut off his life but they doomed his soul. Some of the scouts also killed women and even children as well as the war- riors. The old Indian fighters never forgot their early hatred for the Indian race. It is related of John Cut- right, that long after the close of the Indian wars, when he was so old and infirm that he could walk only with the aid of his cane, he attempted to get his gun and shoot a friendly Indian whom he saw passing through the settlements. He had to be guarded closely by his fam- ily until after the Indian had left the vicinity. The pioneers who braved the dangers of the for- ests and the Indians were men of the hardiest stamp. They were rude and ignorant for the most part, caring nothing for the finer sentiments and having little re- gard for anything which did not add to their physical well-being. Ability to draw a fine bead along the bar- rel of a gun was more highly regarded than any other accomplishment. "The people, many of them," said Francis Asbury, pioneer bishop of Methodism, "are of the boldest cast of adverturers, and with some the de- cencies of civilized society are scarcely regarded." They were a hard-fighting, hard-drinking, quarrelsome set for the most part. The conditions of the wilderness did not suit the institution of negro slavery, which flourished east of the mountains. All the settlers were obliged to labor in clearing the fields, raising their crops, and making all the improvements on their farms. There was little other work the slaves could do. The settlers naturally object- ed to having slaves working in the fields, because their own work was the same, and they did not wish to be considered to be on the same level with them. The in- stitution of slavery could not be profitable unless it were possible to export great quantities of agricultural produce; and this was impossible both because of the lack of adequate transportation facilities and the ab- sence of large tracts of comparatively level land for tillage. Only a few slaves were brought with the first settlers. Colonel Lowther owned two, who worked in the fields and produced grain enough for himself and some of the neighbors. The Colonel was thus released from the necessity of working in the fields and could de- vote all his energies to the defense of the settlements leading parties of rangers against the Indians and in- specting the posts throughout the frontier of north- western Virginia. No slaves were brought to the dis- trict now included in Lewis County until later. The system of indenture was also in vogue as shown by a record of the court, 1785; "On motion of Richard Hocklin, servant of John P. Duvall, complaining against his master, in regard to wearing an iron collar its the opinion of the Court sd. collar be taken off by his mas- ter." There was a sort of system of apprenticeship from the earliest times. All the orphans were deemed to be wards of the state whom the county court ordered to be bound out by the overseers of the poor until they reached the legal age. The laws required that they should be "found" in return for the work they did, and they were usually allowed a sum of money when their term of service ended. There were many of these wards of the state among the scattered settlements of north- western Virginia. Unless a pioneer lived at a great distance from all other human habitations — something which occurred rarely — it cannot be said that he was lonely. There was always a community of interest in warding off Indian attacks, in helping to perform labor on different farms which could not be done by one man, and in countless other matters. The settlers of a neighborhood were con- tinually being thrown together, and the neighborhood then included all the settled portions of what is now Lewis and Upshur counties and half of Harrison. When the dangers of an Indian attack or house-raisings did not throw the settlers together often enough, other social diversions were arranged. In the spring some popular, but lazy, farmer might hold a grubbing bee to which all the neighbors were invited for a day. Large numbers came, because they knew that the mistress of the house would have a fine dinner for the occasion and that there would be games and a dance after the day's work and play were over. In the fall there were corn huskings, which were always occasions of great gayety. Neigh- bors came for miles around, particularly young men and women. Preparations had previously been made for the husking by pulling off all the ears of corn from the stalks and hauling them to the appointed place where they were piled in a long row. Husking usually began just after dark by the light of the full moon and the buskers managed to make the job last until nearly morning. Sometimes a contest was arranged in which two good buskers chose sides and divided the pile in half. Then followed a good-natured race to see which side could finish first. The work was likely to be inter- rupted whenever a young man found a red ear, because immemorial custom of the frontier gave him the right to kiss the prettiest girl present. There were also many informal gatherings of neighbors. Occasionally there was a traveler who wanted to stay all night. The settlers were most hos- pitable and gave him his food and a place to sleep in return for gossip of the frontier or of the regions east of the mountains whence all had come. The greatest social occasions among the settlers were the weddings. There was no labor of log-rolling or house-raising or other hard work in connection with them, and they attracted universal interest. On the morning of the day set for the ceremony all the friends of the groom met at his father's house to escort him to the home of the bride's parents. They formed a pro- cession in double file along the trail, all attired in their best and riding their best horses. Frequently their pro- gress would be interrupted by grapevines tied across the path as a joke or through the ill will of some neighbor who had not been invited to the wedding. The time was taken up with good-natured banter and songs and yells and perhaps a race for "Black Betty," a bottle of whiskey or rum. The marriage ceremony was performed by a preacher, if there were one in the settlement, if not, ar- rangements were made to call in someone who had been designated by the county court to officiate. After the ceremony the guests were seated at the table to eat the most sumptuous meal which it was possible for the housewife of the frontier to prepare. Meats and vegeta- bles were cooked in every known way, and crowded upon the table until it would hold no more. The dearth of pewterware made no difference to the guests. They were accustomed to eat with their hunting knives. After the dinner the festivities commenced. It was not long until dancing commenced, and the couples were soon engaged in three or four-handed reels or in square sets and jigs to the tune of "The West Fork River." The dancing continued until morning, and if any couple be- came tired and attempted to hide from the others they were hunted up and compelled to dance while the fiddler played "Hold on Till Tomorrow Morning." During the night the spirits of the party were kept up by the fre- quent passing of "Black Betty." The feasting and danc- ing frequently continued for several days until all con- cerned were too exhausted to continue further. The earliest settlers were without schools. The children had to depend for an education upon what their parents or older brothers and sisters could teach them. There are traditions that William Powers, after his com- ing to the West Fork valley in 1785, taught a term of school at West's fort. The Rev. John Mitchell also gave the children instruction in the rudiments of the three R's while he was engaged in the double duty of preaching the Gospel in the wilderness and helping tJ keep the Indians from the gates of West's fort. Both these schools were irregular and the term was short. Teachers could not always be found nor could the set- tlers always be induced to subscribe enough to employ a teacher. The result was that many years later the records of Lewis County show the signatures of many of the largest landholders and most important citizens made with a cross and witnessed. The state government early took action to light the torch of learning in the hills and dales west of the mountains. The General Assembly in 1787 chartered the Randolph academy, which should in a sense take the place of William and Mary college for the youth of the counties of Ohio, Monongalia, Harrison and Randolph. John P. Duvall, George Jackson, John Powers, Robert Maxwell and John Jackson were appointed trustees of the institution with power to select the most eligible site within the counties, to make contracts for the erec- tion of buildings, and to employ teachers and act as the general board of management. The General Assembly provided for the support of the academy one-sixth of the surveyor's fees of the four counties, which had formerly been paid for the support of William and Mary college in Virginia. The trustees designated Clarksburg as the most eligible location for the academy, and in 1793 they let the contract for the first building. A short time afterward the work of con- struction started. Many students took advantage of the opportunity to secure an education within the walls of Randolph academy, among whom were many young men who later were numbered among the most promi- nent citizens of Lewis County. The religious interests of the pioneers were not overlooked. Hardly were the first settlements made until Baptist and Methodist itinerant preachers followed the trails that had been made and attempted to estab- lish churches in the virgin soil of the new settlements. The founding of churches in some places antedated the establishment of that other influence of civilization, or- derly government. Baptist preachers and Methodist circuit riders braved all the perils of the wilderness to bring their message to the benighted people on the frontier. Before the close of the Revolution the Meth- odists had established classes at various places in the Trans-Alleghany district. Classes were in existence by 1781 in the West Fork Valley. There was a flourishing class near Richards' fort under the leadership of Moses Ellsworth. A society was organized at John Hacker's on Hacker's creek as early as 1786, probably by Rev. John Mitchell, but no church was erected for several years afterwards. The Rev. Henry Smith, who visited the region in 1794, found a good society there. The Rev. Joseph Cheuvront, a Frenchman, took up his res- idence near the mouth of Hacker's creek shortly after- ward and was licensed to celebrate the rites of matri- mony in 1790. He was regarded as a very eloquent preacher by the people of the community, and even the circuit rider confessed that he "could preach all around him." Henry McWhorter, who came to McKinney's run in 1790, soon became one of the leading members of the Hacker's creek Methodist society. It is said that he was a member of the Methodist church for sixty years and a class leader for fifty. Under his leadership the class grew and prospered. Regular preaching ser- vices were begun early in the last decade of the eight- eenth century and have been continued without serious interruption until the present time. The number of Methodist societies in the upper West Fork valley was so great that in 1788 Bishop Asbury came to Clarksburg to hold a quarterly meeting, where he preached to an audience of about seven hundred people. In the letters and journals of some of the old circuit riders are to be found interesting glimpses of the pioneer settlements. The Rev. Henry Smith came to the Clarksburg circuit in 1784 and held a meeting at the house of Joseph Bon- nett. Of his congregation he says : "The people came to this meeting from four or five miles around. * * * They were all backwoods people and came to the meet- ing in backwoods style, all on foot, a considerable con- gregation. I looked around and saw an old man who had shoes on his feet. The preacher wore Indian moc- casins. Every man, woman and child besides was bare- footed. The old women had on what we called then short gowns, and the rest had neither short nor long gowns. This was a novel sight for me for a Sunday con- gregation. I soon found if there were no shoes and fine dresses in the congregation there were attentive hearers and feeling hearts. In meeting the class I heard the same humble loving religious experience that I had often heard in better dressed societies. If this scene did not make a backwoods man of me outright, it at least reconciled me to the problem and I felt happy among them." At "Brother Stortze's" not far from the West's fort, the new preacher saw "men coming to meet- ing with rifles on their shoulders, guarding their fami- lies, then setting their guns in a corner of the house until after the meeting, and returning in the same order." At West's fort, "before I had got to sleep the dogs raved at a terrific rate. I did not know that I was in any danger; but the Indians having but a little while before this been through the country and done mischief, and this being a frontier house, I did not feel myself secure in my exposed situation." Not all the people of northwestern Virginia received the preachers as kindly as these earlier settlers of Hacker's creek. Bishop Asbury says that after he and a companion had ridden all day "near midnight we stopped at A's, who hissed his dogs on us." As to the character of the people, he says: "On the one hand savage warfare teaches them to be cruel, and on the other the teaching of Antinomians poisons them with errors in doctrine. Good moralists they are not, and good Christians they can not be unless they are better taught." The Baptists were on the field about the same time as the Methodists and their preachers likewise travelled through the wilderness and organized churches. There was a Baptist congregation at Buckhannon in 1786, and other societies were soon organized throughout the Trans-Alleghany. Bishop Asbury 's quarterly confer- ence at Clarksburg was held in "a long close room be- longing to the Baptists." In 1790 a deed is recorded by which the Baptists of Hopewell meeting-house se- cured possession of a lot in Clarksburg for a burial ground. There was no Baptist church established in what is now Lewis County until 1805, but their preach- ers came frequently to the neighborhood. Jacob Cozad, who lived not far from the present site of Berlin, was licensed as a preacher of the Baptist church in 1797. -----------------------------------------------------------