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Brandon Ray Kirk

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Tag Archives: French and Indian War

Aracoma (Part 2)

14 Monday Nov 2022

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in American Revolutionary War, Logan, Native American History, Women's History

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American Revolution, Aracoma, Battle of Point Pleasant, Boling Baker, Chief Cornstalk, Circleville, Doris Miller, Edward Braddock, Fort Randolph, French and Indian War, Horsepen Creek, Horsepen Mountain, Huntington, Jim Comstock, Logan, Matthew Arbuckle, Native American History, Native Americans, Ohio, Pickaway Plain, Point Pleasant, Revolutionary War, Shawnee, Treaty of Camp Charlotte, West Virginia, West Virginian Women

Doris Miller (1903-1993), a longtime educator, historian, writer, and poet operating in the area of Huntington, West Virginia, composed this biography of Aracoma, a well-known Native American figure who lived in present-day Logan, West Virginia. This is Part 2 of her composition.

The father whose death was mentioned by Aracoma was the noted Shawnee sachem, Cornstalk, leader at the Battle of Point Pleasant on October 10, 1774. After the treaty of Camp Charlotte was signed following that battle, Cornstalk appears to have been constant in keeping his promise to be a friend to the border Virginians. The American Revolution was then in progress, and Tory colonists strongly entrenched in Canada were using every influence they could bring to bear on the Indians to persuade them to harry western settlements of the colonies that were banded together in rebellion. In September, 1777, Cornstalk went to Fort Randolph, on the site of Point Pleasant, to warn the commander of the garrison, Colonel Arbuckle, of impending hostitlies from other Shawnees, incited by the British.

As a reward for his warning, Cornstalk was held with two companions as hostages. While Colonel Arbuckle waited for a messenger to reach the governor of Virginia and a reply to be received, two men from the fort crossed the Ohio to hunt venison and were waylaid by hostile Indians. One of the men was killed and scalped. Members of the garrison were so enraged that they killed Cornstalk and his companions in vengeance, defying officers who sought to restrain them from an act in violation of military ethics.

Aracoma’s husband was Boling (or Bowling) Baker, an English soldier who had come to America with General Braddock’s army. Though he had been called a deserter, he may have been captured by Indians lurking along the path of Braddock’s march or in the route which followed the English army’s disastrous engagement with the French and Indians on July 9, 1755.

Apparently Baker had been taken to Cornstalk’s town at Pickaway Plain, near Circleville, O., and had been made a member of the tribe. There he met the sachem’s young daughter and at some later time became her husband. Together they were leaders of the Indian settlement in present Logan County.

In addition to the town located on the island at Logan, the Indians apparently had a camping place on Horsepen Creek where the braves sometimes camped with whatever horses they might possess. The animals could be walled in here by steep mountain sides and with hickory withes wound from tree to tree. Still today Horsepen Creek and Horsepen Mountain bear the names first white settlers gave them for their connections with the earlier inhabitants.

At this time, land-hungry white settlers were pressing continually westward from eastern Virginia. it is said that scouting parties sent out after crops were gathered in the fall of 1779 found Indians encamped with a strong force on Horsepen Fork of Gilbert’s Creek and on Ben Creek and returned home to wait until after spring crops had been planted for another visit. Also, Indian depredations and the occasional massacre of a white settler’s family by stray bands of Indian hunters far from home kept the frontiersmen alert and distrustful of all Indians, however peaceful and friendly.

Tradition says that they Indians on the Guyandotte prospered until 1776, when their settlement was stricken by a great scourge. The pestilence may have been smallpox, measles, dysentery, or even some lighter disorder, for Indians have no immunity built up against diseases which beset the white men. Among the many who died were the children of Aracoma and Boling Baker.

As repeated countless times, the Aracoma legend varies in details. Some begin the story by telling of Boling Baker’s arrival as a captive in the Shawnee village. They say that Aracoma interceded with her father when the young Englishman was about to be made to run the gauntlet, just as Pocahontas protected John Smith. Though doubtless based on surmise, the story could be true, for captives who escaped from the Indian villages in Ohio told of having been forced to run the gauntlet. Some romanticists believe Baker’s love for the Indian maiden began with his gratitude that day, and that also could be true.

Source: West Virginia Women, Richwood, WV: Jim Comstock (1974), p. 7-9.

For more about Doris Miller, go here: https://mds.marshall.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1284&context=sc_finding_aids

Civil War in the Kanawha Valley: Ruffner Memorial Park (2019)

29 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in African American History, American Revolutionary War, Cemeteries, Civil War

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22nd Virginia Infantry, Appalachia, Charleston, Confederate Army, Daniel Ruffner, French and Indian War, gas, George S. Patton, George Washington, Henry D. Ruffner, history, Holly Mansion, John McCausland, Joseph Ruffner, Kanawha County, Kanawha Riflemen, Kanawha River, Kanawha Street, oil, Revolutionary War, Richard Laidley, salt, Thomas Bullitt, United Daughters of the Confederacy, West Virginia

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Terry Lowry is THE authority on the Civil War in the Kanawha Valley. Stop 2 on his tour: Ruffner Memorial Park in Charleston, WV. 29 September 2019. Here is a link to Terry’s latest book, The Battle of Charleston (2016): https://wvcivilwar.com/now-available-the-battle-of-charleston/

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Kanawha Riflemen: “Hometown Boys in Gray.” 29 September 2019

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Kanawha Riflemen Memorial at Ruffner Memorial Park. In 1831, Joseph Ruffner deeded this cemetery to the city. In 1920, the site became a city park. Some graves were relocated but many are still here with their headstones buried beneath the surface. The UDC memorial was placed in 1922. 29 September 2019

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Thomas Bullitt grave. Ruffner Memorial Park. In 1776, George Washington wrote of him: “Bullet (sic) is no favourite of mine, & therefore I shall say nothing more of him, than that his own opinion of himself always kept pace with what others pleas’d to think of him—if any thing, rather run a head of it.” 29 September 2019

History for Boone County, WV (1927)

28 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Boone County, Civil War, Native American History

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Albert Allen, Appalachia, Ballardsville Methodist Church, Boone County, Cabell County, Charleston, civil war, Coal River, crime, Crook District, Daniel Boone, Danville, Edgar Mitchell, Frankfort, French and Indian War, genealogy, history, Jack Dotson, Johnson Copley, Kanawha County, Kanawha River, Kanawha Valley, Kentucky, Lee Sowards, Lewisburg, Logan Banner, Logan County, Madison, Missouri, Nathan Boone, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Peytona District, Point Pleasant, Pond Fork, Ruckers Branch, Scott District, Sherman District, Spruce Fork, St. Albans, Virginia Assembly, Washington District, West Virginia, West Virginia Synodical School, Yadkin Valley

From the Logan Banner of Logan, WV, comes this bit of history about Boone County in a story dated December 9, 1927:

BOONE COUNTY

Boone county was created in 1847 of parts of Kanawha, Cabell and Logan counties. Its area is 06 miles, 65 miles larger than Logan, and in 1920 its population was 18,145. It is divided into five magisterial districts, as follows: Crook, Peytona, Scott, Sherman and Washington.

Boone county commemorates in West Virginia the name of Daniel Boone, the pathfinder to the west. It is an honor worthily bestowed, for who has not heard of Daniel Boone and the story of his efforts as an explorer, hunter, land-pilot and surveyor. His was a romantic life, picturesque and even pathetic. For more than a century he has he has been held as the ideal of the frontiersman, perhaps for the reason that his course in life was not marked by selfishness and self-seeking. He fought with the Indians, but was not tainted with the blood-lust that so often marred the border warrior and made him even more savage than the red man whom he sought to expel; he built and passed on to newer fields, leaving to others the fruits of his industry and his suffering. As a man needing plenty of “elbow room,” his places of residence mark the border between civilization and savagery for a period of fifty years. And there was a time, a period of nearly ten years, when his cabin home was on the banks of the Kanawha, a short distance above the present City of Charleston.

Daniel Boone was born in the Schulykill Valley, Pennsylvania, on November 2, 1734, but in 1750 removed with his parents to the Yadkin Valley, in North Carolina. Here he grew to manhood, married and reared a family, but was active as an Indian trader, frontiersman and defender of the feeble settlement. He was with Braddock’s army at its defeat on the Monongahela in 1755, and a few years later became the founder and defender of Kentucky. He strove with the red man with force and stratagem, and many are the fire-side tales recounted and retold in West Virginia homes of his prowess with the rifle; his ready plans and nimble wit that helped him out of situations that seemed almost impossible. Many, perhaps, are without foundation of fact; others contain enough of truth to leaven the story. Of his service to the western settlers, records preserved in the archives of state and nation show that he was indefatigable. At the Indian uprising in 1774, Boone was sent out to warn the settlers and surveyors, ranging from the settlement on the Holston river throughout all of what is now southern West Virginia to Lewisburg. In 1788, after he had lost his property in Kentucky through defective titles and failure to properly enter land grants, Boone and his family removed to Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, where they remained about one year. Contrary to his habit, his next move was toward the east to a site near the City of Charleston. When Kanawha county was formed in 1789 Boone was a resident and was named the first Lieutenant Colonel of the militia, and the following year, 1790, was elected a member of the lower house of the Virginia assembly. Colonel Boone left the Kanawha valley in 1799, removing to Missouri where he had been granted a thousand arpents of land by the Spanish government and had been appointed a Syndic for the Femme-Osage district–a local office combining the duties of sheriff, jury and military commandant. Colonel Boone died at the home of his youngest son, Colonel Nathan Boone, on the Femme Osage river, Missouri, September 26, 1820. His remains, with those of his wife, were some years later taken to Frankfort, Kentucky, and re-interred with pomp and ceremony. A monument erected by the state marks his last resting place.

Madison, the present county seat, is located at the junction of Pond Fork and Spruce Fork, which form Coal River, is 603 feet above sea level and in 1920 had a population of 604. It was incorporated as a town by the circuit court of that county in 1906. At the organization of the county in 1847, the seat of justice was located on the lands of Albert Allen, at the mouth of Spruce Fork, opposite the present town of Madison. The original court house was burned by Federal troops during the Civil War, and for a time thereafter the seat of justice was located at the Ballardsville Methodist Church. In 1866 the court house was re-located on the lands of Johnson Copley, opposite the old site, and the public buildings erected, which were used until 1921 when the present fine court house was erected.

The West Virginia Synodical School maintained and operated by the Presbyterian church, occupies the site of the original court house, opposite the present county seat.

Danville, another incorporated town in that county, had a population of 327 in 1920.

Source: Logan (WV) Banner, 9 December 1927.

Old Trees at Boone Courthouse, Hangings LB 03.22.1927.JPG

Logan (WV) Banner, 22 March 1927.

Welcome to Burke’s Garden, VA (2015)

16 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Native American History, Tazewell County

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Andrew Lewis, Appalachia, Brandon Kirk, Burke's Fort, Burkes Garden, farming, French and Indian War, Garden Mountain, history, James Burke, James Patton, Mary Thompson, Native Americans, North Caorlina, photos, Tazewell County, Thomas Ingles, Virginia

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Burke’s Garden, Tazewell County, VA. October 2015. Photo by Mom.

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Burke’s Garden, Tazewell County, VA. October 2015.

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Burke’s Garden, Tazewell County, VA. October 2015. James Patton, referenced on this historical marker, is my direct ancestor through his daughter, Mary (Patton) Thompson.

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Burke’s Garden, Tazewell County, VA. October 2015.

Burkes Garden, Virginia (2015)

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Native American History

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Appalachia, Burkes Garden, French and Indian War, Garden Mountain, genealogy, history, James Burke, James Patton, Native Americans, U.S. South, Virginia

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I recently visited Burkes Garden, Virginia, which was explored by my ancestor, James Patton. 10 October 2015

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If you had lived in the Harts Creek community during the 1880s, to which faction of feudists might you have given your loyalty?

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