08 Wednesday May 2019
Posted in Blair, Boone County, Clothier, Coal, Timber
23 Saturday Feb 2019
Tags
Andrew Lewis, Appalachia, Aracoma, Battle of the Island, Big Creek, Boling Baker, Coal River, Dingess Run, Elizabeth Madison, George Booth, Gilbert Creek, Guyandotte River, Hatfield Island, history, Island Creek, John Breckinridge, Kentucky, Logan, Logan Banner, Logan County, Mingo County, Montgomery County, Native American History, Native Americans, Spruce Fork, Thomas Madison, Virginia, Washington County, West Virginia
From the Logan Banner of Logan, WV, comes this bit of information about Logan’s early history printed on April 26, 1937:
Land On Which City Of Logan Now Stands First Owned by Breckinridge
The tract of land on which the city of Logan now stands and the Island–now “Hatfield’s Island”–once belonged to John Breckinridge, scion of an old Kentucky family and leader of the attacking party which broke the control of the Shawnee Indians in the Guyandotte valleys in the “Battle of the Islands.”
Princess Aracoma was killed in this battle and Boling Baker, her renegade white husband, was banished forever from the lush river valley where he had spent his days since his desertion from the English forces in Virginia.
Captain Breckenridge led the attack which made the valley safe for white settlers, and, in appreciation of his services, the new government allowed him 300 acres at the mouth of Island creek.
The land grant was made early in the 1780s along with a few others on Island Creek, Dingess Run, Gilbert Creek, Big Creek and the Spruce Fork of Cole River.
Surveying parties from Montgomery and Washington county, Virginia, braved the wilderness and apportioned the land in Guyan Valley and vicinity to early Indian fighters who had contributed their services to opening the valley for white settlement.
Included in the surveys made by deputy surveyors from Montgomery county were grants apportioning much of Island Creek, Spruce Fork, and Dingess Run to persons whose names are still remembered in the county has holders of much of this county’s land.
In these early surveys Andrew Lewis was given 3000 acres on Island Creek along with 2000 acres on Big Creek, and 3000 acres on Gilbert Creek.
Thomas Madison was given 2000 acres on Spruce Fork, 1000 acres on Dingess Run, and 2000 acres on Gilbert Creek.
Others who figured in this early allocation of land were Elizabeth Madison, who was given much of Spruce Fork; George Booth, who was awarded several thousand acres along Guyan River and on Island Creek; and George Booth [same name listed twice in this story], who received much of the land along Island Creek.
Later in the waning years of the 19th century other grants were made by the new government with the stipulation that settlement be made immediately, but these early grants were rewards for work well done in opening the valley of the Guyandotte for settlement.
04 Tuesday Sep 2018
Posted in Logan
Tags
Appalachia, county clerk, genealogy, history, Laurel Fork, Little Coal River, Logan, Logan County, Roanoke Republican, Spruce Fork, Stratton Street, Thomas Mullins, Virginia, West Virginia, William Straton
From the Alexandria (VA) Gazette comes this bit of history for William Straton of Logan County, (West) Virginia, dated December 4, 1860:
FATAL SHOOTING ACCIDENT.
The Roanoke Republican states that on the morning of the 15th ult., Wm. Stratton, esq., Clerk of Logan county, Va., and a young man, Thos. Mullins, of the same county, left the hunting camp on Laurel Fork of Spruce Fork of Little Coal river, in pursuit of deer. They became separated, for some time, and Mr. Stratton thinking he spied a deer, through a small aperture in a laurel thicket, about fifty yards distant, fired at it, and to his horror, found that he had shot his companion, Mr. Mullins, through the body–the ball entering his left side just below the ribs. No one was near, to whom the alarm could be given for aid, as they were about a mile and a half from the camp, and their camp companions may have been in an opposite direction from them. They, however, came to their assistance before night and making a litter on which they placed a bed, bore Mr. Mullins to the camp, which he died about 10 o’clock that night.
NOTE: Stratton Street in Logan is named for Mr. Straton.
28 Saturday Jul 2018
Posted in Boone County, Civil War, Native American History
Tags
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.
Logan (WV) Banner, 22 March 1927.
15 Sunday Jul 2018
Posted in Boone County, Huntington, Logan
Tags
Appalachia, Boone County, Camp Creek, Charles L. Estep, civil war, Coal River, Coal Valley News, Cumberland Gap, Danville, education, Hadalton, history, Huntington, Isaac Barker, Jackie Dolin, John E. Kenna, John Halstead, John Morris, Kanawha River, Kentucky, Kinder Hill, Little Coal River, Logan, Logan Banner, Madison, Marshall A. Estep, Maysville, Mud River, North Carolina, Ohio River, Olive Branch Baptist Church, Spruce Fork, Spruce Ridge, Texas, Thomas Price, Turtle Creek, W.H. Turley, W.W. Hall, West Virginia, White Oak Creek, Wilderness Road
A story titled “Old Times in Boone County Told About By Historian” and printed in the Logan Banner in Logan, WV, on April 20, 1928 provides some history for Boone County:
Old-timers and students of local history should be interested in the following excerpt from the history of Boone county by Prof. W.W. Hall. The family names mentioned are familiar ones.
What is here reproduced was taken from the Coal Valley News:
About the year of 1798 Isaac Barker reared a pole cabin on the brow of the hill on the lower side of White Oak Creek, near old lock seven. This was the first white man’s home established in Boone county. The second settler in the county was Johnson Kinder, a brother-in-law of Barker. He settled on Kinder Hill a few months after Barker came. The first settler on Little Coal River was John Halstead, who settled at the mouth of Camp creek about 1800. A few months later Jackie Dolin was married to Isaac Barker’s daughter and led his blushing bride, attired in her homespun, through the trackless forest up Brush creek and over the hill to a scantily furnished home on Camp creek. Not long after this Thomas Price, a daring hunter from North Carolina, wandered over the Wilderness Road through Cumberland Gap to Maysville, Kentucky, where he embarked in a canoe, ascended the Ohio, the Kanawha, the Coal and the Little Coal rivers to the present site of the town of Danville, and became the first settler there.
For some years after the coming of the white men there were no churches, but when an Old Baptist or Methodist preacher would arrive in the settlement, word was passed around to the neighbors and that night earnest prayers, exhortations and hallelujahs would ascend from those rude homes. The first church erected in the county was the Olive Branch Baptist church at the mouth of Turtle creek. The first term of the circuit court held in the county after its organization in 1847 was held in this church. The grand jury made its investigations while seated on the framing in Ballard’s old water mill near by, and the petit jury retired to the paw paw bushes below to consider their verdicts.
The daring hunters, adventurous pioneers and brave soldiers who came from the best families in the east to establish home in the wilderness, were not contented to let their children grow up without the rudiments of an education, so they established Old Field schools in the slave cabins, tanneries, country churches and abandoned dwellings, when an itinerant teacher who could read, write and cipher a little came along. The first free school in the county was taught by John Morris, just after the Civil War, in an old house abandoned by Dr. Church. The old house stood across the hollow from W.H. Turley’s present residence in Madison. Within the next year or two a log school house was erected near the upper end of Danville and another on the point across the river from Hadalton. The children of Madison had to go to Danville or Hadalton to school until 1885, when the people of Madison, by mandamus, compelled the board of education to give them a school. The first school house erected in Madison is now used by Dr. Smoot for a barn. While the course of study in these early schools was meager and the work crude, yet they did succeed in inspiring a few boys to strive for higher education. Former United States Senator John E. Kenna was born in Boone county and attended his first schools in a log house on Big Coal river. Dr. Marshall A. Estep, an eminent physician of Texas, and his brother, Judge Charles L. Estep, of Huntington and Logan, were reared in the “Promised Land,” the name of their father’s mountain home on the summit of Spruce Ridge, and attended their first schools in a log house on the Spruce Fork. One of these early log school houses still stands on the head of Mud river, remote from the highways frequented by trade and travelers. Two of the most recent prosecuting attorneys of the county, two clerks of the circuit court, two of the clerks of the county court, four county superintendents of schools, chief U.S. Marshal for the southern district of West Virginia, and two prosperous dental surgeons attended school when boys in that little log school house on the head of Mud. The attendance in it was never large.
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