Tag Archives: Tennessee

Edward Theodore England of Logan, WV (1928)

04 Sunday Dec 2022

Posted by in Logan, World War I, Wyoming County

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From West Virginians, published by the West Virginia Biographical Association in 1928, comes this profile of Congressman Edward Theodore England of Logan, WV:

Edward Theodore England, congressman from the sixth district of West Virginia, made a reputation, which finally took him to Congress through his singularly able and efficient administration as attorney general of the state, 1916-1924. Mr. England was born in Jackson County, W.Va., the son of A.J.S. and Mary Elizabeth (Welch) England. His father was a native of Barbour County, W.Va., and a minister in the Methodist Church. He spent a boyhood and youth of mingled labor and effort to advance and improve himself. His education was largely derived from the opportunities he created. He attended public schools, the Concord Normal at Athens, W.Va., graduating therefrom in 1892 and was also graduated with the degrees of Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Law from the Southern Normal University, Huntingdon, Tenn. He began the practice of law at Oceana, then the county seat of Wyoming in the spring of 1899. From there, seeking a larger field for his activities, he removed to Logan, county seat of Logan County in 1901 and from that county, his abilities as a successful lawyer gained him recognition throughout the state. He served as mayor of Logan in 1903 and again in 1908 and in 1912 was elected to the state senate. He was a leader in that body for eight years and in 1915 was elected president of the senate, an office in which he represented West Virginia and presided over the first meeting of state lieutenant governors, held at Rhea Springs, Tennessee, in 1916. In 1916, Mr. England was elected on the state Republican ticket as attorney-general and in 1920 was re-elected by an increased majority. It was during his administration, that the Virginia-West Virginia debt settlement was negotiated and finally cleared up, Mr. England handing West Virginia’s interests in the affair. He also represented the state in the cases of Ohio and Pennsylvania vs. West Virginia, involving the constitutionality of an act passed by the West Virginia legislature affecting the transportation of gas out of the state. During his term as attorney general occurred the World War and there were many matters growing out of the war period that were assigned to his office. He was a member of the State Council of Defense and as a four-minute man, his services were enlisted as a speaker in war drives and campaigns. In 1923, Mr. England was elected president of the Attorney-Generals’ Association of the United States at a meeting in Minneapolis, Minn. He was a candidate for governor of the state in 1924, being defeated by a small majority, in the primary. He is known all over West Virginia as a loyal member of the Knights of Pythias. During 1920-21 he was Grand Chancellor of the state order and was also Junior Vice Grand Chancellor in 1923. He is a thirty-second degree Mason and Shriner, and is otherwise affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows., Elks, Loyal Order of Moose, and the Kiwanis club, of Charleston. He is also a member of the Methodist church. Mr. England was elected to Congress November 2, 1926, and has looked after the interests of the state faithfully. The sixth congressional district which he represents comprises the counties of Boone, Fayette, Greenbrier, Kanawha, Pocahontas and Raleigh, and in committee appointment he holds place on the Post Office and Postal Committee, being one of a fewto be honored with appointment to a major committee during first term. He was renominated without opposition in the Republican Primary in May, 1928. Mr. England was married to Huldah L. Lenburg, of Moulton, La., December 25, 1901. They have three children, Arline, Francis M. and Majorie England.

Nancy E. Hatfield Memories, Part 4 (1974)

30 Saturday Oct 2021

Posted by in Big Sandy Valley, Hatfield-McCoy Feud, Logan, Matewan, Women's History

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Howard B. Lee, former Attorney General of West Virginia, provided this account of Nancy Hatfield (widow of Cap) in the early 1970s:

“Mrs. Hatfield, we have talked much about an era that is gone. Feuds are ended, railroads and paved highways have come, the huge coal industry has developed, churches and schools are everywhere, and people are educated. Now, I would like to know something about you.”

This is the brief life-story of the remarkable and unforgettable Nancy Elizabeth Hatfield, as she related it to me.

She was Nancy Elizabeth Smith, called “Nan” by her family and friends, born in Wayne County, West Virginia, September 10, 1866. (She died August 24, 1942). In her early years, she lived “close enough to the Ohio River,” she said, “to see the big boats that brought people and goods up from below.” She attended a country school three months out of the year, and acquired the rudiments of a common school education, plus a yearning for wider knowledge.

While she was still a young girl her parents moved by push-boat up the Big Sandy and Tug rivers into what is now Mingo County, then Logan County. They settled in the wilderness on Mate Creek, near the site of the present town of Matewan.

“Why they made that move,” said Nancy Elizabeth, “I have never understood.”

In her new environment, in the summer of 1880, when she was 14 years old, Nancy Elizabeth married Joseph M. Glenn, an enterprising young adventurer from Georgia, who had established a store in the mountains, and floated rafts of black walnut logs, and other timber, down the Tug and Big Sandy rivers to the lumber mills of Catlettsburg, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio.

Two years after their marriage Glenn was waylaid and murdered by a former business associate, named Bill Smith–no relation to Nancy Elizabeth. Smith escaped into the wilderness and was never apprehended. The 16-year-old widow was left with a three-weeks old infant son, who grew into manhood and for years, that son, the late Joseph M. Glenn, was a leading lawyer in the city of Logan.

On October 11, 1883, a year after her husband’s death, at the age of 17, Nancy Elizabeth married the 19-year-old Cap Hatfield, second son of Devil Anse.

“He was the best looking young man in the settlement,” she proudly told me.

But at that time Cap had little to recommend him, except his good looks. He was born Feb. 6, 1864, during the Civil War, and grew up in a wild and lawless wilderness, where people were torn and divided by political and sectional hatreds and family feuds–a rugged, mountain land, without roads, schools, or churches.

When he married, Cap could neither read nor write, but he possessed the qualities necessary for survival in that turbulent time and place–he was “quick on the draw, and a dead shot.”

“When we were married, Cap was not a very good risk as a husband,” said Nancy Elizabeth. “The feud had been going on for a year, and he was already its most deadly killer. Kentucky had set a price on his head. But we were young, he was handsome, and I was deeply in love with him. Besides, he was the best shot on the border, and I was confident that he could take care of himself–and he did.”

Nancy Elizabeth taught her handsome husband to read and write, and imparted to him the meager learning she had acquired in the country school in Wayne County. But, more important, the she instilled into him her own hunger for knowledge.

Cap had a brilliant mind, and he set about to improve it. He and Nancy Elizabeth bought and read many books on history and biography, and they also subscribed for and read a number of the leading magazines of their day. In time they built up a small library or good books, which they read and studied along with their children.

At the urging of Nancy Elizabeth, Cap decided to study law, and enrolled at the University Law School at Huntington, Tennessee. But six months later, a renewal of the feud brought him back to the mountains. He never returned to law school, but continued his legal studies at home, and was admitted to the bar in Wyoming and Mingo counties. However, he never practiced the profession.

Nancy Elizabeth and Cap raised seven of their nine children, and Nancy’ss eyes grew moist as she talked of the sacrifices she and Cap had made that their children might obtain the education fate had denied to their parents. But her face glowed with a mother’s pride as she said:

“All our children are reasonably well educated. Three are college graduates, and the others attended college from one to three years. But, above everything else, they are all good and useful citizens.”

As I left the home of the remarkable and unforgettable Nancy Hatfield, I knew that I had been in the presence of a queenly woman–a real “Mountain Queen.”

Source: West Virginia Women (Richwood, WV: Jim Comstock, 1974), p. 153-154.

Early Schools of Logan County, WV (1916)

04 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Civil War, Logan

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From the Logan Democrat of Logan, WV, in a story titled “Schools and School Houses of Logan” and dated September 14, 1916, comes this bit of history about early education in Logan County, courtesy of G.T. Swain:

The hardest proposition encountered by the author in the preparation of this book was securing the following information relative to the early schools of Logan. We interviewed numbers of the older inhabitants, but owing to their faulty memories we were unable to obtain anything accurate. Nor were the county school officials able to give us any information regarding the schools of the early period. In making mention of this fact to Professor W.W. Hall of Stollings, who is District Superintendent of the free schools in Logan district, he graciously offered to secure as much information as he could from an old lady by the name of Sarah Dingess, who lives near his home. Thus, when we thought that we had exhausted every effort along this line, we were surprised and doubly appreciative of the efforts of Professor Hall, who secured for us the data from which the following article was compiled:

When the first settlers of Logan left the civilization of the East and came to the fertile Guyan Valley to carve homes for themselves and their children out of the forest, they brought with them a desire for schools for their offspring. One of the first pioneers of this valley, Peter Dingess, very early in the last century, erected a pole cabin upon the ruins of the Indian village on the Big Island, for a school house. That was the first school house erected within the limits of Logan county. In that house the children of The Islands (the first name of Logan) were taught “readin’, writin’ and spankin’.” After they ceased to use that house for school purposes, the people annoyed Mr. Dingess so much, wanting to live in the building, that he had his son, John, go out at night and burn it down. Thus the first school house for the children of Logan disappeared.

After the cabin on the Big Island ceased to be used for a school house, Lewis B. Lawson erected a round log house near the mouth of Dingess Run, where W.V. Vance now resides, for a school building. In that house George Bryant taught the children of Lawnsville (the name of Logan at that time) for a number of terms. A Mrs. Graves from Tennessee, wife of a Methodist circuit rider, also taught several terms there. Her work was of high order as a few of the older citizens yet attest.

A short time after Mr. Lawson built his school house at Dingess Run his brother, James, erected a school house on his land at the forks of Island Creek in the Old Fork Field, where J.W. Fisher now resides. The Rev. Totten, a famous and popular Southern Methodist circuit rider, taught the urchins of Aracoma (the name of Logan at that time) for several terms in the early ’50s of the last century.

After the passage of the Free School Act by the General Assembly of Virginia in 1846, the people of Aracoma and Dingess Run erected a boxed building for a school house by the Big Rock in the narrows above Bill Ellis’ hollow. The county paid the tuition of poor children in that school. Rev. Totten taught for several years in that house. He was teaching there when the Civil War began, when he discontinued his school, joined the Logan Wild Cats, marched away to Dixie, and never returned. Each of the last three named houses was washed away in the great flood in the year 1861.

When the Civil War was over and the soldiers had returned to their homes, they immediately set about to erect a school house. They built a hewn log house on the lower side of Bill Ellis’ hollow. That was the first free school building erected within the present limits of the city of Logan. In that house one-armed Jim Sidebottom wielded the rod and taught the three R’s. He was strict and a good teacher in his day. That house served as an institution of learning till in 1883 the Board of Education bought about an acre on the hill where the brick school houses now stand from Hickman White. A few years later additional land was bought of John B. Floyd in order to get a haul road from Coal street opposite the residence of Joe Perry’s to the school building. The old frame building was erected on the hill in 1883, and it furnished ample room for the children for more than two decades.

After the completion of the Guyan railroad to Logan the phenomenal growth of the city began. The growth of its educational facilities has kept pace with its material progress. In 1907 a brick building of four more rooms was added. Then they thought they would never need any more room. In 1911 they built a two story frame school house. In 1914 the magnificent new High school building was erected. Today, nineteen teachers are employed in the city, and within the next few years several more teachers must be employed, while the buildings are already taxed to their capacity.

In the year 1911 the Board of Education employed W.W. Hall as district supervisor. He asked for the establishment of a high school, and the citizens strongly endorsed his recommendation. The high school was established and Mr. Hall went at his own expense to the state university at Morgantown to find a principal for the high school. He secured F.O. Woerner, and the school was organized in 1911, on August 28. The next year Miss Maude Smartwood of Cleveland, Ohio, was added to the high school teaching force. In 1913 J.A. McCauley died from typhoid fever before the school closed, and George EM. Ford was employed to finish the term. In 1914 the school offered for the first time a standard four-year high school course and was classified by the state authorities as a first class high school. Today it is regarded as one of the best high schools in the state. It has more than one hundred pupils enrolled and employs seven regular high school teachers. It has a better equipped domestic science department than any other high school in West Virginia. When the high school was organized in 1911, there were only seven pupils in eighth grade in the city school. These seven were taken and pitched bodily into the high school. Of that first class, Fred Kellerman, Leland Hall, Roscoe Hinchman, Leon Smith, Kate and Beatrice Taylor continued in school until they were graduated June 2, 1915.

The first common school diploma examination ever held in Logan county was conducted by Supt. Hall as the close of his first year’s work at the head of the Logan District schools. He also conducted the first common school graduation exercises ever held in the county, in the old Southern Methodist church, on May 28, 1912.

Logan is indeed proud of her schools, and the efforts made by the faculty and school officials toward the training and educational development of young America meets with the hearty approval and commendation of all citizens.

Those in charge of the county schools are: Lon E. Browning, county superintendent; W.W. Hall, Logan district supervisor; the Logan district board of education is composed of J.L. Curry, president; and J.L. Chambers and L.G. Burns, commissioners. Chas. Avis is secretary of the board.

The faculty consists of F.O. Woerner, Principal of the Logan High School and instructor in mathematics; Joel Lee Jones, languages; Minnie Cobb, science; Isabella Wilson, cooking and sewing; Maud Ryder, commercial subjects; Jennie Mitchell, history and civics, and Mrs. R.E. Petty, music.

Lucile Bradshaw, English, literature, and mathematics; Florence Hughes, geography, history, and physiology, of the sixth and seventh grades departmental.

The following are the teachers in the grades: G.O. Nelson, Principal; Athelyn Hatfield, Pearl Staats, Brooke McComas, Lillian Halstead, Elma Allen, Lettie Halstead, Pearl Hundley, Kittie Virginia Cleavinger and Bertha Allen.

Huntington Safe Robbed by James Gang Taken to Henlawson, WV (1937)

27 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Coal, Huntington, Logan

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From the Logan Banner of Logan, WV, comes this bit of history about the James Gang’s robbery of a Huntington bank…and the fate of a safe:

Historic Safe In Offices Merrill Mines, Henlawson

Bank Safe Robbed by Jesse James’ Gang at Huntington in 1875 Now in Fire-proof Vault at Henlawson

Used As Storage For Old Files

The Merrill Mines at Henlawson have a safe in their payroll office which has a unique history.

The safe is being used by the company as a storage place for old records and is in a fire-proof vault.

But it was not always thus.

According to Bob Greever, payroll clerk, who became interested in the history of the safe and clipped a news story from a Huntington newspaper to support his story, the depository was once in the old Bank of Huntington on Third avenue and Twelfth street and was robbed by members of Jesse James gang, who made their getaway with $14,500 on Twelfth street to Fourth avenue, thence to Tenth street and out Tenth street to the hills, closely pursued by a hastily formed posse.

Old-timers in Logan still remember the posse which followed the gang to Logan and lost its trail at the forks of Island Creek long enough for the gang to make their escape to Tennessee.

Reports came back to Logan that the posse overtook the band in Tennessee, killed one of the gang, Bud McDaniel, and arrested another by the name of Webb or Keen. The man the police arrested was brought back to West Virginia and was sentenced to the penitentiary for 20 years. Most of the money was recovered.

An excerpt from the news article describing the bank robbery reads:

“On Monday, September 6, 1875, between the hours of 1 and 2 o’clock a group of men later discovered to have been members of the dreaded James gang, descended on the Bank of Huntington and, at the point of a pistol, forced Robert T. Oney, cashier, to open the bank’s safe in order that they might rifle the contents.

“They complimented the cashier on his courage and insisted on restoring to him an amount of money shown to be his by a credit slip on the counter.

“Reaching the outside of the bank the four men sprung into their saddles, brandished their pistols in the air and galloped away, yelling like Comanche.”

“It was definitely learned that Jesse James was not among them, but there was uncertainty as to whether or not Frank James was in the party. Colder Young was present and may have been leader of the detachment.”

C.W. Jones, general manager of the Merrill Mines, said that the old safe, which weighs every bit of two tons, was first owned by Henry Lawson, lumber operator at Henlawson.

Lawson brought the safe from Huntington by pushboat and put it in his lumber offices on the site of the Merrill Mine offices.

When the Merrill Mines opened their workings, the safe was left near its original site and a fireproof vault was built around it.

The safe is showing the ravages of nearly a century of service. The combination is broken, it squeaks on its hinges, and some of the cement which is encased between steel plates on the safe doors is beginning to crack.

However, the safe is in its final resting place, the door of the vault is too small to get the safe through.

Logan (WV) Banner, 13 May 1937

Loganite Author Returns to Laud Jail Conditions (1926)

06 Wednesday Feb 2019

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From the Logan Banner of Logan, WV, comes this bit of history about author George Martin Nathaniel Parker, dated 1926:

WELL KNOWN AUTHOR FINDS LOGAN JAIL BEST MANAGED IN WEST VA.
EATS UNUSUAL DINNER OF PRISONERS

Having inspected more than 100 jails in West Virginia as a humanitarian effort to better conditions for his fellow man, G.M.N. Parker, author, editor, and former Logan school teacher, this week visited the Logan county jail and highly commended the administration of the institution under the jurisdiction of Sheriff Hatfield and the management of Jailer Kummler.

He wrote a description for The Banner giving his impressions of the Logan county institution. The writer was born in Mt. Nebo, N.C., and became a school teacher in his youth. Forty years ago he was persuaded by Judge John B. Wilkinson to come to Logan from Kentucky, where he then was teaching, to take charge of the school here in the old wooden building on Reservoir Hill. He taught here a year.

From the school work, Parker devoted himself to writing books in connection with editorial newspaper work. Of late years, he has made his home at Princeton, W.Va.

Published books of this writer include “From the Rio Grande to The Rhine,” “Lights In The Old Home Window,” and “Footprints From City to Farm.” His latest volume is “The Key to Continent,” now on the press.

“In this connection,” said Parker, “at Kingsport, Tenn., in the back woods one of the largest book publishing plants in the United States. Here my books are published. The plant turns out one and one-half million volumes monthly. The paper, cloth, and other materials used in the books are manufactured in one big plant. It ought to be a matter of pride to the South to realize that the biggest bookmaking plant in the nation is in Tennessee.

“I came back to Logan for a brief visit with old friends being hungry for the hills. I was born in the hills and like to come back to them from time to time.

“In addition to noting the remarkable change in the Logan county jail, I note other remarkable progressive changes in Logan.

“Of the 100 or more jails in West Virginia I have inspected, I find that the Logan county institution is the most progressive and best type and best operated institution of its kind.”

The article dealing with his visit at the Logan county jail follows:

Even at its best, human life ever has been and ever will be a continual battle; education battling against ignorance, society against selfishness, democracy against aristocracy, right against wrong.

Right is synonymous with law, and law is synonymous with legal master. As the rod is to the parent in the home, so is the prison to the legal master in the country. As the rod is to the home, so the prison is to correct disobedient men and women in the county.

Some prisons correct them only with punishment. These are usually political plums passed out as rewards for campaign activities, and those to whom they are passed go on the philosophy that the more the punishment, the more successful in the correction.

Under this philosophy, prison keepers swell their bank deposits by shrinking the prisoners’ food and by furnishing an inferior quality; a quality so poorly prepared that only the half-starved can eat it; so poorly prepared that the most consecrated Christian could not consistently say grace over it.

The prisons are no better. I have visited some whose floors were common cuspidors so thickly covered with tobacco quids that their sickening fumes almost knocked me back as I entered the door. On my way along the corridors, I have heard prisoners beg for bunks that were free from lice, and have seen green flies swarming in the cells.

We measure the strength of the chain by its weakest link. We measure the morale of the county by its prison. This measurement is an enviable tribute to Logan. In the management of the prison the county sees more than money; sees men. Sees more than punishment; sees purity. Seeing we are all human chameleons in that we absorb our surroundings; that suggestions are the steps in the mental and moral stairs; that cleanliness is the rising road. Logan county has adopted cleanliness as a creed and requires all prisoners to live up to it so that the air circulating through the cells is as free from offensive odors as the breezes that fit the leaves on the surrounding forest peaks.

A word about the way the jail food is prepared. Though a stranger and visitor, an unexpected one at that, I went to the prison when the court house clock was striking 12, and asked the keeper to let me eat dinner with the prisoners. He unlocked the iron door and passed me in—at the same time saying that dinner would be sent in directly.

I was not expecting roast lamb, quail on toast, an English pudding—neither did I get them. All I got were the old familiar Bs: bread, bacon, and beans. But they were good, as good as my mother prepared, way back when I plowed corn in Logan’s hills. In fact, while chasing a chunk of bacon around through my pan of beans—trying to make it stop long enough to cut off a mouthful with my spoon—I seemed again to be a plowboy—happy because I had more than I had when plowing barefooted on the backwoods farm.

Amid the rattling of spoons on the tin pans I watched the prisoners, most of them young, some good and some bad—some are good or better than you or I. All qualified and encouraged to go forth like the graduates from a school and bless the country with ideal citizenship.

I said then that Logan’s prison ought to become as famous as Denver’s juvenile court; that what Denver’s juvenile court was doing for boys and girls, Logan’s prison was doing for young men and young women.

Source: Logan (WV) Banner, 24 August 1926

Chapmanville News 02.17.1922

25 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by in Chapmanville

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A correspondent named “Two Chums” from Chapmanville in Logan County, West Virginia, offered the following items, which the Logan Banner printed on February 17, 1922:

The Chapmanville school is progressing nicely.

Mr. Guy Dingess was calling at G.S. Ferrell’s Sunday.

I hear Miss Devona Butcher is going on the stage for an actress next year.

Miss Gladys Bryant returned from Newport News recently.

Mr. Oscar Langdon is looking hungry now days.

Mr. Millard Brown and Miss Pearl McCloud seemed to be enjoying themselves out walking Sunday.

Green Simms arrived Saturday evening from Camp Dix, N.M.

Mr. Jim Bryant had a 75 cent smile on when he came in the theatre Saturday night.

Mr. Everett Fowler is going to take a journey to Mont Coal in a few days.

Mr. George Hensley has taken a flying trip to Cleveland, Tenn. to graduate and become a minister.

Powell Valley Male Academy at Speedwell, TN (2013)

07 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by in African American History, Civil War

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Powell Valley Male (later Speedwell) Academy, built 1827, at Speedwell in Claiborne County, TN. During the Civil War, it served as headquarters for Confederate General Felix Zollicoffer. 30 May 2013.

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George Shutter, a German immigrant who settled locally from Pennsylvania about 1800, believed strongly in education. He supplied the money and slaves necessary to build the academy. 30 May 2013.

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Slaves supervised by Sam Monday made the bricks from nearby Davis Creek and erected the building. 30 May 2013.

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Once the building was completed, students relocated from an earlier log building. 30 May 2013.

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Students boarded with neighborhood residents or upstairs in the building. The professor lived upstairs. 30 May 2013.

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The Powell Valley Male Academy operated until sometime around 1900 when it was reorganized as Speedwell Academy and served both male and female students. 30 May 2013. For more history, follow this link: http://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/speedwell.html

West Virginia Once Part of Iroquois Domain (1927)

21 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in American Revolutionary War, Native American History

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From the Logan Banner of Logan, WV, comes this bit of history about the Iroqouis and West Virginia dated October 7, 1927:

West Virginia Part of Iroquois Domain

Confederation of Five Nations, Pledged to Peace, Endured For Two Centuries — Hiawatha One of Founders — Vast Indian Drama Told By Andrew P. Price, “Sage of Marlinton.”

You keep hearing of the Shawnees who overran this country prior to the Revolutionary War, and you keep hearing of them to the east and then to the west. You know that when 72 men went from this (Greenbrier) valley to fight them at the mouth of Kanawha, that they were living in Chillicothe.

The mystery of the Shawnee being to the east and then to the west is explained as follows:

When the whites first began to record history the Shawnees were far to the south and were split into two tribes. One lived on the Atlantic seaboard, around Savannah, and the other west of the mountains in the Tennessee country. They were forced north by their enemies and they were sometime after that found with towns at Winchester, in the valley of Virginia, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and in other places in Pennsylvania, while those from the Cumberland basin in Tennessee came north into Ohio. The eastern tribe moved first and no doubt the communicating road between the settlements at Winchester and eastern Pennsylvania traversed West Virginia. They would have to cross Seneca Trail, or Warrior’s Road, and the military town of Mingo Flats lay in their line of travel and that is the occasion of the corrupting of that place and making the garrison traitor to the Five Nations.

The whole of the Appalachia Range of mountains was owned, policed and controlled by the Iroquois or Five Nations. This was the highest type of Indian north of the Rio Grande. For centuries they held a commanding position, their country extending from the mouth of the St. Lawrence river, west on both sides to the Great Lakes and turning there took all the mountain country as far south as Georgia, and they had at least 50 towns along the way from north to south. History deals more with the Mohawks around New York, but the westernmost part in which we live was occupied and kept by the Senecas. The list of the Iroquois or Five Nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondago, Cayuga and Seneca. When the Tuscaroras came in in 1726 they were called the Six Nations.

Government Older Than Ours

This conference lasted for more than two centuries and was perhaps the most notable government ever set up by savages. They are the Indians that James Fennimore Cooper wrote about and they are entitled to every bit of praise that he gives them. They had a council that was noted for its dignity, faith, and ability. The kinds of Europe sent ambassadors to that council for many generations which made treaties, and it was well known in the London of that day as the American Congress is now. The Nations early agreed with the whites to allow the Europeans to settle and thrive on the Atlantic seaboard and they, the Five Nations, kept the mountains and western part of their countries.

Probably the first fraud practiced on the Five Nations was the Greenbrier Colony grant of 100,000 acres on waters that flowed into the Ohio, and this was held up for more than 30 years and only matured after the colonies had gained their independence. It is evident that it was first granted on the mistake of fact, that is, that the Greenbrier, like the Jackson River, flowed into the Atlantic.

Hiawatha an Organizer

The formation of the Five Nations was accomplished about the history the year 1750 and was the work of two Indians of great fame, Dekanawida and Hiawatha. The name of Hiawatha is famous by reason of Longfellow’s poem, but it does not contain a single fact of the history of Hiawatha. The two Indians posed as medicine men and magicians and spent their lives to bring about the league to promote peace and to end war. At the time they commenced their work, war was the religion of the tribes. Hiawatha was a Mohawk, and at times the Mohawks were cannibals. The two Indians traveled from council to council, proposing the scheme of the league to promote peace, and it was debated on the council fires, and it encountered the most bitter opposition. The name of the tyrant Ototarha comes down in history as the most formidable opponent to the peace makers.

The first success they had was to make it unlawful to prosecute family feuds and murders generally. For every murder the killer was required to pay the family of the dead man ten strings of wampum, as the value of a human life. Later the law was amended to require the payment of an additional ten strings of wampum, on the construction that the first payment was compensatory, and the second string to take the place of the life of the murderer which was forfeited under the old law to the blood kin of the slain man.

In time the confederation was formed. First by the Mohawk, Cayuga and Oneida. Then the Onondaga came in and last, the Senecas came in with reservations, and plenty of them. The Senecas refused to disband their armies and were thereupon made the police force of the Iroquois nations, and kept to themselves the department of war and foreign affairs. They gave up murder and cannibalism but clung to their military life.

The league got along pretty well until the introduction of fire-water and gunpowder. After that it was hard to keep the peace. The end of the league of the Iroquois came when they joined the British to fight the colonists. They came out of the Revolutionary War, doomed, and most of the survivors moved into Canada, though some are still to be found on the reservations in the State of New York.

Chapmanville News 11.08.1927

29 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Chapmanville, Huntington

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An unknown correspondent from Chapmanville in Logan County, West Virginia, offered the following items, which the Logan Banner printed on November 8, 1927:

Rev. Watkins of Tennessee is conducting a revival at the Holiness church at present.

Rev. Shrives’ wife is on the sick list at this writing.

Mr. Wetzel Raines and wife were calling on friends in Chapmanville Sunday.

Miss Lillian Johnson is sick at this writing. We hope for her a speedy recovery.

Miss Agnes Whitman was calling on friends in Huntington Sunday.

Miss Nora Whitman is visiting her sister Mrs. Sid White of this place.

George T. Swain to Write Logan County History (1927)

04 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in Battle of Blair Mountain, Coal, Hatfield-McCoy Feud, Logan, Native American History

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From the Logan Banner of Logan, WV, comes this item about George T. Swain’s effort to write a history of Logan County dated May 27, 1927:

New Logan County History is Written

G.T. Swain, the Author, Says It May Be Ready For Distribution In 60 Days.

Announcement was made yesterday by G.T. Swain that his manuscript, on which he has been working for the past several years, of a complete history of Logan county, is practically completed and he plans to leave here within the next ten days for Kingsport, Tenn., where he will place it in the hands of a publisher.

It is understood the book will be published with cloth binding, the cover title to be printed in gold letters, and the work will cover approximately 400 pages. It will give traditions and legends of the tribe of Indians that inhabited this valley, details of the invasion and battle here when Aracoma was killed, the early life of the pioneers and who they were, as well as incidents occurring here during the early years.

It will contain a full history of the Hatfield-McCoy feud which occurred partly on Logan soil and a full and complete account of the mine war. Organizations of the coal companies that developed the valley will be given in full and even the names of the first white male and female child born in the valley will be recorded.

In addition to the historical data which have been obtained after laborious work the book will contain biographical sketches and pictures of approximately fifty prominent men who helped in the development of the great Guyan valley coal field. The completed book is expected to be ready for distribution within 60 days.

NOTE: To order a reprint of Swain’s history book, go here: http://www.woodlandpress.com/book/local-history/history-logan-county-west-virginia

NOTE: It’s very important for local newspapers to promote works by historians/writers!

Mountain Folk (1927)

02 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in African American History, Logan

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From the Logan Banner of Logan, WV, dated August 5, 1927, comes this editorial about the “mountain folk” of Appalachia, printed in response to a piece in Collier’s:

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MOUNTAIN FOLK

Observations By R.H. Martin, Editor of Charleston Mail, In Rejoinder to Collier’s Article

Some West Virginia newspapers are both indignant and aroused over an article printed in Collier’s recently under the name of Arthur Davenport and having for its theme the sad and deplorable conditions of the mountain dwellers in Southern Appalachia. The general tenor of the article can be fairly judged by the introductory synopsis:

We Americans are fond of tilting our noses and giving the rest of the world the superior eye.

Anybody going about in that fashion is pretty sure to overlook an unpolished heel or a rip in the clothing where it makes others laugh most.

Here is the story of the unpolished heel. Here are Americans of nearly two hundred years’ breeding who never heard the names Roosevelt, Wilson, Ford, Babe Ruth, Charlie Chaplin; who never saw a —

But never mind. Read and cease marveling for a few moments that the Chinese can be dedraggled, the Hottentot so naked, the mukhik so ignorant and the Hindu so impoverished. Here are all of these calamities within a few hours train ride from our own golden Capitol.

If the conditions are as Mr. Davenport has painted them, then it would appear to be a case where pity and help were needed rather than sneers and laughter. In fact, Mr. Davenport in the introduction, or Collier’s editor who may have written it, gives some indications of “nose-tilting” that might provoke a rather loud guffaw from some unlettered mountaineer whose forbears were possibly among, and certainly of the same type, of those mountaineers who won the battles of the Cowpens and King’s Mountain, which victories some historians consider the turning point in the American revolution. They were probably of the same type as that Col. Washington, who, although he could not make a letter, yet left the mark of his sword on a certain Col. Tarleton.

It may be true–we shall not attempt to deny it–that there are mountaineers who never heard of Babe Ruth. We have not the slightest desire to detract one iota from all laurels due to the famous batsman, but, like most mountaineers, probably we should, if it simmered down to that, prefer Sergeant York as our hero to the idol of the howling grandstand that throws pop-bottles at umpires.

Nor shall we repine if it is true that some of these mountaineers never heard of Charlie Chaplin. We fail to see where knowing him as most Americans know him would be intellectually or otherwise uplifting. Perhaps, such mountaineers, as have missed long-distance acquaintance of either of these gentlemen just mentioned have not lost so much after all. As for other names mentioned there may be in the deepest mountain recesses persons who have not heard of them. If Mr. Davenport knows of his own personal knowledge of such cases, his statement stands.

There are mountain folk in the great ranges of Southern Appalachia who have been cut off from this modern civilization of ours that produces bandits in Gotham and gunmen in Chicago, the nauseous scandals of Hollywood, the commercial orgies of Dempsey and Sharkey, and other highly moral and refining manifestations of the literates, and their ignorance of the outside world may be large. But as to whether a more intimate contact with this outside world which we boastfully call civilized would improve the mountaineer or not, would, it seems to us, depend a good deal upon that part of it with which he came in contact.

Mountaineers in the innermost recesses of the elevations of the elevations are poor as well as deficient in general knowledge. We admit as much. Their wants are few, and they are able to get along with what to satisfy their forefathers who at infinite toil conquered the wilderness and blazed the paths of those whose “culture” takes on “nose-tilting” sneering and laughing. Perhaps Mr. Davenport might get a new insight into real values if he should read what Bobbie Burns wrote about “honest poverty.”

Illiteracy still exceeds 90 percent in the mountains of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina, which states contribute to the four million of which I write. Poverty of a sort unbelievable in the cities is so commonplace as not to be impressive: the amount of money passing through the hands of the old mountaineer in any year is often less than eight dollars.

The term, “mountains of Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina” is ambiguous. Practically all West Virginia is mountainous, or semi-mountainous. Taking the states named as a whole the percentage of illiteracy among native-born whites is as follows: Kentucky, 7.3; North Carolina, 8.2; Virginia, 6.1; West Virginia, 4.8; Tennessee, 7.4. These figures are slightly increased by adding to them foreign illiterates and illiterates among the negro population. The latter two elements present special problems that are being gradually worked out and the percentages from now on will rapidly diminish. To say therefore, that mountain folk are 90 percent illiterate, one would have to restrict the term “mountain folk” to a very small proportion of the population.

But Mr. Davenport seems to apply his percentage to the “four million of which I write.” It possibly may be that if Mr. Davenport has that same passion for facts as animated Charles Darwin, and is as careful in testing his data, he will revise his figures.

The entire story is exaggerated and weird; but it is nothing to worry about. The people of the states named know the causes and the difficulties and are remedying the situation as rapidly as possible. Fastidious refinement may halt at the lofty mountain ranges and at the mouth of the deep and dark defiles, but from these same mountain folk have come some of the strongest type of Americans despite educational handicaps. When we think of Sergeant York and his folk, we do not despair of the mountain folk nor depreciate their sturdy virtues. We neither feel like sneering nor laughing. And we hope modern “culture” and “civilization” has the good breeding not to tilt the nose at supposed inferiors who may in some essentials actually be superiors.

For more about Collier’s, follow this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collier%27s

Battle of Curry Farm (1864)

19 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Civil War, Hamlin

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This entry compiles information relating to the Battle or Skirmish at Curry Farm, which occurred as part of the War Between the States in May of 1864 at Hamlin in present-day Lincoln County, WV. It is a working entry and will be updated based on the discovery of new information.

On May 29, 1864, Confederates commanded by Captain John L. Chapman of Company B, 34th Battalion Virginia Cavalry, attacked a detachment of the 3rd West Virginia Cavalry, Company G, commanded by 1st Lt. John W. Harshbarger at Curry Farm near Hamlin in present-day Lincoln County. H.H. Hardesty’s History of Lincoln County, West Virginia, compiled in c.1883, provides the only known account of the battle: “The Federals had marched from Hurricane Bridge and were proceeding up Mud river when they were fired upon by the Confederates, who were concealed on the opposite side of the river. The Federal commander at once ordered a charge and the Confederates retreated without loss. The Federals had one killed, a man named Mathias Kayler from Raleigh county, and two wounded — one being Isaac Jackson, who was shot through the left arm; and another, a member of Company K” (98-99).

Prior to the battle, on May 10, 1864, Capt. John Chapman had been sent with a detachment of dismounted men from the area of Russell County, Virginia, into Cabell and Logan counties “to gather up absentees and deserters from the 34th Battalion” (Cole, 80). Capt. Chapman had been wounded in action at Brandy Station, Virginia, on August 14, 1863 and at Blountsville, Tennessee, on March 10, 1864 (Cole, 147).

Isaac Jackson, one of the two Union soldiers wounded at Curry Farm, was a private in Company G, 3rd WV Cavalry, formerly commanded by Captain John S. Witcher (who had been promoted to major in April 1864). Hardesty cites Mr. Jackson as “wounded in action at Currys Farm, May 29, 1864” (98). Following the battle, on July 6, 1864, 1st Lt. Harshbarger was promoted to captain of Company G. On December 7, 1864, an Adjutant General’s Report shows Company G, 3rd WV Cavalry, stationed near Winchester, VA. The muster roll shows 108 names, citing Private Isaac Jackson as “Wounded in skirmish, May 5, 1864. In hospital since this date.” (Note how this record provides a different date of his wounding from the date provided by Hardesty, who compiled his history about 1881.) http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wvwayne/roster3G.htm

Curry Farm, according to Hardesty, was located 1/4 mile above Hamlin (Hardesty, 90, 98).

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The West Virginia Division of Culture and History has recently erected this historical marker on Curry Farm. 12 November 2017. Photo by Mom.

Capt. John Chapman left Cabell and Logan counties and rejoined the 34th Battalion Virginia Cavalry in the vicinity of Pound Gap, Virginia, by the end of June 1864 (Cole, 82).

Capt. John W. Harshbarger (1836-1909) is buried here: https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=35761174

Selected Sources:

Scott C. Cole, 34th Battalion Virginia Cavalry (Lynchburg, VA: H.E. Howard, Inc., 1993) 80, 82, 121, 147.

Michael Graham, The Coal River Valley in the Civil War (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014) 150-151.

Some modern writers have misunderstood the Battle of Curry Farm as occurring at the Curry farm located four miles north of Hamlin on Big Buffalo Creek, near Hamlin Chapel (later Curry Chapel). Hamlin Chapel is important for the role it played in the creation of Lincoln County in 1867. “The first meeting of the Board of Supervisors was held on the 11th day of March, 1867, in what was known as Hamlin chapel, an old church which stood on the Curry farm, about one-fourth of a mile above the present county seat. There were present: William C. Mahone, of Carroll District; John Scites, of Sheridan, and William A. Holstein, of Duval. W. C. Mahone was made president, and Benjamin F. Curry, clerk, the latter giving bond in the penalty of $2000, with James A. Holly and Jeremiah Witcher as his securities. It was then ordered that the Board of Supervisors have the White Hall,  a Southern Methodist church one-fourth of a mile below where the county seat now stands arranged for holding the courts until the proper buildings could be erected, George A. Holton and a majority of the trustees consenting thereto” (Hardesty, 90-91). Curry Chapel no longer stands but its former location can be found near the intersection of Route 1 and Route 3/11 above the mouth of Straight Fork of Big Buffalo Creek.

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Curry Chapel Cemetery, 18 July 2017. The battle did not occur here.

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Granville Curry grave, 18 July 2017. Photo by Mom. The battle did not occur here.

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Curry Chapel Cemetery, north of Hamlin. The battle did not occur here. Instead, it occurred just to the left of the [3] in the above map.

Poor Whites (1896)

18 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in African American History, Coal, Native American History

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On July 15, 1896, the Huntington Advertiser of Huntington, West Virginia, printed a story titled “The Poor Whites: Origin of a Distinct Class Living in the South.” Subtitled “The ‘Cracker of the Hills’ is the Direct Descendant of the ‘Sold Passengers’ Who Came to This Country in the Seventeenth Century,” the story initially appeared in the Chattanooga Times of Chattanooga, Tennessee. And here it is:

The notion that the poor white element of the southern Appalachian region is identical with the poor people generally over the country is an error, and an error of enough importance to call for correction. The poor white of the south has some kinfolk in the Adirondack region of New York and the Blue and Alleghany [sic] mountains of Pennsylvania, but he has few relatives any place else about the Mason-Dixon line. The states of New York and Pennsylvania were slave states until the early part of this century.

This poor white mountaineer descends direct from those immigrants who came over in the early days of the colonies; from 1620 to about or some time after the Revolutionary war period, as “sold passengers.” They sold their services for a time sufficient to enable them to work out their passage money. They were sold, articled to masters, in the colonies for their board and fixed wage, and thus they earned the cost of their migration.

The laws under which they were articled were severe, as severe as apprentice laws in those days. The “sold passenger” virtually became the slave of the purchaser of his labor. He could be whipped if he did not do the task set [before] him, and woe to the unlucky wight [sic] if he ran away. He was sure to be caught and cruelly punished.

And though he was usually a descendant of the lowest grade of humanity on the British islands, he still had enough of the Anglo-Saxon spirit about him to make him an unsatisfactory chattel.

From 1620 forward–the year when the Dutch landed the first cargo of African slaves on the continent–the “sold passenger” was fast replaced by negroes, who took more naturally and amiably to the slave life.

The poor white naturally came to cherish a bitter hatred for the blacks that were preferred over him. He already hated his domineering white master. When he was free to go, he put as many miles as his means and his safety from Indian murderers permitted between himself and those he hated and hoped he might never see again. In that early time the mountain region was not even surveyed, let alone owned by individual proprietors.

The English, Scotch, Irish and continental immigrant who had some means sat down on the rich valleys, river bottoms and rolling savannahs, and the poor white was made welcome to the foothills and mountain plateaus.

These descendants of the British villain of the feudal era grew and multiplied, became almost as distinct a people from the lords of the lowlands as the Scotch highlander was, as related to his lowland neighbor, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The stir of the period since the close of our civil war has made somewhat indistinct the line that separates the mountaineer from the plainsman of the south, especially in the foothills and at points where the two have intermingled in traffic, in the schoolhouse and church, and especially where the poor whites have been employed at mining, iron making, etc. But go into the mountains far enough and you will find the types as clear cut as it was 100 years ago, with its inimitable drawling speech and curious dialect, its sallow complexion, lanky frame, lazy habits and immorality–all as distinctly marked as they were when hundreds of these people found Cherokee wives in Georgia and Tennessee in the early part of the century and bleached most of the copper out of the skin of the Choctaw as well as out of the Cherokee.

It is a pity that some competent anthropological historian has not traced the annals of this interesting and distinctive section of our population, and made record of it in the interest of science, no less than in the interest of the proper education and elevation of the mountain people. It has become, especially in the Piedmont section of the south, a most important labor element. The cotton mill labor by thousands comes from the “Cracker of the Hills,” and it is destined o become a great power, that labor population, social and political.

The redemption of the poor white began when slavery went down in blood and destruction, and it has gone on faster and traveled further than some of us think.

Wyatt B. Shannon

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Wyoming County

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From “Virginia and Virginians, 1606-1888,” published by H.H. Hardesty, we find this entry for Wyatt B. Shannon, who resided at Oceana in Wyoming County, West Virginia:

Editor of the Wyoming weekly News, was born in Wyoming county, W.Va., Dec. 16, 1831; his parents were married in that county in 1830; his father, James H. Shannon, was born in what is now Wyoming county, Dec. 31, 1808, and died there June 14, 1890; his wife, Renee Gore, and mother of the subject of this record, was born in Logan county, W.Va., Jun 1810, and died in Wyoming county June 14, 1888. The father is of Irish lineage, the mother of German. Their first born, the subject of this sketch, was married in Wyoming county, W.Va., May 19, 1853, to Sarah A. Gadd, who was born March 9, 1837; their children’s record is as follows: Jasper J., born Feb. 24, 1854, is now married; Vanlinden B.H., born Sept. 3, 1856, died Aug. 27, 1860; Haven R.C., born May 2, 1858, died Sept. 20, 1860; Wyatt A., born May 28, 1860, died June 24, 1864; Lightburn L., born Feb. 21, 1863, now married; Richard A., born Feb 12, 1866, now married; Ulysses G., born May 16, 1868, now married; Laura Ann, born Oct. 14, 1870; Vida B., born March 14, 1873; May, born May 1, 1877; a babe, unnamed, stillborn. The parents of Mrs. Wyatt B. Shannon, James and Rhoda Thornton Gadd, were married in Franklin county, Va., in 1826; the father was born in that county in 1808 and died June 29, 1888; the mother, born in the same county in 1804, now resides in Tennessee; the former was of Irish descent, the latter is of Scotch. Wyatt B. Shannon enlisted in 1863 in the U.S. army and served until honorably discharged and mustered out at the close of the war of the Rebellion. In 1860 he was elected justice of the peace, and at the close of the war was appointed to the same position by Government; after serving some time, he resigned, and in 1876 was elected to the same office and held it until elected sheriff in 1884, which office he held a full term of four years. In 1887 he began the publication of the Wyoming weekly News, which he has since successfully edited. He is an able and efficient officer, a useful and highly esteemed citizen, always read to aid any enterprise that tends to advance the mental, moral and financial interests of the people. His address is Oceana, Wyoming county, W.Va.

Source: Dr. R.A. Brock, Virginia and Virginians, 1606-1888 (Richmond, VA: H.H. Hardesty, Publisher, 1888), p. 839.