Читать книгу West Virginia - Otis K. Rice - Страница 8

An Unknown West. For about one hundred and twenty-five years after English colonists landed at Jamestown, settlements in Virginia did not extend beyond the Tidewater and Piedmont regions. Virginians kept busy with the burdensome tasks of taming a wilderness and with transplanting and adapting essential political and social institutions. Culturally, they remained tied to England, and English demand for their tobacco and furs formed the economic underpinnings of their colony.

In spite of more immediate concerns, seventeenth-century Virginians had a deep curiosity about the unknown West. Some envisioned the discovery of gold, silver, and other treasures such as the Spaniards had found in Mexico and Peru. Others, with an optimism born of erroneous concepts of North American geography, entertained hopes of following one of the interior waterways a few hundred miles to the South Sea, as they called the Pacific Ocean, and opening a shorter route to China and the Indies. For some, the sheer joy of adventure was enough to lure them into the depths of the great forests.

Indian wars in 1622 and 1644, brought on by the relentless pressure of settlements upon tribal lands, dashed dreams of riches, discovery of the elusive passage to the Pacific, and high adventure. Following appalling massacres of settlers in 1644, Virginia established forts at the falls of the James, Pamunkey, Chickahominy, and Appomattox rivers. Completed in 1646, they guarded the trails by which hostile Indians gained access to exposed settlements. Each fort was erected by a contractor known as an undertaker, who received the fort property, six hundred acres of land adjoining it, and important tax exemptions on the condition that he maintain ten armed men there for three years to defend the frontiers.

Fur Trade and Seventeeth-Century Exploration. The defense posts built by the undertakers became key centers for the expansion of the fur trade in Virginia. In August 1650 Abraham Wood, the builder of Fort Henry at the falls of the Appomattox River, set out for the western country in the company of three gentlemen, their servants, and an Indian guide. Wood's party passed through the land of the Occaneechi Indians, who had acted as middlemen in the fur trade, and beyond the point where the Staunton and Dan rivers unite to form the Roanoke. Although remote tribes evinced some hostility, Wood foresaw possibilities for a profitable trade and placed orders in England for trading goods, including guns, powder, shot, hatchets, and kettles. Edward Bland, a member of the expedition, wrote an account entitled “The Discovery of New Brittaine,” later published as a pamphlet in London. It aroused much interest, but unsettled political conditions in England precluded further advancement of the fur trade in the 1650s.

The growth of the Virginia fur trade in the quarter of a century following the Stuart Restoration was part of a great territorial and commercial expansion that absorbed English energies. In three wars between 1652 and 1674, England dealt the Dutch, her old commercial rival, staggering blows, and in a series of navigation acts, particularly those of 1660, 1663, and 1673, she moved the center of European commerce from Amsterdam to London. In 1664 she acquired New Netherland, which controlled the heart of the American fur country. Other evidence of the importance of furs in the British economy stemmed from the organization of the Hudson's Bay Company, the world's largest fur-trading corporation, in 1660.

Spearheading the fur trade and western exploration in Virginia was Sir William Berkeley, who returned to the colony as governor in 1664, and several planter-traders, including Abraham Wood and William Byrd. Their interest in furs resulted in expeditions that later pointed the way toward West Virginia. When King Charles II denied him permission to lead an expedition into the Indian country, Berkeley engaged a young German, John Lederer, then in Virginia, to undertake three journeys into the backcountry. On the third of his expeditions, in 1670, Lederer followed the Rappahannock River to its headwaters, ascended the wooded slopes of the Blue Ridge, and from a point near Front Royal became the first white person of record to gaze upon the Shenandoah Valley Lederer's accounts suffer from misconceptions and exaggerations, but they quickened interest in the fur trade and exploration.

Of far greater importance to West Virginia history was the expedition dispatched from Fort Henry by Abraham Wood in the summer of 1671. Known for Thomas Batts, its leader, and Robert Fallam, who kept a journal of its progress, it proceeded to the junction of the Staunton and Dan rivers and continued westward until it reached a stream, which, unlike others of the Virginia Piedmont, flowed toward the west rather than into the Atlantic Ocean. The men called the stream Wood's River in honor of Abraham Wood, but it later became the New River. Along their route they saw markings, including the letters M A N I, on trees, evidence that other white men had already been there. Who their predecessors were remains unknown, but they may have been traders, some of whom they met, sent out by William Byrd from his post at the present Richmond. The Batts and Fallam expedition reached Peters Falls on the New River, near the present Virginia-West Virginia border, before turning homeward. Their journey later had international implications, when England used their discovery of the New River to assert her claim to the entire Ohio Valley.

Wood sent out another expedition from Fort Henry on May 17, 1673, for the purpose of opening a direct fur trade with tribes beyond the Blue Ridge and ending the exactions of Occaneechi middlemen. James Needham, its leader, and his companions visited a village of Tomahittan, now believed to have been Yuchi Indians on the Hiwassee River. They established friendly relations and left Gabriel Arthur, an intelligent youth, with the Indians to learn their customs and language. Arthur later accompanied a Tomahittan war party across southern West Virginia to the Kanawha River, probably by way of the Coal, to a village of Moneton Indians, possibly at either Saint Albans or Buffalo. Arthur thus became the first white person of record to visit the Kanawha Valley. Before he returned home he was captured by Saura, or Shawnee, in Ohio, but he managed a dramatic escape.

In about 1675 disruptive conditions began to impede the fur trade and exploration. In that year war broke out with the Susquehannocks on the frontiers, and an even more serious conflict known as Bacon's Rebellion, brought on by the Indian disturbances and autocratic policies of Governor Berkeley, threatened the Virginia government itself. Severe economic problems also undermined the tranquil atmosphere essential to trade and exploration. In 1680 Abraham Wood died, and during the ensuing decade unsettled conditions in England itself, which culminated in the Glorious Revolution, removed any solid support from the mother country.

Meanwhile, French explorers and traders had penetrated the Ohio Valley. French authorities claimed that the famous explorer La Salle was on branches of the Ohio in 1669, two years before Batts and Fallam reached the New River, and that on the basis of discovery, France had a stronger claim than England to the Ohio Valley. Their claim cannot be substantiated, but there seems little doubt that French traders visited the Ohio Valley during the late seventeenth century and that some of them ventured into the present West Virginia.

Traders from other colonies, who engaged in commerce with the Shawnee and Delaware, also visited West Virginia. In 1692 Arnout Viele, a Dutchman sent out by the governor of New York, followed the Ohio to Shawnee towns along the lower course of the river. By the early eighteenth century several Pennsylvania traders, among them Peter Bezalion, Martin Chattier, and James Le Tort, had become “familiar with parts of West Virginia. In 1725 John Van Meter, a New Jersey trader, visited the South Branch of the Potomac with a party of Delaware and was highly impressed with the excellence of its lands.

First Attempts at Settlement. In West Virginia, as elsewhere on the American frontier, the fur trader was usually the precursor of the settler. In 1703 Louis Michel, a resident of Bern, Switzerland, wrote from Germantown, Pennsylvania, that he and “eight experienced Englishmen” proposed to visit western regions described by the Indians as having high mountains, rich minerals, abundant game, and fertile lands. Michel became associated with George Ritter, a Bern druggist, who proposed to plant a Swiss colony in America with some four or five hundred merchants, artisans, manufacturers, traders, and farmers. The plan, however, led to no migrations.¹

Michel remained interested in West Virginia. In 1706, accompanied by James Le Tort, Peter Bezalion, and Martin Chartier, he visited Harpers Ferry and sketched a map of the area. Upon his return to Switzerland, Michel joined Baron Christopher de Graffenried, another resident of Bern, in a plan to establish a Swiss colony in America. Once again, however, plans for a Swiss colony at the forks of the Potomac failed. The lands desired were claimed by the proprietors of Maryland and Pennsylvania, as well as by Virginia, and the Conestoga Indians warned the government of Pennsylvania against allowing settlers to take up land around Harpers Ferry. When the proprietors of North Carolina offered the Swiss promoters far more attractive terms, they abandoned plans for any settlement in West Virginia.

The Shenandoah Valley continued to beckon Virginians. By the time Alexander Spotswood arrived in the colony as governor in 1710, valuable plantations already covered much of the Piedmont, and buffer settlements west of the Blue Ridge were considered essential to their protection from the French and the Indians. In 1716 Spots wood led an expedition of fifty gentlemen, with servants and Indian guides, across the mountains by way of Swift Run Gap and into the Shenandoah Valley. The discovery of excellent farm and grazing lands by these “Knights of the Golden Horseshoe,” as Spotswood later dubbed his companions, clearly foreshadowed an imminent move of the frontier into the Shenandoah Valley.

There are some reasons to believe that settlements may have been made in the Shenandoah Valley section of West Virginia within a year after Spotswood's expedition. In 1717 the Conestoga Indians asked Pennsylvania authorities for information about persons who had taken up lands west of the Blue Ridge. Moreover, records of the Philadelphia Synod of the Presbyterian Church show that on September 19, 1717, residents of “Potomoke, in Virginia” requested a minister. These records further reveal that during the following year the Reverend Daniel McGill visited “Potomoke,” where he “remained for some months and put the people in church order.” The site of “Potomoke” remains a mystery, but there is reason to believe that it was at or near Shepherdstown.²

West Virginians have generally credited Morgan Morgan, a Welshman who settled on Mill Creek near Bunker Hill, Berkeley County, with the first settlement in the state. Assertions that he moved to West Virginia in 1726 are erroneous. Records show that he lived in Delaware in 1729 and did not acquire his West Virginia lands until November 1730. When he migrated to Bunker Hill about 1731, settlers had probably already begun to enter the lower Shenandoah Valley. In fact, Germans may have settled at Shepherdstown, then known as Mecklenburg, as early as 1727. The claim that Morgan Morgan was the first settler in West Virginia, therefore, must be considered tradition rather than established fact.

The Role of the Land Speculator. Concerns with the identity of the first settler or settlers obscure the fact that no substantial number of immigrants could have arrived in West Virginia before about 1730. Unlike migrating families in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions, pioneers west of the Blue Ridge had to cut themselves off from nearly all contacts with former friends and relatives. Only the boldest dared face single-handedly the perils of Indian hostilities, the chilling prospects of isolation in times of sorrow and distress, and the almost insuperable burdens of conquering a wilderness. Most families were willing to move only as part of larger migrations.

With French activity in the Ohio Valley becoming more ominous for her Piedmont settlements, Virginia in 1730 made changes in her land law designed to encourage migrations into the Valley of Virginia. They placed the land speculator between the settler and the wilderness. The law allowed speculators to receive one thousand acres for each family that they seated west of the Blue Ridge, provided they drew the families from outside Virginia and settled them within two years. Most speculators requested grants ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 acres. Some of the grants, including those to John and Isaac Van Meter between the Potomac and the Shenandoah, Alexander Ross and Morgan Bryan northwest of Opequon Creek, and Edward Barradall and John Lewis on the Cacapon River, were wholly or partly in West Virginia.

Most speculators obtained the necessary families from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and from distressed areas of Europe. Large numbers of Germans and Scotch-Irish responded to their offers, but they also attracted English, Welsh, Dutch, and other nationalities. About thirty-five percent of the population of Jefferson and Berkeley counties at the time of the French and Indian War was English, but Germans and Scotch-Irish each accounted for about thirty percent. Martinsburg and Shepherdstown were centers of German population. There were also so many Germans along the South Branch of the Potomac and Patterson Creek that a Moravian missionary, who visited the area in 1748, declared that in order to reach the people a minister should be fluent in both German and English.³

Although some historians have claimed that land speculators impeded the advance of the frontier generally in America, it appears that their influence in the Valley of Virginia and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia was, on the whole, favorable, especially before the French and Indian War. By 1750 a population pressure had built up in the Valley of Virginia, and both speculators and settlers were seeking new lands that might drain off surplus numbers. By then about eight thousand persons lived in the Eastern Panhandle.

The success of the Valley and upper Potomac speculators stemmed in part from the excellence of their lands, for both crops and grazing, and from their charges of only three pounds per hundred acres, compared with the five to ten pounds asked for less desirable lands in Maryland and Pennsylvania. The Virginia speculators also extended easy credit terms and took care of legal detail, often at a distant courthouse. These services were important to immigrants who had little or no cash and were often unfamiliar with either the English language or legal technicalities.

The Fairfax Proprietary. The grants in the lower Shenandoah and upper Potomac valleys, including all of those in West Virginia, lay within a tract claimed by an English nobleman, Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax. The Fairfax claim originated in a patent made in 1669 by King Charles II to seven supporters of the royal family in its long struggle with Parliament. By 1719, through inheritance and purchase, the entire property had come into the hands of Lord Fairfax, who claimed all the territory between the headsprings of the southern fork of the Rappahannock River and the highest branch of the Potomac. Known as the Northern Neck, it embraced some 5,282,000 acres.

In 1733, shortly after settlers began to move into present West Virginia, Lord Fairfax petitioned the Crown to proclaim his rights and to restrain Virginia from making further grants within the area that he claimed. Three years later, commissioners representing both Fairfax and Virginia were selected to run the boundary, but Virginia held that the Fairfax line extended westward only to the mouth of the Shenandoah and included only 2,033,000 acres. Fairfax, however, proposed a compromise by which the Crown, on April 6, 1745, confirmed his rights. It defined his tract as extending to the headsprings of the Rapidan River and to the westernmost spring of the North Branch of the Potomac, where in 1746 the famous Fairfax Stone was erected. Fairfax recognized all grants already made by Virginia in the area. He retained extensive properties, including all ungranted lands in present Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hardy, Hampshire, and Mineral counties and substantial parts of Grant and Tucker counties.

Although the frontier, with its abundance of land, was not conducive to the perpetuation of European forms of land tenure, Fairfax did not hesitate to introduce a feudal system into his princely estate. He laid off his land into large manors, such as the South Branch Manor with 55,000 acres and Patterson Creek Manor with 9,000 acres. The majority of his tenants obtained tracts of from about one hundred to three hundred acres under the old plan of lease and release. They made a down payment, known as composition money, and each year thereafter, on Saint Michaelmas Day, they paid a quitrent varying with the size and value of their holdings. Probably not more than ten percent of those who acquired lands from him held them in fee simple.

The system of tenure introduced by Fairfax apparently did not deter settlers from making contracts with him. By 1747 homesteads extended for sixty miles along the South Branch and along much of Patterson Creek. Families such as the Heaths, Van Meters, Hornbacks, Hites, Harnesses, Armentrouts, Inskeeps, McNeals, Renicks, Shobes, and Cunninghams, which would in time become prominent, either acquired their lands from Fairfax or became his tenants after the resolution of his dispute with Virginia.⁴

Cultural Influences. Pioneers in the lower Shenandoah and upper Potomac valleys escaped much of the crudeness and prolonged reversion to primitive conditions that characterized most of the Appalachian frontier. As elsewhere, religion and education suffered acutely from the erosive effects of the frontier experience. On the other hand, strong family ties and national consciousness, such as that which prevailed among the Germans, helped preserve moral and ethical standards. The requirement that Virginia speculators settle families rather than individuals had a salutary effect and cannot be ignored in any assessment of the significance of the land speculator west of the Blue Ridge.

A quarter of a century in which they remained unmolested by the Indians and favorable geographical conditions also contributed to the preservation of social and economic forms. Like the Bluegrass region of Kentucky and the Nashville Basin of Tennessee, the limestone soils of the Shenandoah and upper Potomac valleys provided unsurpassed grazing lands and promoted a diversified plantation-type agriculture. As early as 1747 Moravian missionaries reported barns along the South Branch large enough to accommodate religious gatherings. In 1762 the Virginia General Assembly incorporated the towns of Mecklenburg and Romney. By the time of the American Revolution, plantations, including Adam Stephen's Bower, Horatio Gates's Traveler's Rest, and Samuel Washington's Harewood, were common in the lower Shenandoah Valley.

Taking advantage of their opportunities, residents of the Shenandoah and upper Potomac valleys transformed a naturally favored land into one of milk and honey. Andrew Burnaby, a British traveler, declared in 1760 that they had “what many princes would give half their dominions for, health, content[ment], and tranquillity of mind.”⁵

¹William J. Hinke, trans. and ed., “Letters Regarding the Second Journey of Michel to America, February 14, 1703, to January 16, 1704, and His Stay in America till 1708,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 24(June 1916): 295-97, 301-302.

²Charles H. Ambler and Festus P. Summers, West Virginia, the Mountain State, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1958), 107, which quotes Minutes of the Philadelphia Synod of the Presbyterian Church.

³WilliamJ. Hinke and Charles Kernper, eds., “Moravian Diaries of Travels Through Viginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 11(January 1904): 226.

⁴For the changing relationships between social classes on the Virginia frontier, see Albert H. Tillson, Jr., Gentry and Common Folk: Political Culture on a Virginia Frontier, 1740-1789 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991).

⁵Andrew Burnaby, Travels Tltrough the Middle Settletnents in North-America, in the Years 1759and 1760, with Observationson the Stateofihe Colonies(London: Printed for T. Payne, 1775), 33.