Volume 14 , Issue 31

Pendleton County, (West) Virginia

A little bit more of the naming and how Pendleton county was formed. Pendleton County was created by an act of the Virginia General Assembly adopted on December 4, 1787, and effective as of May 1, 1788, from parts of Augusta, Harding and Rockingham counties (Virginia). It was named in honor of Edmund Pendleton (1721-1803). Edmund Pendleton was born in Caroline County, Virginia on September 9, 1721.

After studying the law, Edmund was admitted to the bar in 1744. In 1751, he was appointed a justice of the peace for Caroline County and, from 1752 to 1774, served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He served as President of the Virginia Convention of 1774 and represented Virginia in the Continental Congress of 1774-1775. In 1776, he returned to the now renamed Virginia House of Delegates and was elected its first speaker. Later that year, he joined George Wythe and Thomas Jefferson in a three-year effort to rewrite Virginia's legal code. In March 1777, he fell from his horse and severely injured his hip, forcing him to use crutches for the rest of his life. His disability did not prevent him from continuing his public service. After resting over the winter, he returned to his speaker's duties that spring and continued to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates until 1788 when he was appointed to the newly-created Virginia High Court of Chancery. In 1788, he also served as President of the Virginia Convention of 1788 which ratified the U.S. Constitution. He also received an appointment to the federal court system that year, but he declined the offer. In 1789, he was named President of the now renamed Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. He served in the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals until his death in Richmond, Virginia, on October 23, 1803.

In Oren Frederick Morton's book, History of Pendleton County, West Virginia, chapter VII, we learn that the annals of Pendleton fell into three groupings: the Pioneer Period (closing with the organization of the county in 1788); the Middle Period, which continued to the close of War of 1861; and the period, beginning in 1865 and continued into our own time (as Morton had stated in the early 1900's). Did your ancestor's surnames appear at some time in Pendleton county, (West) Virginia?

The second stage was one of peace except for a not quite vanished war cloud at the beginning and a risen war cloud at the close. Within the county these disturbances were not deeply felt. Population rapidly increased and became more diffused over the region. Land values rose and highways were extended. The church and the schoolhouse made their appearance. A local civil organization took form, and the area embraced in the future county began to assume individuality. Natural conditions pointed to a separate administrative organization.

The shock caused by the ravaging of the infant settlements on the South Branch and the South Fork was rendered less heavy by the fall in the very same year of Fort Duquesne. This post was the keystone of the French power west of the Alleghanies. When Fort Duquesne fell the French resistance was utterly broken, and as a natural consequences the backbone of the Indian resistance was broken. There was now a correct feeling that the Indian peril was practically a thing of the past, so far as the country east of the Alleghany divide was concerned.

In the Pendleton settlers there was a renewed immigration that began in 1759 and in the land sales of 1761 and 1763. In those two seasons the Green syndicate alone sold 7773 acres at more than double the price paid by the pioneers of the Dyer settlement. The estate of Peter Moser, killed in March, 1758, was appraised June 29, of the same year, only two months after the twin disasters of Upper Tract and the Fort Seybert. The administrator was Michael Mallow, and the valuation was fixed at $366.24. In 1761 we find mention of the sail bill of the George Moser estate. The executors in this instance were Elizabeth Moser, Daniel Smith and Philip Harper.

The will of Roger Dyer was proved by William Gibson. He left his homestead to his son James (my 5th great grand uncle), his tract of 427 acres near Moorefield to his daughter Hannah (Dyer) Keister (my 5th great grandmother), and a bequest to his grandson Roger Dyer. His wife Hannah was named as executor. An inventory, taken August 14, 1759, showed an estate of $2,099.71, inclusive of $82, 30 in gold coin and $140 in other cash.

Immigration was quite active, directed most heavily into the South Branch and North Fork valleys, owing to the early colonization of the South Fork and the meager supply of good land along that stream. Between 1761 and 1767 we find Ludwig Wagoner and Gabriel Pickens located near Fort Seybert. Postle Hoover was below Brandywine and Sebastian Hoover was above. Jonas Pickle was at the mouth of Brushy Fork and near him was Michael Wilfong. Robert Davis, who married the widow of Peter Hawes was living on a purchase from Matthes Patton.

On the South Branch the names are more numerous. The Haigler, Harpole, and Wise families settled near the north line of the county. John Poage, an active and influential citizen, was at Upper Tract and owned land on the Blackthorn. Paul Shaver was a neighbor to Mallow. A little higher up the river were Ebernan and Vaneman. Still further up were George Hammer and George Coplinger. Near by on Trout Run was Jacob Harper, and at the mouth of the same tributary was the Patterson family. On Friend's Run were Richardson, Power, Hornbarrier, and Cassell. A little above the site of Franklin was Henry Peninger. At the mouth of Thorn Ulrich Conrad had built a mill in 1766, or very soon afterward. Sill higher up the river were Leonard Simmons and Matthew Harper. Gabriel Kile was well up the Blackthorn.

Turning to the North Fork we find the Scotts and Cunninghams joined by Justus Hinkle, Moses Ellsworth, John Davis, and probably the Teter brothers. From the mouth of Seneca downward the partners Daniel Harrison and Joseph Skidmore had picked out a dozen of choice tracts, embracing nearly a thousand acres.

During the ten years closing with 1777, Jacob Dickenson was below Brandywine and George Puffenbarger on Brushy Fork. Henry Fleisher could be found on the South Branch at the county line. Henry Buzzard was on Dry Run. On the Blackthorn were Christopher Eye and George Sumwalt. George and Francis Evick had come to the Evick Gap. George Dice was a neighbor to them, and Jacob Conrad and George Kile were below the Ruddle postoffice. On the North Fork we now find the Bennetts above and Nelsons below the mouth of Dry Run. William Gragg was on the plateau between the Mouth of Seneca and Roaring Creek. Near him was Andrew Johnson and below the Seneca was Daniel Mouse. Mosee Thompson was elsewhere on the river.

The gristmills and blacksmith shops were multiplying and the settlements were assuming a degree of stability. In 1769 Michael Propst conveyed a plot of ground for the erection of a Lutheran church, and what seems the earliest schoolhouse made its appearance on the land of Robert Davis.

It was 1756 when William Dyer and Michael Propst were appointed road overseers in place of William Hevener. Later on we find Mark Swadley and Henry Stone acting in the same capacity. It was in 1767 that the first mention of an authorized road on the North Fork, when Michael Eberman, Philip Harpole and Andrew Johnson were ordered to view a road from Joseph Bennett's to the mouth of the North Fork.

Jonas Friend and Henry Peninger were constables, and Matthew Patton and John Skidmore were captains of militia, the date of Skidmore's commission being August 19, 1767. The years of peace and envelopment were interrupted in 1774, when the Dunmore War broke out with the red man. Augusta raised 400 men for the army under General Andrew Lewis, with which the fought and won the great battle of Point Pleasant. It is said every man in the Augusta company was at least six feet in height. Pendleton men formed a portion of the Augusta contingent, and Captain john Skidmore was wounded at Point Pleasant. This was also considered to a little time to the opening of the Revolutionary period.

The immigrants of the thirteen colonies were overwhelmingly of British descent. They were proud of their ancestry, and so long as their liberties were respected they were not inclined to break the tie that linked them to England. This tie they regarded as little more than nominal. They willingly acknowledged their allegiance to the King of England, but did not freely recognize the authority of any lawmaking body except their own legislatures. They did not see why the statutes under which they lived should be made or passed upon by a legislative body representing only the British people. They were suspicious of every act of Parliament which included them in its provisions, but so long as no particular harm was done to their rights they remained quiet.

When the stubborn George II became king and tried not only to rule as an autocrat but to control Parliament by bribery, then it was that the Americans were thrown into a ferment. His attempt to make them pay taxes in which they had no say drove them into armed resistance. If the claim of the king were conceded, there was no telling what else it might lead to. It had all along been expected of them that they should keep out of manufacturing, trade only with England, and be content with exchanging the products of their fields for the products of her workshops. But the colonies were rapidly growing in population and wealth, and this shackling of industry was becoming intolerable.

The War of the Revolution was fought by the Americans to gain commercial freedom and to maintain their rights as British subjects. These claims did not necessarily lead to independence. Independence was asserted and accomplished because the king was too blind and obstinate to recognize the rights of the Americans to the full exercise of the same privileges the British citizen possessed. Canada, Australia and South Africa remain British because their home government has learned wisdom from the lesson of 1783.

As the quarrel developed, the Americans were generally agreed that the British government was overleaping its powers. They were not so fully agreed as to the expediency of political separation. Wealth was timid and conservative. The well-to-do merchants, professional men, and large landholders were to a great extent unfriendly to independence. It is estimated that a third of the American people were of this opinion. Such men were styled tories and their opponents were called patriots.

It was in New York and Pennsylvania the Tories were as numerous as the patriots. In South Carolina and Georgia they were more numerous. In the other colonies the patriots were clearly in the lead. The American climate became too warm for the Tories, and during the Revolution or at its close 200,000 of them went into exile.

The most unanimous of the Americans were the Scotch-Irish on the frontier. They stood by the cause of American independence almost to a man. It was they that Washington had in mind when he said that as a last resort he would retire to the mountains of West Augusta and find in its men a force that would "lift up our bleeding country and set her free." By West Augusta he referred to the District of West Augusta in its original boundaries as described in a previous chapter.

The English and Germans are of the same general origin, and the German immigrants in America could not feel that they were under a very alien rule. The king of England was also king of Hanover, a country of Germany. He was in fact the grandson of a German-born and German-speaking monarch. Though the Germans have had many wars, they have not in modern times been a truly militant nation. They have fought from necessity and not from glory.

The American Germans could not forget that for a century their fatherland had been most cruelly wasted by a rapid succession of civil, foreign and religious wars. It had lost three-fourths of its population and had been set back for two hundred years. The Germans being clannish, unfamiliar with the English tongue, and living much to themselves, the quarrel did not strike them so forcibly as it did the Americans of British ancestry. While many of the Germans did good service in the American army, many others were Tories.

This is why Pendleton, though an inland region, was divided in its sympathies. All the Scotch-Irish and a great share of the English element stiffly upheld the American cause. A few of the English, some of the Highland Scotch, and many of the Germans took the Tory side.

Pendleton was at this time a part of Augusta. Augusta had been established by the Scotch-Irish and was dominated by them. The temper of its people would appear in the instructions drawn up at Staunton, 22 February 1775, and given to the delegates to the House of Burgesses, which was drawn up in a remote frontier county and showed that the framers knew how to use their mother tongue with clearness and force. It revealed a profound sense of the justice of their claims, and it breathed a resolution to uphold them to the bitter end. It recognized that the Americans and British were not one in nationality. It read as follows:

"The people of Augusta are impressed with just sentiments of loyalty to his majesty, King George, whose title tot he crown of Great Britain rests on no other foundation than the liberty of all his subjects. We have respect for the parent state, which respect is founded on religion, on law, and on the genuine principles of the British constitution. On these principles do we earnestly desire to see harmony and good understanding restored between Great Britain and America. Many of us and our forefathers left our native land and explored this once savage wilderness to enjoy the free exercise of the rights of conscience and of human nature. These rights we are fully resolved with our lives and fortunes inviolably to preserve; nor will we surrender such inestimable blessings, the purchase of toil and anger, to any ministry, to any parliament, or any body of men by whom we are not represented, and in whom we are not represented, and in whose decisions, therefore, we have no voice. We are determined to maintain unimpaired that liberty which is the gift of Heaven to the subjects of Britain's empire, and will most cordially join our countrymen in such measures as may be necessary to secure and perpetuate the ancient, just, and legal rights of this colony and all British subjects."

On 16 May 1776, a memorial from the county committee, presented to the state convention was thus mentioned by the the following:

"A representation from the committee of the county of Augusta was presented to the Convention and read, setting forth the present unhappy condition of the country, and from the ministerial measures of revenge now perusing, representing the necessity of making a confederacy of the United States, the most perfect, independent, and lasting, and of framing an equal, free and liberal government, that may bear the trial of all future ages."

This memorial was said by Hugh J. Grigsby to the first expression of the policy of establishing an independent state government and permanent confederate of states which the parliamentary journals of America contain. It is worthy of a most careful reading by every class in American history.

It was a natural consequence that the men who could draw up such papers as these should forward a shipment of 137 barrels of flour from Augusta in 1774 for the use of the people of Boston. The savage iniquity of the Boston Port Bill, a measure of parliament, had put an end to the commerce of the city and reduced its people to straits.

The Augustans served very numerously in the American army, but owing to the scantiness of the preserved records there is only a very partial knowledge as to the names of the Augusta men who fought on the American side. As to the men of Pendleton there is fragmentary information. Augusta men helped to win the brilliant victories of Stony Point, and the Cowpens. Augusta volunteers under Captain Tate marched to the support of General Greene in 1781 and took part in the battle of Guilford. The Virginia militia fought nobly that Greene said he wished he had known beforehand how ell they were going to acquit themselves. At Guilford the Virginia riflemen did their part in inflicting upon Cornwallis what was in reality a crushing defeat. Cornwallis lost a third of his men and had to get out of North Carolina in hot haste. This result paved the way for his final capture at Yorktown. Several of Tate's company were killed in the battle of Guilford.

The companies raised in Augusta were expected to consist of expert riflemen. Each man was to "furnish himself with a good rifle, if to be had, otherwise with a tomahawk, common firelock, bayonet, pouch for cartouch box, and three charges of powered and ball." On affidavit that the rifleman could not supply himself as above, he was to be supplied at public expense.

Of the six regiments called for by Virginia in 1775, one was to be of Germans from the Valley of Virginia and from the colony in Culpeper.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---