Trees Above with Coal Below By John Nuttall NEYENESCH PRINTERS SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 1961 Illustrations New River below Hawksnest Top of Fayette Rock Seam McVey Patent Below Nuttal Station Taylor Family on Short Creek Cokeovens and First Tipple Looking East from the Cliffs New River Dam at Hawksnest Bridge Preface In 1870 my grandfather, John Nuttall, purchased his first parcel of land on the C&O (Chesapeake and Ohio Railway), that followed the north bank of New River which cuts Fayette County West Virginia, in two. Annually buying more lands during the next 26 years, he acquired a large boundary none of which has yet been sold. The time will come when dozens of questions my granddaughters would like to ask about their lands and the activities of their ancestors; with no living person able to give the answers, I have undertaken the task of telling them everything that comes to my mind on back to John Nuttall. This history is intended and believed to be a truthful, factual account, but due allowance must be made for the fact that the writer is not an authority on any of the subjects discussed unless it possibly be about corner trees. I am simply telling what I saw, heard, did, and believed as a layman, but it will soon be discovered that it is principally an old man enjoying himself reminiscing. Inasmuch as I was named for my grandfather, it occurred to me that I could escape the odium of spelling out my own name a hundred times also eliminate a few hundred personal pronouns if I used only his initials when referring to my grandfather, then I went a step further by euphonizing his J.N. initials into the name of Jayne. [Note: June 2013] – The author died in 1967 – this book has served as a primary source document ever since. TREES ABOVE WITH COAL BELOW 1 Chapter One New River arising in North Carolina flows 200 miles northeast until it is 50 miles due west of Roanoke, Virginia. Here it makes a left turn to its gap through the Allegheny mountain, then flows 200 miles northwest all the way through West Virginia to the Ohio River. Thirty-five miles inside of West Virginia it receives the waters of the Greenbrier River coming from the northeast along the western side of the Allegheny and 65 miles farther northwest, New River is again augmented by the Gauley River which also comes from the northeast. Between these two confluences, New River had to abrade its channel through innumerable seams of rock that were slow to weather away and still remain to protect the stratums under each one of them, thereby giving the river such steep sides as to place the canyon in the category of a gorge that is a thousand feet deep. From the Greenbrier to the Gauley, New River flows to almost every point of the compass in its tortuous journey. To avoid confusion to the reader we will assume that it flows due west. Meadow River with its source about 20 miles north of New River and 20 miles west of the Greenbrier, flows west parallel to New River to empty into the Gauley 30 miles above its mouth. New River, Meadow River and the Gauley with steep banks, boulders in their beds and along the banks, never had any trail of any kind nor could any canoe negotiate those rivers. There is still no passage along them in Fayette county excepting the roadbed blasted out by the railroads. The crest of the Allegheny became the boundary line between Virginia and West Virginia. The first adventurer who followed the James River up to its source then went straight up and over the Allegheny, crossed about 50 miles north of the New River gap and entered Greenbrier county West Virginia. Here he found good soil with fine grasslands along the Greenbrier River that flows only 12 miles below the crest at this place. Greenbrier county reaches 50 miles westward from the crest, the north half of Fayette county carries on for another 50 miles, then Kanawha county extends another 50 miles down the Kanawha River with Charleston located 38 miles below the Gauley junction. West of the Gauley, New River met no more thick rock seams. Therefore it has no boulders in its channel, level ground along its banks, and more gently receding hillsides. Because of this sudden peacefulness after dashing through the New River gorge, the stream is given a new name to become the Kanawha River from the Gauley on to the Ohio, some 85 miles. From the Gauley up to the Greenbrier the strata is rising at a grade of one to two percent towards the southeast from whence New River is flowing down at a grade of one fourth of one percent or 13 feet to the mile a grade of 2 percent being 105 feet to the mile. At the Gauley junction the largest of the rock seams, the Fayette seam 1 1 0 feet thick is at water 2 TREES ABOVE WITH COAL BELOW level. Following southeast up New River for 12 miles the rise of the strata has carried the Fayette seam to the top of the canyon where it becomes an immense rampart rimming the top of the gorge for the next 3 miles upriver. At the spot where the Fayette rock seam first reaches the top on the north side, Fern Creek falls over it to tumble a thousand feet down to New River and two miles upriver Short Creek does likewise. Between these two creeks the rampart is unscalable by man or animal. One more mile upriver is Keeneys Creek, a larger creek that has now cut through the Fayette seam to end the rampart, but the creek falls over many another lesser rock seam on its way down to New River. Short Creek and Keeneys Creek are to be the locale of this narrative. On its course past these three creeks, New River roars as the swift current dashes against the mass of boulders obstructing its passage, although it would not appear that a drop of only 13 feet to the mile would set up such a strong current. The flow of a river is a law of gravity hard to understand; the Mississippi drops only 6 inches to the mile which would seem close to stagnation yet its current moves along at a good pace. The boundary now known as West Virginia was the home of the Mingo, Shawnee, and Delaware Indian tribes who were too ignorant to be able to read or understand the deed which conveyed these lands from the English Crown to the colony of Virginia. The Indians put up a brave defense when the Virginians began inching into the grasslands of Greenbrier county and surprisingly the Crown suddenly sided with the Indians and ordered the Virginians to stay out of West Virginia as it honestly belonged to the Indians. In 1768 the Crown purchased from the Indians all lands lying south (or east) of the Ohio, but payment was made to the Chiefs who lived north of West Virginia. They promptly consumed the liquid assets of the sale price leaving little or nothing for the three West Virginia tribes, who continued to fight for their homelands. After this sale the lands belonged to the Crown personally with Virginia having no claim at all, therefore they still could not issue any land grants. None of these affairs stopped the white men from pushing into Greenbrier county insofar as they could fight off the Indians and drive them back. The Revolutionary War automatically restored West Virginia to Virginia. By that time Greenbrier had so many settlers that Virginia was warranted in giving them a road over the Allegheny to drive or haul their farm products to the Virginian markets. On the north side of the Kanawha River eight miles above Charleston there were some springs of salt water that had long been a mecca for the Indians. When the white settlers along the Ohio heard of these springs they began paddling up the Kanawha to satisfy their craving for salt. Seeing good lands along the upper Kanawha Valley the visitors began to settle there at the same time and speed TREES ABOVE WITH COAL BELOW 3 as in Greenbrier, the first two or three building their cabins right at the springs to spend their whole time boiling off salt to trade. To obtain one pound of salt they had to boil down 50 gallons of the water. Now the customers did not have to bring their big kettle nor be away from home for such a long time, therefore the salt grew into big business. Instead of getting their salt from the seaboard, the Greenbrier settlers found it cheaper and quicker to follow an old buffalo trail through the north half of Fayette to the Kanawha. The Kanawha settlers clamored for the Greenbrier road to be extended through Fayette to give them access to their Capitol and of course both Fayette and Greenbrier joined in on this petition for the road, which they got about 1785. The New River and Meadow River canyons being impassable, the road had to follow the ridge midway between them, skirting along the head of Keeneys Creek, Short Creek, and Fern Creek. Thirty years later this road was so worn down as to be near impassable and it was replaced by the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, completed in 1824. The turnpike in general followed the first road with only one big detour; when it reached the apex above the mouth of the Gauley it followed the outcrop of the Fayette rock seam down to bridge the mouth of the Gauley whereas the old buffalo trail and first road had to swing to the right to follow Rich Creek down to where the Gauley could be forded fifteen miles above its mouth. Virginia did not see fit to grant any land deeds to private citizens in Fayette County along either of these roads until 1780. There have been conflicting statements about their rules no doubt due to the fact that they changed their policies from time to time. It seems that at first they would give only a couple of hundred acres but they soon became more generous in order to get those wild lands on the tax rolls. A settler needing every one of his pennies to establish and equip his new home seldom wanted to pay taxes on any more land than he needed and there were only a few settlers who took as many as 600 acres. A lone man could not farm more than 40 acres but 200 acres seemed to be the most popular acreage. This allowed a replacement of the first fields as they wore out, with 20 acres of woodlands to supply bean poles, fence rails and fuel and the extra 100 acres were for any child who might wish to live next door if they got the land as a gift. The acreages varied from 75 up to 500 all in accord with the means or the size of the family. To get a deed, known as a patent, from Virginia, the applicant had to go on the ground to choose what he wanted and make local enquiry as to whether or not that land had been patented to anybody else as yet, then employ a patent surveyor to run it off, plat his notes on paper and triangulate it to compute the acreage. The surveyor's report was sent to Richmond where a clerk would copy the metes and bounds, known as the "calls," the corner trees, and all other data on to a sheepskin parchment, using excellent ink; the Governor would sign it and impress a state seal with red ribbon into the lower corner. Those patents were substantial instruments that now, 150 years later, look as fresh as though issued ten years ago, if the patent was never unduly exposed. The patent itself was 4 TREES ABOVE WITH COAL BELOW excellent but the surveying was the exact opposite. Locality place names came into existence naturally in accordance with the vagaries of nature and whether it was by chance or by patent dictum from Richmond, the localities were about 2 miles square. The area bounded on the west by Fern Creek, on the east by Keeneys Creek, with Short Creek in the middle, on the north by the turnpike and on the south by the cliff rampart at the top of the New River gorge was called Chestnutburg because of the unusually large number of those trees. To the west of Chestnutburg was Pine Spring, named for a large spring that flowed from the base of a big hemlock. To the northwest of Pine Spring the underbrush was a mass of dogwoods to give that large boundary the locality names of Dogwood Gap, Dogwood Ridge, Dogwood Flats and Dogwood Creek. Illustrators and writers made it a common practice to enliven their product by picturing the turnpike stagecoaches as always going at a brisk trot or at a gallop, even though they knew this to be contrary to the facts. On all hills, the road workers cut a small ditch across the road, tossing up the dirt to form a little embankment on the lower side of the ditch; these ditches were known as thankyou-marms because the pitching of the vehicle crossing them caused a rider's body to make a slight bow as would be made when thanking a person for a gift. The thank-you-marms were made to carry off the rain waters to keep them from running down the ruts to ruin the road, and they were spaced at 30 on up to 150 feet apart in accord with the steepness of the grade; a stagecoach could not survive hitting the thank-you-marms at any speed greater than a slow jog. On level ground there were rocks, ruts, chugholes and marshy places, so that the stages could seldom do better than a dogtrot averaging six miles an hour in near level country and four miles an hour in the mountainous sections. The turnpike company having barely enough funds to complete the road, could build no taverns and had to choose settlers homes, as close as possible to being about 12 miles apart for horse- changing relay stations, with other larger homes at 50 or 60 mile intervals for overnight stops. With fresh horses every 12 miles the stage maintained its dogtrotting average steadily all day for ten or eleven hours to cover a lot of ground and to also come close to shaking the livers loose in the passengers. The drivers had no such ordeal, during the years of the daily runs; a driver would leave a tavern at 7 A.M. take his stage 12 miles east in 2 hours, he and his four horses rest for six or seven hours then bring back a westbound stage. On the west slope of the Allegheny there were a great number of sulphur springs for 30 miles on down from the crest, with a resort built around each good spring as the expanding roads reached TREES ABOVE WITH COAL BELOW 5 them. On the first road to Greenbrier there was an especially odoriferous spring, with a whitish mineral deposit, six miles below the crest, that was named the White Sulphur Spring, and a tavern was built beside it. This tavern was so successful that it quickly grew into a resort that was, at its peak, able to accept two hundred guests at a time, and this spurred other men into building resorts at other springs on a road; there was the Red Sulphur Spring, the Green and the Blue, the Old Sweet Springs and the Sweet Chalybeate. To prevent muddiness around the spring, a cupola was built over it and the spring boxed in to direct the overflow into a narrow outlet channel; hanging to a nail in each post of the cupola there was a gourd drinking dipper that would often last several years before developing a leaky crack. If there were any germs in West Virginia during the nineteenth century nobody knew it, therefore such a possibility did in no way worry or discommode any citizen. Every farm spring or well had its gourd dipper for all comers and when the germs grew out into moss after a few years of usage it made the water taste all the better. The water of two of the sulphur springs was rather pleasant to drink, a couple of them passable, the White simply terrible. The denizens of the eastern seaboard lowlands had an unwarranted faith in the healing properties of the sulphur12 springs and with the White so awful they guessed it must have the most of what would cure ailing innards. Many early day springs public or private were boxed in with beegums. The gum trees have a weakness which makes it possible for fungi to gain entrance and eat out all of the inner wood inside the trunk, but the shell keeps the tree growing. Any crack in the shell of a hollow gum would soon be discovered by a bee and become a hive; the settlers would chop down these hollow gums, saw them into four feet lengths and set them up in the orchard, where a colony would voluntarily hive or the settler would transfer a queen bee from a bee tree that had been located and felled in the woods. If a farmer's spring got too low to dip water from it in dry spells or if it was located where every rain muddied it or the farm creatures could foul it he would dig a hole five feet deep, place a 51/2 foot beegum in it, tamp the dirt back tightly all around the beegum and put a flat rock on top of the gum. With the top six inches above ground no dirt could get into the water, it was always cool and clean, always stood filled up to ground level, in dry spells it tapped water five feet underground, and it could be seen to be pure. The wells were completely enclosed around the top to prevent children or animals from falling into them and so dark that you could not see what lesser creatures might have fallen in and be floating in the water; when you lifted the board or rock from a beegum spring and reached in with the gourd dipper you could see and remove any snake, chipmunk or cat that might be in there. 6 TREES ABOVE WITH COAL BELOW In fairness to the White Sulphur Springs it should be stated that if you go to the creek when thirsty it is still a delightful resort, its surrounding woods pretty all year, in bloom, in fall coloring or with snow on the limbs. Six miles westward from the White the turnpike crossed the Greenbrier River on a covered bridge that had window holes for light and ventilation; from that high vantage point a traveler could see to the bottom of the clear river with a good view into the aquatic life. Two catfish wriggling along the bottom in search of food, five bass that do not feed during midday idling in the eddy of a pier, a small water turtle called a skilpot slowly and awkwardly clawing his way across the river to visit relatives over there. A three mile climb out of the canyon brought the turnpike to Lewisburg, the county seat of Greenbrier, built on the steep sides of a deep little ravine; it was a bothersome location yet it produced the finest citizens and no doubt as true in this century as it was in the nineteenth. Fifty miles west of Lewisburg, after having gone fifteen miles inside of Fayette county, the stagecoaches arrived at the Locust Lane tavern that was famous the whole length of the turnpike. Fayette had quantities of honey locust trees whose winged seed pods would sail along to take root in sunny open spaces that had good virgin soil; being hardy and of fast growth, their roots and later shade would choke off opposition tree seedlings. Because their rapid growth assured early arrival of good shade, also because they did not grow high enough to endanger buildings in a wind storm the farmers welcomed and encouraged their locust trees around the house and barn. The first and second owners of the Locust Lane patent had slaves to clear long fields beside the turnpike, the house and barn at the northwest edge of the fields. The prevailing winds carried the seed pods down the pike to lodge in every zig and zag of the snake fencing with the result that a half mile of the pike became solidly lined on both sides with locust trees whose limbs met overhead. In spring when the trees were loaded with their fragrant blooms, it was fairly intoxicating to ride through that half mile bower; there was the hum of a myriad of bees collecting the nectar of the blooms, the singing of the birds gobbling bugs on the blooms or building their nests. The mass of low vegetation in the fence corners provided well-hidden spots for the ground-nesting birds, the bob-whites, and meadowlarks that could be heard calling or singing in the fields, while over in the woods a grouse was giving voice to his sentiments by drumming on a log. The stagecoaches carried only a fraction of the turnpike travelers and to obtain some ready cash from the other travelers, every man who owned large enough a house and barn or could enlarge what he had, took out a tavern license if he had a healthy wife able to do that extra work. There was a tavern every four miles through north Fayette, the Alderson tavern located four miles west of