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The Whole River Is a Bustle Some About Their Children, Brothers And “…the whole river is a bustle some about their Children, Brothers and Husbands and the rest of us about our salt.” THE ANTEBELLUM INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE KANAWHA VALLEY IN THE VIRGINIA BACKCOUNTRY A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate School of Western Carolina University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History. by Carter Bruns Director: Dr. Alexander Macaulay Associate Professor of History History Department Committee Members: Dr. Mary Ella Engel, History Dr. Jessica Swigger, History November 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... i INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................6 Chapter 1: A Driving Vision for the Great Kanawha ........................................................20 Chapter 2: The Undaunted Pursuit of Salt .........................................................................41 Chapter 3: Relentless Innovation .......................................................................................64 Chapter 4: Bending Agricultural Slavery .......................................................................117 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................143 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................153 ABSTRACT “…the whole river is a bustle some about their Children, Brothers and Husbands and the rest of us about our salt.” THE ANTEBELLUM INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE KANAWHA VALLEY IN THE VIRGINIA BACKCOUNTRY Thomas Nelson Carter Bruns MA Western Carolina University (November 2013) Director: Dr. Alex Macaulay The Kanawha River of West Virginia begins at the confluence of the New and Gauley Rivers. It runs northwest for 97 miles through south central West Virginia until it reaches the Ohio River at the town of Point Pleasant. The Great Kanawha Valley is an area long recognized for its rich resources. Although not always fully appreciated, the history of the valley is one of relentless and innovative exploitation of its bounty. The development of the Kanawha salt industry in particular, with its late eighteenth- early nineteenth century beginnings, presents itself as a valuable lens through which to examine the historical assumption of post-bellum Appalachian industrialization. An examination of the early Kanawha Valley salt industry exposes a valley near the nation’s frontier which relentlessly pursued the industrial development of salt and monopolized the mineral’s supply across swaths of the Great West. In doing so, valley salt-makers created innovations which are still the basis of oil and gas drilling today, severely degraded their environment, created a unique slave-labor community, and began a pattern of relentless industrialization of the Kanawha Valley which continues to this day. This thesis intends to illuminate this early industry in the Kanawha Valley as a way of chipping away at myths of Appalachia and place Appalachian industrialization’s beginnings far earlier than is commonly considered. The introductory chapter focuses on the historiography of the Kanawha Valley, West Virginia and more importantly, Appalachia. It is important to establish why the proposed paper is important in the context of other writings, but more importantly, to help explore how the Kanawha Valley fits with past and present ideas of the Appalachian region. Chapter one explores the Kanawha Valley as a focal point in Virginians’ dreams of a commercial thoroughfare stretching from the Chesapeake Bay to the Mississippi River through Virginia. This includes discussions the formation of salt domes beneath the Kanawha River, the necessity of salt as a food preservative, and the mineral’s role in early American society. The chapter then discusses Native American uses of the salt marshes in the Kanawha, European exploration of the Kanawha Valley, valley settlement, land speculation in the region, and the inception of the salt industry on the banks of the Kanawha River. Chapter two begins with the early development of the commercial salt industry and follows that development until approximately 1815. The purpose of this is to root the Kanawha Valley salt industry in the larger context of the rise of the Ohio Valley’s meat packing industry and the region’s role in the international salted meat trade. Chapter three explores the innovation which was integral to the industry, making the Kanawha Valley the site of a number of developments, techniques and inventions which remain fundamental to the oil and gas well drilling industry to this day. This exploration of innovation marks the progress of the salt industry as well as serve as a contradiction to stereotypes of Appalachia. Chapter four explores the nature of slavery that the Kanawha Valley salt industry relied upon. The Kanawha Valley salt-makers relied heavily on agricultural slaves leased from owners in eastern Virginia. This extremely heavy reliance on hired slaves for industrial work a mere forty miles from the freedom of Ohio suggests unique innovations may have existed in the nature of slavery. The industrial slavery of the Kanawha Valley not only suggests possible unique facets to bondage there, it also provides a new light in which to examine Appalachia, a region where slavery remains less studied than agricultural regions. The thesis conclusion, points out the uniqueness of the Kanawha Valley. This thesis does not intend to suggest the post Civil War industrialization if Appalachia is incorrect, but that it cannot be assumed. This thesis serves to chip away at the assumption that the industrialization of the region was a post-Civil War event. 6 INTRODUCTION The Kanawha River of West Virginia begins at the confluence of the New and Gauley Rivers. It runs northwest for 97 miles through south central West Virginia until it reaches the Ohio River at the town of Point Pleasant. The Great Kanawha Valley is an area long recognized for its rich resources. In 1784, George Washington wrote to then Governor Benjamin Harrison, “if the falls of the Great Kanawha can be made navigable, it will be found of equal importance to both the James and Potomac. Upon the whole, the object is, in my estimation, of vast commercial and political importance.”1 Even in a region renowned for its natural wealth, this narrow river valley is particularly blessed with resources. Although not always fully appreciated or recognized, the history of the valley is one of relentless and innovative exploitation of its bounty. The development of the Kanawha salt industry in particular, with its late eighteenth- early nineteenth century beginnings, presents itself as a valuable lens through which to examine the historical assumption of post-bellum Appalachian industrialization. In his book Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, historian Ronald Lewis writes, “Appalachia is a region without formal history, beyond the physical reality of its mountains, ‘Appalachia’ is a socially constructed conceptual place, born in the fertile minds of the late-nineteenth- century local color writers…”2 Lying in the heart of West Virginia, the Kanawha Valley 1 Emery L. Kemp, The Great Kanawha Navigation (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 6. 2 Ronald L. Lewis, Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation and Social Change in West Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 1. The writing of Mary Noialles Murfree, who used the pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock, serves as an excellent example of local color writers’ descriptions of Appalachia and its residents. Charles 7 sits firmly in Appalachia. Geographically, West Virginia is the only state to lie entirely within the boundaries of Appalachia. West Virginians are often thought to epitomize what it is to be Appalachian. The “Mountain State” is saddled with a reputation for being inhabited by insular people. It is a region untrammeled by modern dentistry. Too simple, lazy, and drunken to capitalize on their region’s bounty following the Civil War, the people of the “hollers” left the natural wealth around them for outsiders to develop while they stared forlornly from dilapidated cabins or feuded. To this day, these myths or stereotypes persist with methamphetamine replacing moonshine and double-wide trailers replacing primitive cabins. Even those who seem to revere these Appalachians often promote the idea of xenophobic lives spent in isolated poverty. The work of photographer Shelby Lee Adams serves as an example of this. Adams clearly exhibits a great deal of affection, even reverence, for his subjects, yet he inevitably portrays them in rustic, isolated settings. Trappings of modernity in his work, such as a satellite dish on the roof of a shack, only serve to emphasize the rusticity of their existence and the intrusion of the outside into a closed society.3 Anthony Harkins discusses the extraordinary tenacity of the mountaineer image in his book Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon.4 Harkins claims “the portrayal of southern mountain people as pre-modern and ignorant ‘hillbillies’ is one of the most lasting and pervasive images in American popular iconography, appearing continually throughout the twentieth century in nearly
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