Alleghany County

A CENTENNIAL HISTORY of ALLEGHANY COUNTY VIRGINIA By OREN F. MORTON, B. LIT. Author of "Under the Cottonwoods/' "Winning or Losing?" "Land of the Laurel," "The Story of Daniel Boone," "A Practical History of Music," "A History of the Virginia Conference of the United Brethren Church," and Histories of Pendleton, Preston, Highland, Bath, Monroe, and Rockbridge Counties in Virginia and Wt!s$ Virginia. Dayton, Virginia J. K. RUEBUSH COMPANY 1923 CONTENTS Chapter Page I. The Geography· of Alleghany .........•...•.... · 1 II. In the Day of the Pathfinder . 5 III. Early Land Patents . 9 IV. Life in the Pioneer Days .. .. .. .. 19 V. Twenty Years of Indian Trouble . 30 VI. Before 1822 ........... : . 38 VII. From 1822 to 1861 . 43 VIII. Alleghany in the War of 1861 . 49 IX. Highways and Railways . 57 X. Churches, Schools, and Journalism . 64 XI. The Industries of Alleghany .......... , . 69 XII. ~he County Seat . 73 XIII. Clifton Forge . 81 XIV. Alleghany as Seen in a Tour . 85 XV. Ann Royall and Ann Bailey .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 97 XVI. Alleghany in the World War . 105 XVII.· The Present and the Future . 120 XVIII. · The Families of Alleghany . 125 XIX. .\Legislators and County Officials . 148 XX. Soldiers of 1861 and Earlier Wars . 155 XXI. Soldiers of the W~rld Wa.r . 173 APPENDIX Paragraphs from the West .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 193 Addenda . 222 Suggestive Questions . 228 Index . 230 FOREWORD Tu1s VOLUME is based upon the documentary records of Alle ghany, and its parent counties, Augusta, Botetourt, · Bath, and Monroe; on archives in the capitol and the state library of Vir ginia; on a history in manuscript by Mrs. E. C. Means; on various books relating more or· less to the Alleghany area; on question naires kindly filled out by several citizens; and upon personal interviews with residents of the county. Acknowledgment is gladly given to the Board of Supervisors and the School Board for their si.tbstantial support; to H. M. and J. T. McAllister, R. B. Stephenson, Mrs. A. M. Evans, Mrs. T. M. Gathright, dlld Mr. and Mrs. C. P. Jones, Jr., for source material furnished; and to all other persons who have given assistance to the enterprise, in cluding those families who so hospitably entertained the author during his field tour. This volume has not been carried into minute detail in every phase of local history. The financial resources for such a long and comprehensive task were not at the command of the author. If the book had been compiled on such a plan, its bulk would make necessary a price that many persons would consider pro hibitive. What has been attempted is to put as much local his tory as possible into a book that could be offered at a reasonable price, and thus circulate generally among the families of the county. At the request of several citizens a list of suggestive questions will be found near the end of the volume. These are intended for those teachers who may use the book as a supplementary reader. The section entitled "Paragraphs from the \Vest" is from notes supplied by Boutwell Dunlap of San Francisco, a historian of Virginia parentage who has fu~nished this information with out charge, and has· taken a very keen interest in the present undertaking. This section broadens the value of the book and makes it of service to readers interested in genealogic inquiry. The material now contributed by :Mr. Dunlap has never hitherto been published. OREN F. MORTON. A CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF ALLEGHANY COUNTY I THE GEOGRAPHY OF ALLEGHANY OuT OF nearly three thousand counties in the American Union, the only ones bearing the name of its best known mountain system are in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. The first of these three lies in the midst of the Appalachian ridges. In outline it is irregular. From the northeast corner to the southwestern, Alle ghany county extends forty-three miles. The extreme breadth is eighteen miles. The area is 458 square miles, or 293,120 acres. The bordering counties in Virginia are Bath, Botetourt, Craig, and Rockbridge. Those in West Virginia are Greenbrier and Monroe. From the county seat it is 205 miles by rail to the capital of Virginia, 164 miles to the capital of West Virginia, and 221 miles to the capitaf of the United States. The magisterial districts are Boiling Spring in the south, Cov ington in the northwest, and Clifton in the northeast. The city of Clifton Forge is politically independent of Alleghany county, but is geographically a part of Clifton district. The western limit of the county is the Alleghany Front, the central ridge of the Appalachian system. It is a natural bound ary, since it divides the waters flowing into the Atlantic from those feeding the Mississippi River. In the extreme east is North Mountain, the western limit to the Valley of Virginia. As far north as the vicinity of Covington, the uplift between Dunlap and Potts creeks is called Peter's Mountain. Potts Mountain separates the upper valley of Potts Creek from Craig county. The other ridges within the county or on the eastern border bear a variety of local names. The lowest altitude-almost precisely 1,000 feet-occurs on Jackson's River at Iron Gate. The valley levels vary from 1,000 feet to more than 2,000. Clifton Forge is 1,047 feet above sea ·level, and Covington is 1,225 feet. Lick Mountain, just west of 2 A CENTENNIAL HISTORY QF ALLEGHANY COUNTY Covington, rises to a height of 2,980 feet. The greatest eleva tions are Adcock's Knob in North Mountain, 3,573 feet, Hickory Knob in the Alleghany Front, 3,381 feet hi·gh, and an unnamed prominence, four miles north of Hickory Knob, with an altitude of 3,451 feet. · The entire county is watered by the James, known as Jack son's River above its junction with the Cowpasture. Within Al leghany county this stream has a. course of thirty-four miles. After holding for a long distance the same general direction as the Alleghany Front, Jackson's River makes a · sharp bend, two miles below Covington, and flows northeastw·ardly to the Iron Gate, where it turns to the southeast. At Covington it is joined by Dunlap Creek, and at the point of its great bend by Potts Creek. These two affluents are large enough to be known as rivers. They are parallel streams and flow to the northeast. Two miles below Iron Gate, Jackson's River meets th~ •Cow• pasture, which has a very crooked course of ten miles in the east of Alleghany county. It is almost as long and large as its com panion, but its only important tributaries in this couhty are Padd's and Simpson's creeks. Other tributaries ol Jackson's River are Falling Springs Run, Smith Creek, and Wilson's Creek. Nearly always the streams of Alleghany county are rapid. Except for the influence of industrial operations, they are as generaUy clear. Springs, sometimes of freestone water and some times of limestone, are numerous. But in the limestone belts, much of the rainfall sinks into underground channels, reappearing in powerful springs at the base level of the valleys. A spring at Low Moor is said to have a flow of 500 gallons a minute. The sandstones, limestones, and shales belong to some of the oldest formaticms known to Americatt geology. They are too old to contain coal, petroleum, or natural gas, yet they include iron ores, porcelain, and brick clays, blue and magnesian limestones, cement rock, pyrites, marl, commercial slate, and even a deposit that resembles marble. This county is very mountainous, and not one-fourth of jts surface is even fairly adapted to tiJlage. Foremost in fertility but least is extent is the dark, rich loam of the very limited river and creek bottoms. The benches and more level tracts of upland are thinner and often stony, and where a limestone base is not THE GEOGRAPHY OF ALLEGHANY 3 present they are less fertile. Good soil sometimes occurs on the higher slopes, but in general the proper use of the mountain sur face is as pasture ground or forest reserve. The mountain ranges by which Alleghany is inclosed protect this county from the great atmospheric disturbances that use the immense basin of the Mississippi as a playground. They also shield it from the e.ast winds that are so unpleasant on the Atlantic coast. Therefore the local climate is not one of extremes. It is of mountain quality with respect to a pleasant, tonic air. Yet it cannot be defined as a cold climate, since the river bottoms lie at a lower level than portions of the Shenandoah Valley. The temperatures at Clifton F(.lrge and Covington are abput the same as at Stl\Unton, where the mean is thirty-five degrees for the winter, seventy-five for the summer, and fifty-five for the year. Alleghany is a healthful region, although the industrial operations impart a somewhat unpleasant quality to the morning fogs along Jackson's River. \\7hen this county was a wilderness, there was much more animal life thah there is now. The buffalo and the elk were gone when the Declaration of American Independence was written. The wolf, once a great scourge to the young livestock, held his ground until within the recollection of people now living. The puma, ~r panther, a larger but less troublesome beast of prey, is also locally extinct. The wildcat, the fox, and an occasional black bear still Ji11ger, and now and then an eagle disports him self in the sky. Neither have the deer utterly vanished.

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