History & Social Geography
|
General and Regional Map of that Portion of the New River and Kanawha Coal Fields. Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company, c1905. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. Image courtesy of Tending the Commons. |
To use these maps, click on the small one to the left and it will show a larger, interactive version with multiple layers. Click the buttons below the map to show the different layers. Click the active points on the map to discover audio, video, photos and more. |
History of Coal River Part 1
Early History of Coal River
“Oh well, coal is West Virginia.” Oh really, is it? -Judy Bonds
The history of Coal River is a history of humans and the surrounding mountains, creeks and plant and animal life. The people of Coal River, from Native Americans to early settlers to mining communities lived in close connection with the mountains and the resources they provided. Yet, while Native American hunting parties, fur trappers and settlers were drawn to the region for the resources provided by their natural environment, the mountains also contained resources that drove the industrial development of America: salt, timber and coal. The history of Coal River was driven by the tension between those sought to exploit the land and people and the residents who struggled to protect their way of life, the rights of miners and now the very mountains themselves.
While Coal River Valley saw little permanent Native American settlement in its history, it was used as rich hunting and foraging grounds and thus contains many trails that connect the Kanawha River Valley to the low-lands of Virginia. These trails were most often used by groups of hunters, but war parties also used the routes as pathways to raid the early settlements of Colonial Virginia.[1] Several Native American peoples hunted in southern West Virginia until the Seneca, a member of the Iroquois Confederacy, took control of the region.
The Seneca and a conglomeration of different Native American peoples, called the Mingo, hunted in present day West Virginia until the colonial Virginian government purchased the region from the Iroquois Confederacy in 1744. The Mingo, whose settlements straddled the Ohio River, continued to hunt in southern West Virginia until their French allies were defeated in the French and Indian War in 1763, after which they withdrew to their settlements.[2]
One of these trails led from the Kanawha Valley, down Coal River and up the Marsh Fork until it turned south and crossed Cherry Pond Mountain at Indian Gap.[3] Indeed, several areas of the Coal River region are named after the early Native American trails and markers that colonial explorers and trappers used to guide themselves through the valley. Paint Creek is named after the painted trees that marked what most historians believe either marked a trail or a favorite camping site for Native American hunting parties.[4]
As settlers from the Eastern Colonies began to expand into the western frontier in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they bypassed modern day southern West Virginia because of its rugged and inaccessible terrain. British colonial governments who feared French expansion into the wider Ohio River region commissioned the first explorations into West Virginia. In 1742, the colonial government of Virginia commissioned John Peter Salley, a German immigrant to Orange County, to explore the unsettled regions between the Mississippi River and the counties on the edge of the Appalachians.
Salley and his party traveled down the New River until they reached what is now South-Central West Virginia. Departing from the river, they marched south overland until they reached the Coal River. Salley described the region as,
…Mountainous, but farther down the plainer [sic], in these mountains we found plenty of coals, for which we named it Coal River, where this river and the Woods (New) River meets the North Mountains end, and the country appears very plain and is well watered.[5]
This is the first recorded European exploration of the region as well as the first mention of the name Coal River. Because of the distance (some eighty five miles), that Salley and his party marched overland to the Coal River, it is most likely they entered the valley in the Clear or Marsh Fork regions.[6] They constructed boats of buffalo hides and sailed down the river reaching the Kanawha River.[7]
Further concerns over French intentions to settle the disputed frontier pushed the British to commission the Loyal Company to sponsor an expedition to claim the area. Dr. Thomas Walker of Albemarle County was chosen to lead to expedition, which set out in 1750. While on his way to the Ohio River Valley, Walker and his party traveled down the Marsh Fork, reaching the Coal River at the mouth of Hazy Creek at present day Edwight.[8]
Although Walker’s expedition represented the official claim of the Virginia colony to modern southern West Virginia, poor navigation and transportation difficulties left the Coal River region unsettled for many more decades.[9] However, this did not stop land speculators from buying large tracts in an attempt to own the vast quantities of coal and timber described by Salley and Walker.[10] Many of the tracts purchased by speculators in the late 18th Century were enormous, some covering over 100,000 acres.[11] Much of the coal and timber remained out of the reach of speculators because of transportation difficulties.[12] For the next several decades these large tracts were broken up and repurchased as many of the original owners balked at the high taxes and the inability to exploit the resources.[13]
In her work Absentee Landowning & Exploration in West Virginia, 1760-1920, Barbara Rasmussen argues that this early history of landownership greatly affected the political and economic future of southern Appalachia. Rasmussen states, "From the earliest colonial days, Virginia's political system was carefully structured to protect the interests of those who owned vast lands, not the independent mountain farmers who generally claimed fewer than five-hundred acres a piece."[14]
The discovery of salt and the construction of processing furnaces in the Kanawha Valley at the end of the 18th Century drove the construction of wagon roads through southern West Virginia, opening inaccessible areas to settlement. In 1784, the James River Company was created by the Colonial government of Virginia to construct a road from the James River to the Kanawha River Valley.[15] However, Monroe and Gilles counties, on the foothills of the Alleghany Mountains, wanted roads of their own to gain a shortcut to the salt production, thus opening the headwaters of the Coal River.[16]
The first permanent settlers of the valley quickly followed the construction of roads into present-day Raleigh County. Over the next several years homesteads were founded on the Coal River, some of the first being Daniel Shumate on Shumate’s Creek, James Ellison on Hazy Creek and Jacob Stover on the Clear Fork.[17] In 1836, the Coal Marsh Baptist Church was founded, the first church on Coal River.[18]
Throughout the early history of Coal River, the settler economy was primarily a combination of forest gathering, husbandry and small-scale agriculture. The collection of ramps, ginseng and other resources from the forest supplemented the small plots, or “benches,” of corn and squash grown in areas of forest cleared by settlers. The cleared patches of forest, called “newground,” were often burned and then sowed for several years before the forest was allowed to retake the land. Livestock was allowed to graze in the mountains openly (a practice which continued in the region until the 1950’s). While agriculture was the dominant livelihood of early Coal River settlements, this does not mean that the settlers were isolated subsistence farmers. Rasmussen argues that farmers were slowly transitioning from the subsistence phase that defined early settlement patterns, to that of an agricultural market connected to national markets.[19] While family homesteads remained primarily in the hollows, important family gatherings and cemeteries were located on the mountain slopes. Many of these cemeteries continued to be used until the onset of strip mining closed the mountain commons in the late 20th Century.
The Civil War and Coal River
The remnants of an early homestead on Bailey Mountain. Photo by Rick Bradford.
Like much of the Appalachian region, the Coal River Valley was torn by internal strife between unionist and secessionist sympathizers. Although Raleigh County as a whole voted for secession, the Marsh and Clear Fork districts of the Coal River were strong Union sympathizers.[20] Many neighbors and families were split, some sending soldiers to both the Union and Confederate armies. The area was occupied by both armies on several occasions beginning in late 1862. The war came to southern West Virginia over the control of the valuable salt deposits (salt was necessary for preserving food for armies in the field).[21] After the first occupation by Union forces, the government of Raleigh County ceased to function for the remainder of the war. The absence of an effective government, the political divisions and the movements of Union and Confederate armies through 1862 sparked a large level of violence between erstwhile neighbors in the Coal and New River Valleys.[22] After 1863, Union forces remained in the region fighting Confederate sympathizers known as “Bushwhackers” until the conclusion of the war.[23] Following the war and the incorporation of the region into the new state of West Virginia, many Union sympathizers gained social and political advantages over following decades. The violence of this period, caused by a war that tore the nation apart, would become the foundation for a myth perpetrated by the media and timber and coal companies of the violent Appalachian family culture. Following the war, the expansion of railroads into the region would usher in a new age for Coal River: the age of coal and timber.
[1]Wood, Jim. Raleigh County, West Virginia. Raleigh County Historical Society. BJW Printing and Office Supplies: Beckley, WV. 1994. 19-21.
[2] Dilger, Robert J. and Joseph M. White, “Boone County History.” West Virginia Department of Political Science. http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/wv/Boone/boohistory.html. August 1, 2000. Accessed March 3, 2009.
[3] Wood, Jim. Raleigh County, West Virginia. 17.
[4] Ibid 16.
[5] Ibid 3.
[6] Ibid. 4-5.
[7] Ibid. 5.
[8] Ibid. 9.
[9] Ibid. 33.
[10] Ibid. 29.
[11] Ibid. 27.
[12] Ibid. 29.
[13] Ibid. 27-28,.
[14] Ibid. 35.
[15] Ibid. 36-37.
[16] Hufford, Mary. “Landscape and History at the Headwaters of the Big Coal River Valley: An Overview.” The Library of Congress: American Memory Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia. From the Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/. 8.
[17] Hufford, Mary. “Landscape and History at the Headwaters of the Big Coal River Valley: An Overview.” 9.
[18]Ibid. 10-12.
[19] Eiler, Lyntha Scott. “An old chestnut fence post marks the site of a former settlement on Montcoal Mountain." The Library of Congress: American Memory Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia. From the Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/. August 11, 1996.
[20] Wood, Jim. Raleigh County, West Virginia. 126.
[21] Ibid 166.
[22] Ibid 214-215.
[23] Ibid176.
For more information on sources used, please see the Notes on Sources section.
Previous | Next
|
Journey Up Coal River by Aurora Lights is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. |