Little Grave creek--Remarkable Indian monument--Floating
store--Big Grave creek--Captina island and creek--Baker’s
station--Cressop’s--Fish creek--Biddle’s--John Well’s--A rustick
chorister--Uncommon fly.
On the 21st July at eight A. M. we left Wheeling, observing nothing
very interesting, until we reached Little Grave creek, eleven miles
below at {97} half past eleven o’clock. The creek, which is very small,
puts in from the Virginia side, and there is a ferry-house at the mouth
of it, where we landed, and had a pleasant walk on a very good wagon
road of half a mile to Tomlinson’s, the proprietor of the surrounding
soil. He has been settled here thirty years, but always forted until
the conclusion of the Indian war by General Wayne. He then attempted to
establish a town on the opposite side of the creek from his house; but
it remains without augmentation, with only eleven cottages and cabins.
The neighbouring country however is improving, though slowly. Mr.
Tomlinson has a very good two story brick house, almost finished, fine
apple and peach orchards, and a good farm.[75]
Mrs. Tomlinson obligingly permitted one of her sons to guide us to
what is called the Indian grave, which is a short quarter of a mile to
the southward of the house. It is a circular mound, like the frustum
of a cone, about one hundred and eighty yards in circumference round
the base, sixty round the flat on the top, and about seventy feet
perpendicular height. In the centre of the flat top is a shallow
hollow, like the filled up crater of an old volcano, which hollow or
settle is said to have been formed within the memory of the first
neighbouring settlers, and is supposed by them to be occasioned by the
settling of the earth on the decayed bodies.
The whole mount appears to be formed of clay, and from its regularity,
is evidently a work of art, though I am not of opinion that it has been
a general or publick cemetery, but either a mausoleum raised over, and
in memory of some great Indian chief, a temple for religious worship,
or the scite of a fortification, or citadel to serve as a place of
retreat from a superior foe. About three years ago, the neighbours
perforated the north side, at about half the elevation, digging in
horizontally about twelve feet, without any {98} other satisfaction to
their curiosity, than the finding of part of a human jaw bone, the bone
rough and honeycombed, but the teeth entire, and the surrounding clay
of a white chalky consistence.
There are four or five small mounds all within a few hundred yards
of the great one, each about thirty feet diameter, much lower in
proportion than it, all rounded over the tops, and like the great one,
shewing their antiquity by the size of the trees, plants, and shrubs
which cover them, and having more than it the appearance of tumuli.
The bark of the trees which crown this remarkable monument, is
covered by the initials of visitors cut into it, wherever they could
reach--the number of which, considering the remote situation, is truly
astonishing.[76]
On returning to our boat we found a floating store at the landing. It
was a large square flat, roofed and fitted with shelves and counter,
and containing a various assortment of merchandize, among which were
several copper stills, of which much use is now made throughout the
whole western country for distilling peach and apple brandy, and rye
whiskey.--The store had two owners, who acted both as boatmen and
merchants, and who freely invited us to partake of a dram with them.
They had loaded their flat at Wheeling, and were dropping down the
river, stopping occasionally wherever they could find a market for
their goods.
At about one o’clock we proceeded on our voyage, passing on the right
Mr. Dilly’s large frame house and fine farm, round which the river
takes a great bend to the westward.[77]
About five miles and a half below Little Grave creek, after passing
Big Grave creek,[78] (which is as {99} inconsiderable as its namesake
notwithstanding its distinguishing adjective) and Captina island (very
small) and after having stopped for a few minutes at one Baker’s, who
answered our questions with savage moroseness, we passed Captina creek
on the right, emptying into the Ohio through an extensive bottom, with
three mills and several settlements on it.
A mile lower, on the left is Baker’s station, which has the appearance
of an old settlement.[79]
About three miles below Captina creek we stopped on the left at Mr.
Cressop’s fine farm. He was on the plantation overseeing his labourers,
but Mrs. Cressop received us politely. She is young and very handsome,
and her employments of rocking her infant in its cradle while she
exercised her needle, did not diminish any thing of her beauty or
respectability. She is sister in law to Mr. Luther Martin, a celebrated
lawyer of Baltimore.[80]
Mr. Cressop owns a thousand acres of land here in one body, most of it
first rate bottom, his cottage is well furnished, and he has a neat and
good garden.
A little lower we passed Woods’s fine island, about a mile long, and
stopped just beyond it at Biddle’s tavern on the left, at the conflux
of Fish creek[81] and the Ohio, a mile and a half below Cressop’s.
Biddle keeps a ferry over Fish creek, which is a fine deep stream,
fifty yards wide, running thirty miles through the country, but having
no mills on it yet.
Mr. and Mrs. Biddle are kind and hospitable, decent in their manners,
and reasonable in their charges. He is a tenant of Mr. Robert Woods,
whose house and extensive improvements we had passed at Roland’s ferry
near Wheeling.
Biddle pays a rent of one hundred dollars per annum, for which he has
a right to cultivate and build wherever he pleases on Woods’s land,
Mr. Woods paying him per valuation for the buildings. The house he
now resides in cost him six hundred dollars, {100} which he has been
repaid. He has cleared and cultivated the land for some distance round
the house, and he has ten acres in corn on the island, which contains
fifty acres of the first quality of soil above the highest flood marks,
the rest being liable to inundation.
At nine o’clock, we landed on the left at John Wells’s, seven miles
from Biddle’s. It was a fine night. Eight or nine young men who had
been reaping for Wells during the day, were stretched out at their ease
on the ground, round the door of the cabin, listening to the vocal
performance of one of their comrades, who well merited their attention,
from the goodness of his voice, his taste, execution, variety and
humour. We enjoyed a rural supper, while listening to the rustick
chorister, then resisting our friendly host’s invitation to accept
of a bed, and provided with a light and some milk for next morning’s
breakfast, we retired to our skiff, threw out a night line to fish, and
endeavoured to compose ourselves to sleep under our awning. We were
much disturbed throughout the night by gnats and musquitoes, attracted
probably by our light, before extinguishing of which, we killed a
winged animal of the fly kind, the largest of the species I had ever
seen. It was about three inches long, with four gauzy wings, and a most
formidable display of forceps on each side the mouth, like those of a
scorpion, for which reason it might be named not improperly a winged
scorpion, though it is probably not venomous like it.
Wells and his wife are a young couple who removed last spring to this
place, from his father’s, an opulent farmer, eighteen miles lower down
the river. They are kind and obliging, and better informed than one
might expect, from their limited opportunities of acquiring knowledge
in so remote a situation. Mrs. Wells, though a delicately formed woman,
and with {101} twin boys only six weeks old, both of whom she nurses,
seemed neither to have, nor to require any assistance in her domestick
employments, yet both plenty and order were observable throughout her
cabin. Though we were much incommoded here by musquitoes, yet I must
observe, that comparatively with the country to the eastward of the
Allegheny mountains, particularly near the sea coast, in the vicinity
of salt marshes, we found very few of those troublesome insects, in
our descent of the Ohio, and though we occasionally heard the unwelcome
hum of a few solitary ones, we never once saw or heard a swarm of
them: we were however sometimes at night, when sleeping in our skiff,
infested by gnats or sand flies, but not in such numbers as we might
have expected on a river in the warmest season of the year.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] For a sketch of Joseph Tomlinson, a well-known pioneer, see
Harris’s _Journal_, vol. iii of this series, p. 360, note 40. The
expression “forted” means that he lived within a stockade stronghold
until the close of the Indian wars.--ED.
[76] On the subject of Indian mounds, see for recent scientific
conclusions, Lucien Carr, “Mound Builders,” in Smithsonian Institution
_Report_, 1891 (Washington, 1893), pp. 503-599; also American Bureau of
Ethnology _12th Annual Report_ (Washington, 1894).--ED.
[77] Dillon’s Bottom is nearly opposite Moundsville. Just beyond,
at the bend which Cuming mentions, was situated Round Bottom, which
Colonel Crawford surveyed for Washington, in 1771. Cresap made a
tomahawk claim to the same land, and there was a long litigation over
the matter, which was not finally adjusted until 1839, when the suit
was decided in favor of Washington’s claim. See Washington’s _Works_
(Ford ed., New York, 1889), iii, pp. 392, 408.--ED.
[78] On Big Grave Creek occurred the ambuscade (September 27, 1777) in
which Captain William Foreman and twenty Virginia militiamen were slain
on their way to the relief of Fort Wheeling.--ED.
[79] The family of Bakers here mentioned is not to be confused with
that of Joshua Baker, at whose settlement opposite Yellow Creek
occurred the massacre of Logan’s family. John Baker was a Prussian who
emigrated to America in 1755, removed to the Shenandoah Valley, later
to Dunkard’s Creek, and (1781) to Washington County, Pennsylvania.
While there he learned of a projected Indian attack on the fort at
Wheeling, and sent his son Henry, a youth of eighteen, to deliver the
warning. Henry was captured by the Indians, carried to the Sandusky
towns, and only saved at the intercession of Simon Girty. Upon his
release three years later, he found that his father had again removed,
and fortified Baker’s Station near Captina Creek. At the close of the
Indian wars, Henry Baker married, and moving up the river purchased a
farm including Captina Island, where Cuming found him.--ED.
[80] Mrs. Cresap was a Miss Ogle, whom Michael Cresap had married a
few years previous. Michael Cresap, jr., was but an infant when his
father, Captain Michael Cresap, died. The latter is well-known in
border annals. As early as 1771 he had begun sending out squatters
from his home in Old-town, Maryland, to take up Ohio lands; but he
himself did not settle in this vicinity until the spring of 1774,
when he immediately became involved in the troubles leading to Lord
Dunmore’s War. He was commissioned captain of the local militia (June
10, 1774), and joined McDonald’s expedition to the Muskingum towns. The
following year Cresap was again in Maryland, and raised a company for
the Continental army, dying in New York on his way to join Washington
at Cambridge. Of his children the eldest daughter married Luther
Martin, the well-known Maryland statesman and jurist. The youngest son,
Michael, settled on his father’s Ohio lands, and became a wealthy and
respected citizen.--ED.
[81] For the incidents connected with the early history of Fish Creek,
see Harris’s _Journal_, vol. iii of this series, p. 350, note 37.--ED.