Person:Jacob Plants (3)

From a 1947 volume titled "West Virginia Plants", scanned by Midge Ryan.

JACOB THE PIONEER

Born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, about 1805. Sold his real estate and left Washington County about 1849. Stopped one year in Wetzel County, Virginia, then came to Mason County, Virginia, and bought a large tract of land, approximately five hundred acres, on the West branch of Kanawha Ten-mile creek. He had five sons in the Union Army-John, Christian, Jacob, Francis Marion, and George. Jacob died of fever near Memphis, Tennessee; Francis Marion was killed in action at Fishers Hill, in the Shenandoah Valley. Virginia; Christian and George returned without wounds. John Plants, the father of the author of this sketch, was wounded at the Battle of Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864, a minnie ball, being a leaden bullet, weighing one ounce, passing through his left arm, between the wrist and elbow.

JACOB AND NANCY PLANTS SETTLED ON TEN MILE

They settled on the upper waters of Kanawha Ten Mile but a. few miles from the source of this creek. The West Branch of Ten Mile Creek rise in a series of low hills on the northeast side of the Kanawha River, and only about two miles from the river. The streams then flows in a generally eastward direction from the river, leads to the south and west and empties into the Kanawna Kiver about five miles south of the point where it began, thus making a great bend of many miles, and yet its source and its mouth are c more than five miles apart. Let us get a mental picture of this stream and adjoining country as it must have been about 1850 when Jacob Plants settled there. It is not our purpose here to write fiction, but to try as accurately as we can to see the country as it actually was in that early time.

  The narrow creek bottoms and hills on either side were deep, dark wooded lands. They were forest lands, covered with great ires, hickory, white oak, poplar, ash, pine and other kinds.  There were deer, panther, and smaller game in those forests, not in limited numbers but plentiful in those days.  Willows and elms grew close by the creek.  Here and there, according to nature's own design, were places not so heavily wooded as others and some smaller vegetation grew.  The deep leaf-bed built up by the great forests dropping its heavy leaf growth in the fall for year upon year caught and held much of the rain water that fell so that the creek was not easily flooded more than its banks could hold.
   At a certain point along this stream, our forefathers settled. Some of the descendants, especially those who now live in the locality or spent their childhood there, will remember the place as the White place.  Some of the older generation, still call it the Plants Place. Whether Jacob first settled here or two miles further up the creek at what was later the John Plants place is not known.  If he did settle two miles further up the creek, his stay there was not long, for his family all grew up at the place now known as the White Place, where for many years after the Plants homestead lived a Mr. Neely White. To this place there came Jacob Plants with his family nearly one hundred years ago.  He soon purchased a large tract of land, as is spoken of elsewhere in the article written by T. H. Plants, who was a grandson of Jacob. Jacob gave a trust deed as security for notes in payment for this land. This trust deed signed in Jacob's own hand nearly one hundred years ago. in a good state of preservation is now in the hands of Wilbur E. Plants a great grandson. Some of this land, it is not known just how much nor which member of the family owns it. is still held by the descendants of Jacob Plants. One tract" of fifty acres is held by a great grandson, Wilbur E. Plants, the same mentioned as being in possession of the trust deed.
   In that time long past lived the pioneer family of Jacob Plants. Each generation in its own time has its own particular conditions to meet, not all the same for different generations by any means, and yet perhaps some conditions are common to all generations. All have some pleasures and some sorrows, some problems of some kind. Sickness, health, life, death, sorrow, and gladness are common to every generation.  In that distant past in the home of Jacob and Nancy Plants grew to manhood and womanhood a family of children. Most of these children upon becoming men and women married and reared families of their own, their children did the same and so on to the present time.  Christian Plants of the third generation reared his family on the hill a short distance from the old Jacob Plants homestead, and John Plants reared his family two miles up Ten Mile Creek above the old homestead.  Rhoda married Andrew Hoschar, who with their family lived but a few miles away.  Mary Jane who married Adam Brannon lived at Beech Hill, only a few miles from the old home. So with the others who married and had families.   They reared their families  nearby.   The others were Jack, Nancy, Leonard, George and Joseph.  The grand children of Jacob Plants are to be found widely scattered, some near and some far from the old homestead.  The great-grand children and the great great-grand children of Jacob are even more widely scattered and are to be found in many different states of the nation.  One, a great, great, grandson in the armed services of his country stationed in Germany is contemplating marrying a German girl, and if he does, there is a possibility he will settle in Germany and rear a family there, thus completing a complete cycle in about 175 years of time, since his ancestors left that country for America 175 years ago.