Person:Samuel Lockhart (1)

1910 census:

Ripley, Jackson, WV

47 years old with wife Celestine 31 and daughter Mary L. 8.

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1880 census:

Reedy, Wirt, WV

17 years old with parents Albert 40 and Annetta 40 and siblings.

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1870 census:

Gilmore, Jackson, WV

7 yrs old with parents Albert 29 and Annetta 29 and sister Isabel C. 8, George N. 5, John W. 3, and Lucy L. 1.

Albert is a farmer. _________________________________________________________________ The large stream known as Big Sand Creek enters the Ohio River some

  miles below the mouth of the Little Kanawha, a few miles above the
  mouth of Mill Creek. Some miles from the river, a large branch known
  as the Left Hand Fork comes at nearly right angles, heading back to
  the north of Limestone hill.
  
  The basin drained by Big Sandy, as it is called in common parlance,
  contains an area of many square miles.
  
  It is about nineteen miles, by road, from the head of "Sandy", near
  the Stalnaker schoolhouse in Roane County, to Ravenswood, at the mouth
  of the creek, on the Ohio River.
  
  The distance by water is much greater, as there are two long cut_offs
  between the forks of the creek at Sandyville and the river.
  
  The soil of the Sandy valley is greatly diversified, much of it being
  extremely fertile, while another considerable amount is hickory and
  white oak land of medium quality, and some, especially in the lower
  valley, is a white, leachy, soapstone clay of little value for
  cultivation. This soil, with low crawfish bottoms and low rolling
  hills, and comparatively smooth "flats" and chalky "second bottoms",
  prevails as far up as Sandyville. About the mouth of Straight Fork,
  from Crooked Fork to Cherry Camp, the Mud Run flats, and for a mile or
  more up Trace Fork and the Right Hand Fork of the Main Creek. Near the
  mouth of the stream, much of the soil is almost a pure sand, hence the
  name of the creek.
  
  Next the head of Right Sandy and its numerous branches, the soil is
  fertile, but rough and hilly, while Left Sandy heads back in Limestone
  ridge, a region noted for the fertility and the endurance of its soil,
  its high, sheer, hills, "black waxy" clay, locust thickets, bluegrass,
  herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and above all, for its orchards
  of apple and peach trees, which hardly ever fail to produce
  bountifully year after year. It is the wheat and fruit belt of the
  west central part of the state.
  
  All the Sandy valley was heavily timbered, oak, poplar, beech,
  hickory, maple, etc., being the prevailing species.
  
  Panthers, bear, deer, wolves and the smaller animals common to this
  region were plentiful when the country was first settled.
  
  One of the peculiarities of the Sandy valley, in the early days of its
  history, was a dreadful scourge which came to be called the "Sandy
  Fever". Just what it was, or the cause of it, has never been
  satisfactorily explained, but for a half century, it prevailed,
  numbering its victims by the score, sometimes blotting out a whole
  family in a few weeks, or, again, taking one here and other there.
  Scarcely a household in the valley escaped from a sacrifice to the
  plague. At times, say the old pioneers whose memories extend back to
  those unhappy visitations, the pestilence was so virulent that it
  attacked the cattle in the woods, many of whom were carried off by it,
  even calves after sucking a stricken dam, being seized with vomiting
  and dying in great agony. One old man with whom I talked claimed that
  the disease was often transmitted through the use of milk from
  diseased animals.
  
  Another theory advanced is that the epidemic was caused by poison in
  the water, which is probably the true solution of the dying of the
  cattle. There is a spring on the John Somerville farm, on the Brushy
  Fork of Left Sandy, far up among the limestone hills, in which some
  poisonous principle (supposed to be arsenic) is so abundant that
  cattle have to be fenced away from it in dry weather when the water is
  low. And there are, or used to be, places on Trace Fork and perhaps
  neighboring streams, that the people had to keep their stock away from
  the water a certain seasons of the year, although, when the streams
  were flush, the poison was so diluted as to be harmless. In this
  connection, I will mention that I have been told that "Patrick Bord
  was in knowledge of a lead mine in the south west bank of Sand Creek,
  not far from Sandyville, and about two feet under water". I think this
  was on the Right Fork. Pioneers used to get lead there, it is said,
  sufficiently pure to mould bullets for their rifles.
  
  The real "Sandy Fever" was probably malarial in its origin, and more
  prevalent, as well as more virulent, on Sandy than the neighboring
  streams, because of local conditions, such as lower altitude, sluggish
  and stagnant water, low, wet bottoms, assisted, perhaps, by poisonous
  mineral substances in the water when at a low stage.
  
  To this day, typhoid and malarial fevers are far more prevalent, and
  the death rate higher, on the waters of Sandy than on either Mill
  Creek or Reedy.
  
  The principal streams falling in to Sandy are, on the left, Lick Run,
  Straight Fork and Beatty's Run, and on the right _
  
  Crooked Fork, which heads against the west branch of Sycamore, and was
  so named as a "companion piece" for Straight Fork, which comes in from
  the north at Silverton, a little lower down the creek.
  
  Cherry Camp, Mud Run and Trace Fork, so called from an old Indian
  trail, which led up this stream, and down one of the upper branches,
  still known as Little Trace, and thence over to Reedy, and the Little
  Kanawha.