Transcript:Haymond, Henry. History of Harrison County, West Virginia/p357

Source

Haymond, Henry. History of Harrison County, West Virginia: from earliest days of northwestern Virginia to the present. (Morgantown, West Virginia: Acme Publishing, 1910).

Overview

William Haymond, Jr. was the son of Major William Haymond. He submitted a series of letters about the life and times of his father and family to his nephew, Luther Haymond. Eight of these letters were included in the source above. This transcript is part of a series of transcripts that provide the text for those letters. The text is presented as accurately as possible and hyperlinks to werelate pages for individuals are provided. This is a work in progress.

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Transcript - Letter No. 3.

p 357 - William Haymond's Letters.
Letter No. 3.

Palatine Hill, March 25th, 1842. Luther Haymond,

Sir: — In my last I informed you of our alarm on the road just this side of the lower crossing of Middle Island. We proceeded home without being molested. About this time of the year before there was a great scarcity of grain in Harrison County. A great many people went to Pennsylvania after it, among the rest Brother John and myself. We went to John Hall's where Mr. Reeder now lives, and bought a canoe of said Hall, went down the river to the mouth of Whitely to Thomas Douglass'. He had married my sister Ann. There we bought I believe five or seven barrels of fiour. Started up the river, hired a hand three miles above Morgan town. We continued and arrived with our fiour at the mouth of Elk Creek after a week's hard labor. About or in the year, 1790 the Indians killed Johnson's family on Ten Mile Creek, you know the place. Johnson had gone on Saturday to watch a lick. On his return home he found his house in a dreadful situation. The bed tick had been ripped open, the feathers scattered, a cow killed, and I belive a hog in the yard. He judged the cause and immediately started for Clarksburg but took the contrary course. He went the same or nearly the same course the Indians did for a short distance, however, he got to Clarks- burg about 2 o'clock. About twenty of us started some on horseback and some on foot, ran nearly the whole distance and got to the house of Johnson about one hour before sundown, took the Indian trail, in about two or three hundred yards we passed a deer that Johnson had killed and there brought off his horse. We went about one mile on the trail to the top of the ridge, some of the men stopped to parley, some of us pro- ceeded a little further and found Johnson's wife and three children ly- ing dead. They had been tomahawked and scalped and were laid with their feet pointing east, west, north and south. This was an awful sight to me and the rest of the men, but nothing in comparison to that of Mr. Johnson. The bereaved husband and father seemed to be unable to bear the shock. If it was hard to bear in those days of hardships how do you think it would be borne in these days? "We laid the dead together and covered them with a bed cover, and returned back to the house, went into the woods and staid till the next morning when we dug a grave and buried the four together. As we were about finishing Col. Lowther with about fifteen men came to us. We then took the trail. They kept along the ridge, up Ten Mile Creek, crossed the creek, raised the hill on the west side and fell on the head of a small stream of Rush Run near the mouth of the latter, crossed Rush Run, and took the hill, just leaving Owen Davis', now Marsh's place to the left, here we held a consultation and it was decided that the Indians had too long the start, and if overtaken would kill the prisoners and the chase was given up and we returned home. This Indian tale may perhaps be out of place but thinking of those days I could not forbear giving you an ac- count of this sorrowful event.

I must tell you a little anecdote. A Mr. Amaziah Davisson, who for- merly lived about three miles east of Clarksburg had traveled the road from Marietta to Clarksburg. I saw him some time after this, and he told me that he had been very uneasy for some time past as he heard that my father had called him a liar. He had said there was one hill on said road that it would take 1,000 horses to pull an empty wagon up. When my father heard it he said it was a lie for 500 could do it. After his hear- ing how he happened to be called a liar he was pleased at the joke.

I informed you that my father had taken two certificates for land in Harrison (I supposed assigned to him) one on the West Fork for a valua- ble tract, some person claimed it and he gave it up. The other was for 400 acres on Rooting Creek where Simon Arnold now lives. I remember it being said that he got this tract surveyed and some person who lived on the Branch claimed the land and he assigned him the plat. Adjoining this he had a preemption warrant of 1000 acres which he got surveyed. I helped to carry the chain. Previous to our going to survey George Arnold, who made the 1000 survey, asked my father if he intended to take the land between the 400 acres survey and Grigsby's survey. My father said not and Arnold located it. I believe that this was the best land in the bounds of the 1000 acre survey. My father it seems had made his cal- culations to make his survey above the resident right, and would not change even for better land. I do not make this statement with any re- flection on him. I am perfectly satisfied, but to show how little he cared for anything in this world. The land he sold for little but I expect it in part is now valuable.

Poor old Slider and Prince died, I belive, while we lived at that place. They had lived in the times that tried men's souls, but this they knew but little about. I shall have but little to say hereafter in this nar- rative except you wish to hear some other of my adventures with the In- dians, &c. I think Nicholas Carpenter, who lives in your place, Clarks- burg, Va., was with us at Johnson's at the time his family was killed. Ask him.

Yours &c.,

Wm. Haymond.