The settler usually arrived bringing all his worldly goods upon pack horses, and selected a site for his cabin, near a Spring. For this reason most of the houses in West Virginia are located in a hollow or on low ground. He would then fell trees and cut them into logs to build the cabin, and split clapboards with which to cover it. His neighbors, if he had any, would be notified that on a certain day he would have a "raising." The neighbors would turn out on that day to lend a helping hand to the new comer, and the logs would rapidly be placed in position, one on the top of the other in the form of a pen, notched at each end in order to fit closely. The opening between the logs was filled with split sticks and then plastered with wet clay.   This was called "chinking and daubing."

The roof was of clapboards held in place by heavy poles laid on top and pinned down at the ends.

The door was made of "puncheons" split from logs and swinging on wooden hinges. The floor was of split logs, with the hewn side up and fastened down by wooden pins, driven through holes at the ends into sleepers. Openings were left for windows, which were sometimes covered with greased paper to let in the light. Small spaces were left here and there for loop holes.

A doorway was cut through one of the walls and split pieces of wood called door cheeks reaching from the top to the bottom of the opening were pinned with wooden pins to the ends of the logs.

A wooden latch was placed inside the door. To this was attached a leather string, which ran through a hole in the door above the latch. By pulling on this string from the outside the latch would be raised and admittance gained. By pulling the string to the inside the door could not be opened from the outside, and was considered locked
.
At one end would be built a chimney and the flue would be carried up to the top of the cabin by small sticks placed one above the other with clay between and plastered heavily inside with clay, called "cat and clay" and would last for many years without burning, the chimney being a crib of logs lined with flat stones, and a stone hearth.

The whole house was often completed without the use of a nail, the ax and the auger being about all the implements used in its construction. Expert ax men took great pride in their work, and it is wonderful how smooth and close fitting the floor of a cabin could be made by this tool alone.

The furniture of the cabin was of the rudest character, wooden blocks with legs inserted answered for chairs. The table was two or three slabs fastened on pieces fastened to the wall and supported at the other end by wooden legs.

Wooden platters and bowls were much in use and pewter plates and spoons were considered unusually elegant. The bedsteads were simply poles held up by forked sticks at one end and the other end by the wall, and sticks laid across on which to lay the skins and blankets.

Over the doorway was hung the rifle on two dogwood forks, just as cut from the bush, and pinned to the wall.

At night the cabin was lit from the wood fire supplemented by dip tallow candles and a lamp made of a gourd filled with lard, in which was placed a twisted rag wick. In some localities pine knots were used. The cooking utensils were iron pots, frying pan and a dutch oven.

After completing a shelter for his family the first thing to be done was to clear out ground for a corn crop, for on corn bread and game from the woods, depended the lives of the pioneers.

Such was the rude home of the pioneer, which in time was generally followed by a hewn log house much more pretentious and comfortable than the first one.
It was not until portable saw mills were introduced a few years before the civil war that frame or wooden buildings came generally into use, but in the thinly settled regions of the State log houses are still in use.

The hunting shirt was universally worn. This was a kind of loose frock coat, reaching half way down the thighs, open in front and made so wide as to lap over a foot or more when belted. The sleeves were large. The cape was large and fell down over the shoulders and was often handsomely fringed with a raveled piece of cloth of a different color from that of the hunting shirt. The bosom of this dress served as a wallet to hold provisions or other necessary articles. The belt, which was always tied behind answered several purposes besides that of holding the dress together. In cold weather the mittens and some times the bullet bag occupied the front part of it. To the right side was suspended the tomahawk and to the left the hunting knife in its leather sheath.

The hunting shirt was generally made of linsey, sometimes of coarse linen and occasionally of dressed deer skins, these last were very cold and uncomfortable in wet weather.
The shirt and jacket were of the common fashion. A pair of drawers or breeches and leggins were the dress of the thighs and legs, a pair of moccasins made of dressed deer skins covered the feet. In cold weather the moccasin was stuffed with deer's hair or dried leaves so as to keep the feet warm, but in wet weather it was generally said that wearing them was a "decent way of going barefooted."

Owing to the spongy texture of the leather of which they were made they were no protection from dampness or rain, and it is owing to this cause that so many of the early settlers were afflicted with rheumatism.

To prevent this disease as much as possible it was their custom to sleep with their feet next the fire.

In the latter years of the Indian wars some of the young men affected some portions of the Indian dress, which did not meet with the approval of the female population.
The women of the country dressed in dresses of linsey and petticoats of plain material. They also wore coarse shoes and moccasins and sun bonnets.

They wore no watches, bracelets, chains, rings or diamonds, nor decorated their heads with ribbons and huge ill shaped hats and bird feathers such as their fair descendants now adorn themselves with.

Many of them were pretty well grown up before they ever saw the inside of a store room, or knew what one was except by hearsay. Instead of spending much of their time in primping and ornamenting themselves, they had to handle the distaff or shuttle, the sickle or weeding hoe in order to help the head of the family make both ends meet.

Dr. Joseph Doddridge in his most valuable book, relating to the settlement of Western Pennsylvania says
:
"Land was the object which invited the great number of settlers to cross the mountains for as the saying then was, "It was to be had for the taking up."

"Some of the early settlers took the precaution to come over the mountains alone in the spring, and after raising a crop of corn, return and bring their families out in the fall. This I should think was the better way. Others, whose families were small, brought them with them in the Spring. My father took the latter course. His family was but small and he brought them all with him. The Indian meal which he brought over the mountains was expended six weeks too soon, so for that length of time we had to live without bread. The lean venison and the breast of the wild turkey we were taught to call bread. The flesh of the bear was denominated meat. This artifice did not succeed very well, after living this way for some time we became sickly, the stomach seemed to be always empty and tormented with a sense of hunger.

I remember how narrowly the children watched the growth of the potato tops, pumpkin and squash vines hoping from day to day to get something to answer in the place of bread. How delicious was the taste of the young potatoes when we got them. "What a jubilee when we were permitted to pull the young corn for roasting ears. Still more so when it acquired sufficient hardness to be made into "Johnny Cakes" by the aid of a tin grater. We then became healthy, vigorous and contented with our situation, poor as it was.

Most of the early settlers considered their lands of little value from an apprehension that after a few years cultivation it would lose its fertility, at least for a long time. I have often heard them say that such a field would bear so many crops and another so many, more or less than that.   The ground of this belief concerning the short lived fertility of the land in this country, was the poverty of a great proportion of the land in the lower parts of Maryland and Virginia, which after producing a few crops, became unfit for use and was thrown out into commons.

In this unfavorable opinion of the nature of the soil of our country our fore fathers were utterly mistaken. The native weeds were scarcely destroyed before the white clover and different kinds of grass made their appearance. These soon covered the ground so as to afford pasture for the cattle by the time the wood range was eaten out as well as protect the soil from being washed away by drenching rains so often injured in hilly countries."

The settlements composed a self supporting community nearly every thing in use was made at home. The great want was salt, iron and ammunition. To get these the only commodity to exchange for them were furs and skins which were taken East of the mountains on pack horses.

As the population increased and roads were opened for wagons, other articles such as hides, linen from flax, linsey, butter, honey, beeswax, ginseng and snake root were shipped. Later cattle and hogs were driven to the sea coast.

Nearly everything in use was made at home. One man writing in 1787 from East of the mountains where conditions were better than West of them, says: " I never spent more than ten dollars a year which was for salt, nails and the like. Nothing to eat, drink or wear was bought, as my farm produced all."

Every man and woman was a jack of all trades. A fine example of development in this line is given of a pioneer in Western New York, who was a farmer, hunter, trapper, road builder, tailor, shoemaker, lumber man, butcher, hatter, blacksmith, brick-layer, teacher, lawyer and Justice of the Peace.

There was but little trouble in procuring meat, as game abounded in the forest and fish in the streams, but the great difficulty was bread, and often there was none to be had until the corn crop came in.
Hand graters were used to make meal, and mush and milk was one of the substantial dishes.

Indian corn was a great factor in the settlement of Western Virginia. It came early and could be used as food in many different ways. Hand mills consisting of two dressed mill stones set on a section of a tree and turned by hand were in use until tub mills run by water were introduced. Every house had a hominy block.
Cattle got fat in the summer by ranging in the woods, the pea vine being their principal food. In the winter they ate a kind of moss and browsed on the limbs of trees, such as the linn, maple and beech.

Corn could be eaten as roasting cars, made into bread, hominy pone, cakes, mush, succotash, manufactured into whiskey, and used as currency for carrying on local trade and also as food for animals.

Besides, the corn shuckings where the settlers would gather at each others houses to husk their corn crops, were occasions of feasting, dancing and social enjoyment.

The owner of the crop would pull the ears from the stalks and haul them to an open place near his home and put them in a long low pile. In husking the shuck was thrown back and the ear forward. The man who husked a red ear was entitled to kiss the prettiest girl present.

The principal crops of the early settlers were corn, flax and potatoes. Flax was spun and woven into a coarse linen cloth by hand for shirting and other wear.

Sheep were almost indispensable on account of their wool, but were very hard to keep on account of the depredation of wolves.

Wool was carded by hand and spun into yarn on the spinning wheel and woven into a cloth called linsey and made into hunting shirts, trousers, and dresses for the women.

Dyes were obtained from the bark of the butternut, red oak and other barks and berries. Spoons were made by pouring melted pewter into copper moulds. Candles were made from melted tallow run into tin moulds. Fire was obtained from flint, steel and punk, a kind of sponge like substance obtained from trees.   Soap was made from grease.

Tea and coffee were luxuries and almost unknown. Sugar was made from maple trees. Herbs and sassafras bark were sometimes used for tea, and parched rye as a substitute for coffee.

Many articles now deemed necessary for comfortable living were unknown for a great many years after the settlement of the County, such as cooking stoves, matches, lamps, sewing machines, overshoes, umbrellas, buggies, corn planters, reapers, mowers, movable threshing machines, grain drills, horse rakes, breech loading guns, percussion caps and portable saw mills.

Grain was sowed by hand, cut with the sickle and beaten out with the flail or trodden out by horses.

The settlement of a new country in the vicinity of an old one is not attended with much difficulty as supplies can readily be obtained from the latter but the settlement of a land remote from a cultivated region or separated by mountain ranges is very different, because at the outset before crops can be raised by the new settler, food, clothes, salt, iron and household furniture can only be obtained in small supplies and with great labor and difficulty.

The making of a new settlement in a remote wilderness in a time of peace is no light undertaking, but to this when are added those difficulties resulting from a warfare with cruel, brutal savages, who show no mercy and have no pity, the toils, anxiety, privations and sufferings tax the capacity of the human race to the utmost of their endurance.

If the situation saddled hardships and responsibilities upon the men what must have been the burdens borne by the women in the wilderness t Cut off from their parents and the friends of their childhood with no mails or means of communicating with them, often with scanty clothing and without nourishing food, with no diversions save the dull drudgery of household duties in their cold uncomfortable log cabins, and besides this there was the constant anxiety for the fate of the husband engaged in warfare with the savages and not knowing what moment a terrible fate would befall herself and little children.

Many wilted, like broken flowers in the sun, and died in their young womanhood, unable to bear the hardships, privations and terrors incident to a life in the wilderness. Others bore up bravely until the end. It was a time that tried the souls of men and broke the hearts of women.

All honor to these noble women who so loyally and patiently did their part in reclaiming a savage land. They could say to their husbands in the beautiful language of Ruth: "Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge, and where thou diest will I die and there will I be buried.'

The table furniture at the early settlement of the country consisted of a few pewter dishes, plates and spoons, but mostly of wooden bowls, trenchers and small wooden mugs, called noggins, gourds and hard shelled squashes for drinking vessels. The iron pots, knives and forks were brought from the East side of the mountains along with salt, iron and ammunition, on pack horses.

Hog and hominy was one of the substantial dishes of the times and Johnny cake, and pone of corn meal were the only kind of bread used for breakfast and dinner.   At supper, mush and milk was the standing dish.

Mush was frequently eaten with sweetened water, maple molasses, bear's grease or the gravy of fried meat
.
Every cabin had near it a truck patch in which was raised corn for roasting ears, pumpkins, beans, squashes and potatoes. These in the latter part of the summer and early fall were cooked with pork, venison and bear meat, which made very wholesome dishes. The standing dinner dish for every log rolling, house raising, and harvest day, was a pot pie.
Dr. Joseph Doddridge was sent from his home in the Western part of Pennsylvania to school in Maryland when a boy, and thus describes his impressions when taking a meal at the town of Bedford, in a stone tavern with plastered walls and ceiling:

"On going into the dining room I was struck with astonishment at the appearance of the house. I had no idea that there was any house in the world which was not built of logs, but here I looked around the house and could see no logs, and above and I could see no joists. Whether such a thing had been made by the hands of men or had grown so of itself I could not conjecture. I had not the courage to inquire anything about it. When supper came on, my confusion was worse confounded. A little cup stood in a bigger one with some brownish stuff in it which was neither milk, hominy or broth. What to do with these little cups and the spoon belonging to them, I could not tell, and I was afraid to ask anything concerning the use of them. I therefore watched attentively to see what the big folks would do with their little cups and spoons. I imitated them, and found the taste of the coffee nauseous beyond anything I ever had tasted in my life. I continued to drink, as the rest of the company did, with the tears streaming from my eyes, but when it was to end, I was at a loss to know, as the little cups were filled immediately after being emptied. This circumstance distressed me very much, as I durst not say I had enough. Looking attentively at the grown persons I saw one man turn his little cup bottom upwards and put his little spoon across it. I observed that after this his cup was not filled again. I followed his example and to my great satisfaction the result as to my cup was the same."

The introduction of china ware on the tables was not regarded by the pioneers with much favor as it was too easily broken and dulled their hunting knives. Tea ware was too small for men they might do for women, children or the sick. Tea and coffee were regarded by many as only slops, which did not "stick to the ribs."

All the world loves a lover, and a wedding in the early years of Har­rison County attracted the attention of the entire neighborhood old and young. This was not to be wondered at as a wedding was almost the only gathering which was not accompanied with the labor of log rolling, building a cabin or going on a scouting expedition or campaign
.
Dr. Doddridge gives the following account of the proceedings: "On the morning of the wedding the groom and his friends met at the house of his father and made preparations to escort him to the house of the bride. Let the reader imagine an assemblage of people without a store, tailor or dressmaker within two hundred miles, and a company of horses without a blacksmith or saddler within an equal distance. The men dressed in shoe packs, moccasins, leather breeches, legging, linsey hunting shirts, and all home made. The ladies dressed in linsey petticoats and linsey or linen bed gowns, coarse shoes, stockings, handkerchiefs and buckskin gloves if any. If there were any buckles, rings, buttons, laces, ruffles or flounces they were relics of old times East of the mountains, family ornaments from parents or grandparents. The horses were equipped with old saddles, bridles or halters or pack saddles with a bag or blanket thrown over them and fastened with a girth, rope string or a piece of leather.

All being in readiness the procession started to the home of the bride, the order of march was in double file and was often interrupted by the narrowness of the trail through the woods as there were no roads, and sometimes by grape vines being tied across the path either as a joke or to show the ill will of some neighbor.

"Another ceremony commonly took place before the party reached the home of the bride, after the practice of making whiskey began which was at an early period, when the party was about a mile from the place of their destination two young men and sometimes a woman, would be singled out to run for the bottle; the worse the path, the more logs, brush and deep hollows the better as these obstacles afforded an opportunity for the greater display of intrepidity and horsemanship. The English fox chase in point of danger to the riders is nothing to this race for the bottle. The start was announced by an Indian yell: logs, brush, muddy hollows, hill and glen were speedily passed by the rival parties. The bottle was always filled for the occasion so that there was no use for Judges, for the first who reached the door was presented with the prize with which he returned in triumph to the Company. On approaching them he announced his victory by a shrill whoop. At the head of the troop he gave the bottle first to the groom and his attendants and then to each pair in succession to the rear of the line, giving each a dram, and then putting the bottle in the bosom of his hunting shirt took his station in the Company.

The ceremony of the marriage preceded the dinner, which was a substantial backwoods feast of beef, pork, fowls and sometimes venison and bear meat roasted and boiled, with plenty of potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables. During the dinner the greatest hilarity always prevailed although the table might be a large slab of timber hewed out with a broad-axe supported by four sticks set in auger holes, and the furniture some old pewter dishes and plates, a few pewter spoons much battered about the edges were to be seen at some tables, the rest were made of horns. If knives were scarce the deficiency was made up by the hunting knives which were carried in sheaths suspended to the belt of the hunting shirt.

After dinner the dancing commenced and generally lasted until morning. The figures of the dances were three and four handed reels or square sets and jigs. The commencement was always a square four, which was followed by what was called "jigging it off," that is two of the four would single out for a jig and were followed by the remaining couple. The jigs were often followed by what was called cutting out; that is when either of the parties became tired of the dance, on intimation the place was supplied by some one of the Company without any interruption of the dance. In this way a dance was often continued till the musician was heartily tired of his situation. Towards the latter part of the night if any of the company through weariness attempted to conceal themselves for the purpose of sleeping they were hunted up, paraded on the floor and the fiddler ordered to play "Hang on until tomorrow morning.
"
During the festivities of the evening the bottle which was known as "Black Betty' was frequently passed and freely partaken of.

The Infair was an entertainment held at the house of the Groom's father on the day after the wedding, and the order of the procession and the race for "Black betty the same as before.

The feasting and dancing frequently lasted for several days, at the end of which, the whole company were so exhausted with loss of sleep that several days rest were requisite to fit them to return to their ordinary duties.

It sometimes happened that some neighbors or relations, who were not invited to the wedding took offense and out of revenge for the supposed slight would clip the manes and tails of the horses of the Company during the night.

The race for "Black Betty " was sometimes participated in by the young women of the Company. The writer recalls that a Clarksburg lady recounted to her grandchildren the details of an exciting race she took part in when she was a young girl "Way down in old "Monongahela" when she triumphantly won the bottle over all her men competitors.

The hominy block and hand mills were in use in almost every household of the early settlers. The first was made of a large block of wood about three feet long with a bowl shaped excavation scooped out of one end, generally by fire, wider at the top than at the bottom, so that the action of the pestle on the bottom threw the corn up to the sides towards the top of it from whence it continually fell down into the center. In consequence of this movement the whole mass of the grain was pretty equally subjected to the strokes of the pestle. In the fall of the year when the Indian corn was soft, the block and pestle did very well for making meal for Johnny cakes and mush, but the work was rather slow when the corn became hard.

A machine still more simple than the mortar and pestle was used for making meal while the corn was too soft to be beaten. It was simply a grater made of a piece of perforated tin or sheet iron nailed on to a block of wood, the ear of corn was rubbed on the rough edges of the holes while the meal fell through them on the block to which the grater was nailed, and being held in a slanting position the meal was discharged into a vessel placed for its reception.

The hand mill was better than the mortar and grater. It was made of two circular stones, the lowest of which was called the bed stone, the upper one the runner. These were placed in a hoop with a spout for discharging the meal. A staff was let into a hole in the upper surface of the runner near the outer edge and its upper end placed through a hole in a board or cross piece over-head. The grain was poured into the opening in the runner by hand and the operator would take hold of the upright staff and by a circular movement the upper stone or runner would revolve, thus crushing the grain between the two stones.

The first water mills were known as tub mills, and consisted of a perpendicular shaft to the lower end of which a horizontal wheel of four or five feet in diameter was attached, the upper end passing through the bed stone and carrying the runner after the manner of a trundle head. These mills were built with very little expense, and answered their purpose quite well.
Instead of bolting cloths sifters were in general use. These were made of deer skins in the state of parchment, stretched over a hoop and perforated with a hot wire
.

The pioneers suffered from the diseases incident to a new country.

The children were afflicted with the flux and croup and great numbers of them died from these complaints
.
The adults were subject to rheumatism, coughs and colds, which often developed into pulmonary troubles, fevers and pleurisy.

The remedies for these complaints were many and various consisting of teas made from plants, bark and roots, poultices for burns, and gun shot wounds, were made of elm bark, scraped potatoes and plants. Snake bites were treated by a decoction of white plantain boiled in milk taken internally and by sucking the wound, applying to it salt and gun powder and binding a portion of the snake to the wound. There were no doctors in the country and all the medicines used were simple remedies gathered from the forest.

Many died from very simple disorders or injuries that could easily have been cured by a modern physician, but on the other hand many serious cases of illness and wounds recovered without medical treatment.

As the Indian method of warfare was an indiscriminate slaughter of all ages and sexes it was necessary for the settlers to provide for the safety of the women and children as well as for the men, and each neighborhood generally combined together and built rude log structures called forts, in which they could take refuge when warned by the scouts that Indians were approaching the settlements.

The regularly constructed forts were rectangular in shape the outside walls being in part of cabins joined to each other by a stockade, which was composed of strong logs set on end firmly in the ground in contact with each other. The outer wall of these cabins were from ten to twelve feet high and the roofs sloping inward. The doors of the cabins opened into a common square or Court. Blockhouses or bastions were sometimes erected at two or more corners of the fort and projected beyond the cabins and stockade, so as to sweep the outside walls.

A large folding gate made of thick slabs nearest the spring closed the fort. The cabin, walls and gates were pierced with port holes at proper heights and distances and the whole structure made bullet proof.

The block house was a square two story log structure, with port holes both above and below.

The walls of the upper story projected on all sides about two feet over those of the lower story, thus leaving an open place through which the inmates could fire from above and downward upon an enemy, attempting to force the heavy slab doors or to climb or set fire to the walls
.
In some less exposed locality the cabins would be surrounded by a stockade enclosing them in a square. These were called stockades but generally the name of fort was applied to all of these different places of defense.

The families belonging to these forts were so attached to their own cabins on their clearings that they seldom moved into their fort in the spring until compelled by some alarm as they called it; that is when it was announced by some murder that the Indians were raiding the settlements.

Dr. Doddridge says that the Fort to which his father belonged was during the first years of the war three quarters of a mile from his cabin. He says: "I well remember that, when a little boy, the family were sometimes waked up in the dead of night by an express rider with a report that the Indians were at hand. My father seized his gun and other implements of war. My step-mother waked up and dressing the children as well as she could, and being myself the oldest, I had to take my share of the burdens to be carried to the fort. There was no possibility of getting a horse to aid us in removing to the fort Besides the little children we caught up what articles of clothing and provisions we could get hold of in the dark for we durst not light a candle or stir the fire.

All this was done with the utmost dispatch and with the silence of death. The greatest care was taken not waken the youngest child, as for the older ones it was enough to say " Indian" and not a whimper was heard afterwards.

Thus it often happened that the whole number of families belonging to a fort who were in the evenings at their homes, were all in their little fortress before the dawn of the next morning.
In the course of the succeeding day their household furniture was brought in by parties of the men under arms.

All of these works were built without the use of a nail, spike or any other piece of iron for the simple reason that such articles were not to be had.

Such places of refuge seem very trifling in a military point of view, but they answered the purpose in a frontier war as the Indians had no artillery.

The Indians rarely made an attack on one of these rude fortresses and seldom captured one of them when a determined resistance was made. But at times the forest diplomats have lulled the garrison of one of them to a sense of false security to surrender under promises of protection, which was no sooner done than an indiscriminate slaughter was at once begun.

The following is a list of the forts or places of defense built by the settlers in what was originally Harrison County between the years 1774 and 1795:

This fort stood on the Ohio River below Parkersburg on the site of the present village of Belleville, Wood County. It was built in 1785 and 1786 by Captain Joseph Wood and was considered a strong place of defense.

Buckhannon fort stood on or near the site of the town of Buckhannon and when the settlement was abandoned by the whites, it was burnt by Indians in 1782. The renegade Timothy Dorman being with this party.

This was situated on the Buckhannon River one and a half miles North East of the Upshur County Court House on land first settled by John Hacker and near where is now the Heavener Cemetery.

A small fort in the upper part of Tygart's Valley, a half mile east of the present village of Crickard in Randolph County. It has sometimes been called Caarino's Fort.

This fort was situated on Coon's Bun near the West Fork River be­low the town of Shinnston and now in Marion County
.

This was a small place of defense built in Booth's Creek District, now in Taylor County.

Was situated on Jones Bun in Eagle District.

Was in Tygart's Valley at the mouth of Elk Water, Randolph County.

Was situated on Ten Mile Creek in Sardis District, exact location not known.

This fort was located on Cheat River at the present site of St. George, Tucker County, and was built by John Minear, in 1776.

Was situated on the South side of the Little Kanawha River about one mile from its mouth in the Ohio River, now in Wood County. It was built by Captain James Neale, and was a prominent place of defense in the Indian Wars.

Was situated on the Ohio River at the mouth of the Lee Creek, Harris District, Wood County.

This was located on the Southern Bank of Elk Creek two miles from Clarksburg on the Buckhannon road on the Land of Thomas Nutter. It bore a prominent part in the defense of the County, and was a house of refuge for settlers fleeing from a savage foe for many miles around.

Was on Simpson's Creek, Harrison County, below Bridgeport and was built by John Powers.

This was near the mouth of Sycamore Creek, six miles from Clarksburg on the land of Jacob Richards
.

This was a large house enclosed in a stockade, and was built by Jacob West all about a quarter of a mile South of Beverly, about the commencement of Dunmore's War
.

This fort was on Hacker's Creek near the present town of Jane Lew in Lewis County, and was in a locality that suffered more from Indian raids than any other portion of the Virginia frontier.

Was built by Colonel Benjamin Wilson in Tygart's Valley now Ran­dolph County near the mouth of Chenoweth Creek, between Beverly and Elkins and bore a prominent part in the Indian wars.

In addition to the forts mentioned on the East Bank of the Ohio River in Harrison County, the United States Government built Fort Harmer at the mouth of the Muskingum, now Marietta in 1786, and a fort built by the settlers at Belpre, opposite Parkersburg in 1789 called Farmer's Castle, gave additional security to the frontier.