The American
Heritage
Map of the location of the homes of Indians show no
tribe permanently
occupying
Western Virginia. The Shawnees were in Ohio, the
Cherokees in Western
North
Carolina, and East Tennessee, and the Xuala in South
Western Virginia.
They were probably run out by the Cherokees about
1525-50.
I find in Summer's
"History
of Southwest Virginia" most excellent account and
explanation of the
Indians
of the entire section. It is his belief that the
earliest Indians
occupying
any part of this section were the Xuala. Mr. Summers
definitely
believed
that De Sota visited the upper reaches of the Holston
River, perhaps
into
Washington County, in 1540. A tradition exists among the
Cherokees that
the Xuala was driven from the section after 1540 by the
Cherokees, but
no authentic information can be established as to this.
In 1671, Gov.
Berkeley
sent Capt. Henry Batte with a company of Rangers who
crossed the Blue
Ridge
into Floyd County, and in that section they found
Indians living who
were
said to be remnants of that Tribe, but by 1685 they were
all gone. The
Shawnees were westward, in Ohio, and perhaps never made
many inroads
into
the present Southwest Virginia. We must, therefore,
accept the theory
that
the Cherokees were the only Indians in our section,
immediately prior
to
the coming of the white man.
But the vast
area
embracing the Holston, the headwaters of the Kentucky,
the Cumberland
and
the Big Sandy Rivers, seems to have never been permanent
abode of any
Indians.
One reason was the enmity between the Shawnees and the
Cherokees, it
being
bitter enough to deter either Tribe from such a
permanent settlement.
It
was the buffer section separating the two tribes. This
condition
continued
perhaps until rather close to the year 1800, or only
about 160 years
ago.
As late as 1768, the
last
great battle between two Indians tribes was fought in
Tazewell County.
Early in the summer of that year about 200 Cherokee
Indians camped at a
lick to spend the summer in hunting. I am firmly
convinced that this
place
was what is now called Four Ways, two miles east of
Tazewell. The
Martingale
Restaurant is located on this land. Since perhaps
considerably before
1850
this land has been owned by the Peery family. When I was
a boy it was
owned
by Capt. Edd Perry, a Confederate soldier. He died about
1900 or before
that, and about that date his land was partitioned among
his heirs.
There
were five of them, and their father had left them 1050
acres of the
finest
blue grass land on earth. At the Chicago World Fair in
1892 his sod was
awarded the first prize. It was no this farm that "Sweet
Alice Ben
Bolt"
was written. Mr. G. A. Martin, a young lawyer from
Norfolk, visited
this
farm and when I was a very young boy I remember that he
married the
only
daughter of Capt. Edd. He found many, many artifacts
left by the
Indians,
paid boys to hunt them for him, later mounted them in a
large glass
case,
and I bought the entire lot from him during the last
years of his life.
I have them in my office, and will be glad to show them
to anyone
interested.
There are about 1700 to 1800 of them, mounted according
to the
Smithsonian
method.
But to continue my
story
about the last great battle between Indian tribes in
this section:
Later
in the summer of 1768 several hundred Shawnee Indians
appeared and
their
chief sent to the Cherokees a demand that they
immediately leave. The
answer
of the Cherokees was defiant, and both sides began to
prepare for
battle.
The Cherokees retired to the top of Rich Mountain, about
six or seven
miles
distant, near to or perhaps partly on the farm now owned
by Judge F. W.
Smith, and there during the night threw up a breastwork
several hundred
yards long and three or four feet high. The battle
lasted three days,
but
in the end the Shawnees retired.
No permanent Indians
villages
seems to have ever been found in this section. I cannot
believe that
Buchanan
County was ever so settled by the Indians, because the
mountains were
steep,
rocky, covered with forest trees, and had no rich and
which would grow
good grass to feed dear, as the fields of Tazewell,
Russell,
Washington,
Smythe and Wythe counties would. Hence, it was merely a
place where
roving
bands of Indians would come to fish and hunt for short
periods of time
and as a passway from the grass fields of Kentucky to
the grass fields
of the Clinch and Holston rivers. No doubt Short's Gap
was frequently
used
as a passway from the Levisa to the Clinch waters, but
no Indian stayed
in this county very long. There was no reason for so
doing.
Just when the first
white
man came to what is now Buchanan County is not known.
There is no doubt
but that white settlers came to the county and settled
here many years
before they bought any land. The country was rough,
steep, wild, no
roads,
no pasture or grass lands. A man could bring his family,
clear some
land,
build a log hut, and would have to pay nothing for it.
The land at first
belong
to the State of Virginia and the only way a person could
acquire title
to it was to obtain a grant from the Commonwealth. Also,
by a person
could
acquire title to it was to obtain a grant from the
Commonwealth. Also,
by a statute passed by the legislature, a person
settling on land,
using
and possessing it for five years and paying taxes on it
at any time
during
said five years, would have the title of said land. If
he went before
the
Court and proved those facts, the Court would enter an
order so
stating,
whereupon by statute the Commonwealth's title to said
land would be
relinquished
to him.
After the
Revolutionary
War, mostly during the seventeen nineties, the State of
Virginia,
owning
all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or
claiming same by
virtue
of settlement in the name of the King of England,
granted huge tracts
of
land to those furnishing aid to the colonies during that
war. As
practically
all the lands east of the Blue Ridge Mountains,
including perhaps all
of
he Valley of Virginia, had already been taken up by
settlers, these
large
grants were issued of land lying in the main Allegheny
Range of
Mountains.
The better lands in Tazewell, Russell, Washington,
Giles, Smythe, and
Wythe
Counties had likely been so taken up. But west and
northwest of
Tazewell
and Russell counties in what is now Dickenson, Buchanan
and parts of
Wise
counties, in Virginia (and Mercer, Raleigh, McDowell,
Mingo and Logan
counties
in West Virginia) where the lands were less valuable,
there remained
hundreds
of thousands of acres of land still owned by the state.
Those of
such large
grants which covered parts of Buchanan county were:
(1) 59 grants in the name of Richard
Smith,
issued in 1787, totaling 387, 723 acres, covering the
southern half of
the county from the mouth of Big Prater Creek up the
river, later
acquired
by the Warders.
The Warders kept the taxes paid on
their
lands, and about 1860 began to sell these lands to
citizens at 10 cents
per acre; the price finally got to $1.00 per acre
and all were sold.
(2) 200,000 acres to Richard Smith and
Henry
Banks in 1795, about 156,000 acres of which were
located in Buchanan
County,
covering the town of Grundy, down to the Kentucky
line, and up to Big
Prater.
This was the subject of an immense law suit,
beginning in 1914, with
about
1450 defendants. It was fought all the way from the
U. S. District
Court
to the U. S. Supreme Court. The citizens won. I have
a complete set of
the records of this case, covering about 3500 pages,
1342 pages of
which
consisted of briefs.
Plaintiffs were represented by S. B.
Avis,
U. S. Congressman from Charleston, West Virginia,
and Jeffries &
Jeffries
of Norfolk, Virginia and defendants by: E. M Fulton,
William H. Wertt,
G. W. St. Clair, G. C. Burns, George E. Penn, Hager
& Stewart,
Chase
& Daugherty, Chapman, Perry & Buchanan, A.
S. Hig, and Greever
& Gillespie.
(3) 500,000 acre grant to Robert
Morris,
issued in 1795, covering perhaps 50,000 of Buchanan
County, and
extending
into Pike County, Boone, Logan, Wyoming and McDowell
counties. Morris
was
one of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence.
The 500,000 acre
grant
was forfeited by the State of West Virginia for
taxes for the years
1883
to 1894. In 1893 one Henry C. King, of New York and
California,
acquired
legal title for said 500,000 acres of land. In
October 1897, the
Supreme
Court of the U. S., speaking by Mr. Justice Harlan
(171 U. S. P. 404)
upheld
the forfeiture of the land to the State of West
Virginia, thereby
upholding
the title of the citizens. That suit dealt only with
the part of the
coal
in West Virginia, but Virginia also had forfeiture
laws for non-entry
of
land for taxes. Finally, in 19 __, in order to avoid
expensive
litigation,
W. L. Dennis bought from King all that part of the
500,000 acres of
land
lying in Virginia, being 38, 781 acres, for $29,000,
as much of it
covered
land owned by Dennis on the Tug River drainage of
Buchanan County. Also
Ritter Lumber Company and others obtained such deeds
- perhaps $100,000
in all.
The foregoing were
known
as blanket grants, because they covered so much
territory. Also, in the
late eighteen nineties and for ten or fifteen years
into the nineteen
hundreds,
the people of the county were troubled with forged
and bogus grants,
but
they were finally obliterated by Mr. W. L. Dennis,
the Clerk of the
Court,
who refused to admit to record deeds emanating
therefrom.
The oldest small
grant
issued to anyone who might have settled thereon, so
far as I have been
able to ascertain, was an 180 acre grant issued to
James Catesby
Madison
and others, devisees of Rev. James Madison. The
survey on which the
grant
was based is dated December 24, 1783, and the grant
was issued March 2,
1856. Richard Yates was the father of Almarine and
Richard Yates, and
he
conveyed to Robert Looney, the father of Charlie
Looney.
Another old grant
was
issued to Frederick Stiltner in 1827, on survey
dated in 1821. It was a
long narrow grant, beginning below the mouth of
Little Prater Creek,
and
running up the river for a mile or two.
Around 1850 the
Warders
began to sell land to citizens, and junior grants
lying within the
200,000
acre and the 500,000 acre grants were issued in
increasing numbers, as
settlers became more numerous.
My investigations
lead
me to believe that the first permanent settler of
Buchanan was
Frederick
Stiltner. When I first came to the county to live in
January 1919, I
talked
to Christopher Stiltner who, as I recall, stated he
was a grandson of
Frederick.
Basil Stiltner, long employed in the office of the
Commissioner of the
Revenue at Grundy, and who is now 74 years of age,
states the original
Frederick, as a very young man, shipped as a
stowaway on a boat bound
from
Hamburg, Germany, to Norfolk; nearly starved, he had
to show himself at
last. After landing at Norfolk, he joined the
British army as a paid
Hessian
soldier. He did not like it, deserted and went west
to reach the
mountains
where the British could not find him. He was also no
doubt avoiding the
American troops. He finally reached Swords Creek in
Russell County, and
spent a few weeks with a widow and her two children.
He left there and
crossed Sandy Ridge, down Levisa River to the lower
end of the present
town of Grundy, and spent the winter in a hollow
poplar tree which had
blown down. Returning to the widow in the spring he
married her and
brought
her and children back and they built a small log hut
near the poplar
tree.
In 1827, based on a survey dated in 1821, he
obtained a grant for 124
acres
of land extending along the river from below Little
Prater Creek nearly
to Vansant.
I am strongly
inclined
to believe that there were two Frederick Stiltners,
a Senior and a
Junior,
and that the Senior was the one who came from
Germany. Basil may have
confused
the two. The boy who came over in 1777 was perhaps
17, and so was born
about 1760. Christopher was born in 1835, and it was
not likely that
his
father was sired by a Frederick who was then about
75. It is more
likely
that his father was Frederick, Jr. And further, it
is my recollection
that
Christopher told me it was his grandfather, not his
father, who came
from
Germany. Otherwise, the story told me by Christopher
and Basil are the
same.
One of the
Fredericks
in 1832 conveyed his 124 acre grant to John Yates.
Hannibal A. Compton,
former Commissioner of the Revenue of the county,
says in his history
written
for the 1958 Centennial, that Robert Looney came
first to the county,
and
then Joseph and John Looney in 1823. In some of the
histories it is
stated
that the Looneys came from Botetourt County,
Virginia, but other
writers
say they came from Tazewell County. I am inclined to
believe that they
came from Botetourt to that part of Tazewell County
which afterwards
became
Buchanan County.
Another very early
settler
was Milton Ward who, with all of his family and some
ten to fifteen
Negroes,
came from Bowen's or Ward's Cover in Tazewell
County, and settled at
the
mouth of Big Young Branch of Dismal. In 1850 he
obtained 3 grants, and
in 1873 he bought a large tract of land from the
Warders, supposed to
be
about three thousand acres, for which he paid
$200.00. A large family
of
Wards now live in that section of the county. His
slaves all remained
with
his family, and are buried in the family grave yard.
The old log house
stood until recent years, and the site is now
occupied by Tom Ward's
widow.
The Colemans,
ancestors
of Marjorie Coleman (my law partner at Grundy) were
also very early
settlers
of the county. Miss Coleman's father and mother were
both Colemans,
distantly
related. Incidently, her father's kinfolk were
Confederate sympathizers
while her mother's were Northern sympathizers. Miss
Coleman states that
her information is that four brothers settled in
Buchanan County who
were
from eastern Virginia and, while she does not know
the date they came,
her mother's father, Daniel B. Coleman, was born in
Buchanan County
about
1830, on the right fork of Paw Paw. It seems
reasonable to believe that
the family must have come to the county very early,
certainly in the
first
quarter of the 19th century. One of the four
brothers, Peter, settled
farther
up into the county, on Bull or Poplar Creek. Another
brother, Richard
D.
Coleman, settled on Home Creek and was killed by
William McClanahan
during
the Civil War. Richard D. Coleman patented many
thousand acres of land
in the county, but I am unable to locate any grant
earlier than 1835.
By 1860, two years
after
the founding of the county, the population was 2800;
in 1870, 3700; in
1880, it was 5700; in 1890 it was 5900; in 1900,
9700; in 1910 it was
12,300;
in 1920 it was 14,400; in 1930 it was 16,700; in
1940 it was 31,500; in
1960, it was 36,724. The present number of school
children is
approximately
10,396. There are 6 high schools in the county and
school property is
valued
at over five million.
In 1962 the total
assessed
value of all real estate, including public service
corporations in the
county, is $7,950,000, and of personal property,
$7,916,000, making a
total
valuation of all properties $15,916,000. When the
last reassessment of
lands was made in 1958, it was endeavored to assess
all real estate at
ten percent of its value, but total personal and
real property is
probably
assessed at less than one-tenth of their values, so
that the present
total
values of all properties in the county would
probably be in the
neighborhood
of $170,000,000.
In fixing
these
values, no account has been taken of the underwater
level coal, being
the
Pocahontas measures. The total area of these
measures would be in the
neighborhood
of 150,000 acres. In some places as many as three
mineral seams of coal
have been found by diamond drilling. These seams are
the famous
Pocahontas
No. 3, Pocahontas No. 4, and in addition in some
places a third seam,
its
exact classification at this time not being known,
and referred to as a
bastard seam, but perhaps covering a considerable
area. A rough
estimation
of such underwater level coal in the county, in my
opinion, is around
one
billion tons. Island Creek Company has leased one
area of its holdings,
totaling about 9300 acres. It has five other such
areas, while
Pittsburgh
Consolidated owns about two such areas, and the
Pittston Company and
other
interests would own about one such area or more. The
lease now being
developed
on the Island Creek holdings will mine about
1,200,000 tons of coal per
year. At that rate, if all the underwater level coal
were now leased,
and
the mining in each area would produce about the same
amount of coal per
year, it would take in the neighborhood of one
hundred years to mine it
all. And during this hundred years, around ten
millions of tons of coal
per year would be mined, the selling price of which
would likely be
around
fifty to seventy millions of dollars each year.
These figures apply
only
to the underwater level coal.
The above water
level
coal consists of the Cary or Lower Banner, the
Clintwood (both nearly
exhausted),
the Blair, Glamorgan, Hagy, two seams of Raven Red
Ash (Jewell Ridge
seam
is one of them, and around Grundy they are called
the Widow Kennedy and
the Grundy seams), the Splashdam, Jaw Bone and the
Tiller. Many of them
are being heavily mined and have been for the past
ten to twenty years,
and I would say they are about half exhausted. They
are much thinner
than
the Pocahontas measures and of poor quality. At
present Jewell
Smokeless
Coal Corporation is constructing 210 coke ovens,
just above the highway
bridge across Dismal River eight miles above Grundy.
It will ship about
a quarter of a million tons of high grade coke,
beginning next year.
The
Aetna Life Insurance Company of Hartford,
Connecticut, thought so much
of the venture that it lent to the operating company
last spring the
total
sum of $2,350,000, when the company owned none of
the coal, only
operated
under leases. Its present tipple and processing
plant is located almost
wholly on leased property.
In August, 1962, the
Buchanan
Branch of the Norfolk & Western shipped a
whopping record of 20,046
cars of coal. The average daily shipment of coal
from the county is
about
925 cars at 60 tons to the car. The coal shipped
would be around twelve
to thirteen million tons per year, at average sale
price of about $3.60
per ton, the total value of coal shipped would be
about $45,000,000 per
year. These are accurate figures of coal shipments
obtained a week ago
from our Trainmaster, Robert Y. Cook. About 25% of
all coal shipped
from
the entire Norfolk & Western combined system
comes from Buchanan
County.
Something like
a
hundred years ago, or perhaps more, the Virginia and
Kentucky Turnpike
was constructed from a point west of Tazewell,
across Sandy Ridge, into
Buchanan County, and on into Kentucky. This route
was used by a Union
general
during the Civil War. With some five thousand
troops, he traveled up
the
Levisa River and into Tazewell, intending to reach
and destroy the salt
works and shot tower in Wythe and Smythe Counties.
The Confederates
stopped
them before they had done damage, thus avoiding a
most disastrous loss.
Evidently, but little work was done on this road
thereafter.
On my first trip to
Grundy,
in 1906. I went on the N & W to Bluefield,
Devon, West Virginia,
and
there spent the night. Next morning we went up Knox
Creek to Hurley on
the Big Sandy & Cumberland Railroad to Hurley,
and thence by mule
pack
to Lester's Fork, down Elkins Branch to Grundy. The
only other access
into
the county was by horseback from Raven across Sandy
Ridge, and down
Levisa
to Grundy. In about 1908 the B. S. & C. was
extended to Matney,
nine
miles up Slate Creek from Grundy, so thereafter the
entire trip from
Devon
could be made to Grundy by that road. The trip from
Tazewell took some
4 to 5 hours to Devon, where one spent the night,
and about 5 hours
over
to Grundy.
In 1923 or 4, the B.
S.
& C. was bought by the N & W and thereafter
rights of way were
slowly bought from Devon to Grundy. In 1931 on July
1, the N &W,
ran
its first train of standard gauge track into Grundy.
It was a great
day.
In 1935-6, the N & W extended its road from
Grundy to the head of
Dismal
Creek.
In 1921-2 about
«
of a mile of improved road was built on the south
side of Slate Creek,
from a point opposite the high school to a point on
Slate Creek just
below
the Mountain Mission School.
In 1923 construction
on
the present Route 460 was begun, beginning just
below Little Prater
Creek.
It was completed, that is the grading, about 1930 or
1931. It was not
hard
surfaced for many years.
Until about 1908,
all
supplies and food not raised in the county were
hauled by wagon from
Raven
to Grundy. Time consumed was about three days for
the trip over,
loading
and back. After the B. S. & C. was extended to
Slate Creek, the
supplies
came that way.
About 1915, a small
electric
dynamo was erected on the present sight of Jackson
Hardware Company,
which
was operated by steam generated by coal. The lights
were turned on
about
dark and turned off promptly at 10:00 p.m. In case
of a party, the
fireman
would run an extra two hours for $5.00. The lights
were inadequate, and
no power equipment was run by the electricity so
produced. In 1923, an
electric power line was run from McDowell County
across Buchanan to
Dickenson
where it supplied mines of the Clinchfield Coal
Corporation. It crossed
to the north of Grundy, and crossed the Levisa River
just above the
mouth
of Looney's Creek, at the present substation. In
1925, a branch line
was
run from the substation to the town of Grundy and,
since then, we have
had adequate electric power and lighting.
After the railroad
was
constructed through the county, prosperity came and
for the most part
increased
by leaps and bounds. Today the only basic asset the
county has which
will
produce money is coal. Were it not for the coal
being taken and
processed
in the county, starvation, misery and want would
result in a matter of
months and the comfortable, well-equipped, and
modern homes now lived
in
and enjoyed by the people of the county would soon
become unoccupied
and
the values thereof would rapidly disappear.
In my opinion,
we
are assured of a substantial living from our coal
for the next 100 and
perhaps to 150 years. After that, what? The only
other basic asset
which
we have ever had was our fine coverage of timber. At
the end of 100 to
150 years no merchantable saw timber will be
available for
manufacturing
into lumber, because the people keep the timber cut
and removed as fast
as it grows into a moderate value. And, after that,
what?
Within the past few
months,
I have noted the modern tendency of the people,
young and old, to move
away from their old but comfortable homes on tops of
the mountains, the
heads of the branches, and from other inaccessible
places, down to an
easier
life where their late mode automobiles can reach the
new homes being
built
by our people on substantial hard-top roads. I have
talked with our
agricultural
and farm agent and with old citizens of the county.
Judging from their
opinions and my own observations, there is no doubt
these inaccessible
lands in the last 15 or 20 years have gradually been
abandoned to the
growth
of blackberry briars, underbrush, sassafras, other
small and scrubby
trees.
Twice within the past month or so, I have had
occasion to go over 350
acres
of land, the closest boundary line of which is
exactly one mile from
the
courthouse at Grundy. It is owned by a citizen of
Grundy who told me
that
he had not been on the land for 17 years. He was
born and reared on
this
land. He has torn down his father's old home place
and dive or six
tenant
houses which were in bad state of repair, to get rid
of an undesirable
bunch of tenants who paid no rent. In some places
the undergrowth is
almost
impassable. It is fast returning to the state of
nature found by the
early
settlers 75 to 100 years ago.
What shall be done
with
these old abandoned farms, do you ask me? Franklin,
I do not know. No
one
can clear the land and by cultivating it make enough
living on the
crops
produced therefrom to sustain him and his family.
Seemingly, they can
do
this in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Japan, but
not America. We
seem
to have no one work hard enough to wrest a living
from our steep, rocky
and wooded mountains.
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