30 Years Ago
Week of January 18, 1996
National Guard Helping Pendleton Dig Out of Snow
Pendleton County received the assistance of the West Virginia National Guard in its efforts to cope with the recent snowstorm that dumped 35 to 45 inches of snow on Pendleton County. Two National Guard units were in the county, one unit with four people and two Humvees last week from Fairmont and one unit with an end loader, two dump trucks and a Humvee from Moundsville over the weekend.
President Clinton has declared a major disaster for West Virginia, triggering the release of federal disaster funds to help communities recover from the snow storm of 1996.
Miles Dahmer Had Interesting Live
Traveling down the Mississippi on a paddle wheeler, meeting Indians, homesteading in Indian Territory, and fighting in the War Between the States, sounds like scenes from a movie—movie no—but the true life adventures of a young man from Pendleton County in 1857.
On the evening of October 19, 1995, members of the Brig. General James Boggs Camp, Sons of Confederate veterans were given a very interesting and informative program by Miles Dahmer.
Through letters written from Grasshopper Falls in Jefferson County, Kansas Territory, to his aunts back in Pendleton County, Miles has left a very detailed record of his travels westward in 1857.
By Easter Sunday, April 12, 1857, he had arrived at Parkersburg, Virginia, (WV) after traveling from Pendleton County by foot, horseback, and train. Describing this stage of his trip he states, “My load got powerful heavy and my feet blistered very much before I got to the cars. And in fact I felt exactly like I had been chawed and spit out again.”
On the same day he boarded the paddle wheeler “Marriner” and started down the Ohio River. Stopping for a day in Cincinnati, he states, “tired enough I was of the place for it smoked as black as your backwall.
After traveling through a gale which lasted a day and two nights with waves that splashed over the lower deck and causing much excitement, he arrived in St. Louis, Missouri. The boat was overcrowded with 150 passengers. There were not enough staterooms and he was one of the unfortunate ones to sleep on the floor.
Miles met some very interesting characters while onboard. There was a traveling show complete with elephants and horses as well as a “band of musick” which provided music for dancing after supper.
A lot of excitement was created when one of the male passengers fell overboard after having too much brandy. He states, “I tell you…they had a little camp meeting about that time in the cabin. The women all rushed out of their cabin among the men and such crying and wringing of hands and hugging and kissing their husbands wherever they found them.”
He sums up his boat trip by saying, “Boatmen are very clever until they get your money and then they don’t care if the devil had you.”
Miles was very impressed by the Indians he met and described them as having “their hair platted and hanging down over their shoulders with their ears full of silver ear bobs and beads around their necks and a gilded girdle around their waist with tomahawk and scalping knife, and squaws with their papooses in a blanket across their shoulders and a big brass and gold plate on their breast, but I’m not the least afraid of all their scalping knives, tomahawks and smoke pipes.”
When the War Between the States began the 46th Regiment was called into active service by General “Stonewall” Jackson. It was later disbanded and members were reorganized into regular Confederate service. Miles joined Company E of the 25th Virginia Infantry as a private. He was wounded in the Battle of McDowell and later while home on furlough was captured by the Home Guards and sent to prison at Athenaeum in Wheeling and from there to Camp Chase, Ohio. In 1863, he was sent to City Point, Virginia, and freed in a prisoner exchange.
After the war he married and started civilian life on the family farm at Kline where he remained until the end of his life in 1894.
40 Years Ago
Week of January 23, 1986
First Week Lottery Sales Hit $5.1 Million In West Virginia
Ticket sales of the West Virginia Lottery in its first week of operation are estimated at more than $5.1 million, Lottery Director Ralph Peters said today.
Three Land Biggest Trout
The biggest fish caught in Pendleton County in 1985 was a brown trout that measured 24.25 inches and weighed seven pounds. It was caught last April along with two eels on an outline south of Franklin using minnows for bait. Helping land the catch were Neil Atkins of Stuarts Draft, Va., and Harlan Mitchell and Joe Frank Propst, both of Moyers.
DAHMER
Johnny Arvin Dahmer Reminisces Life and Times of Early Settlers
When the early setters came to this section they depended on hunting game and clearing of the land to grow food and clothing for a living. Clearing the land of timber was done through muscle power by the ax and grubbing hoe (mattock).
The best of the oaks and chestnut with a straight grain of wood were split into rails for fencing, furniture, firewood and clapboards for roofs. The logs often used in the house and other buildings depended on what species of trees that grew nearby.
The Joel Dahmer house consisted of white pine. Many nice logs were just rolled together and burned. Chestnut when green is hard to burn so oak and hickory logs were mixed in to help burn the chestnut logs.
At the passing of time the crosscut saw came into use. This saw had only cutting teeth—no rakers—which made it hard to pull and it was given the nickname of “wade and butcher.”
A rule used in this section was when someone cleared on another person’s land, they were to have four crops for clearing the land. Land was considered more valuable cleared than in timber.
The first houses were more simple looking. Then, later the better houses were built from logs hewn on two sides. The first frame houses in this section were built sometime after the War Between the States and the roofs were white pine split shingles.
As the population increased neighbors came together to help in house and barn raisings, log rolling, rock pickings, fence building and firewood cuttings, etc., which in this section was called a frolic. A day was set and folks walked for miles to attend a frolic. The women folks could come, do sewing, quilting and help prepare the meals. The dinner was rather a light meal. Supper was the big meal which often consisted of the chicken potpie along with other food.
After the women cleared away the meal, the good time began, thus the name frolic. Often at the tune of the fiddle, dancing began, games were played which often lasted until the wee hours of the morning. Mrs. Columbia Rader told of a frolic at the Labon H. Propst farm in Mill Run Gap that she and others walked home at the breaking of dawn.
Sometimes a male person coming to the frolic late to avoid the work without an excuse would be given a ride on a rail. The person would be overpowered, placed on a rail to be given a ride by several strong men, which sometimes turned out to be a rough ordeal.
In the year of 1912 or 1913 Daniel Waggy, and Willie and Chapman Wimer had a wood chopping on Sandy Ridge, which was well attended. At roll time or supper time, 26 hands were found present and the boys said an enjoyable time was had last night.
At a frolic at Benjamin Propst’s at Ned’s Mountain, Ben was so well pleased with the work done, he danced that night barefooted in a hoe-down dance that he called the inching hook.
50 Years Ago
Week of January 22, 1976
Pendleton Is Last Stronghold of Use Of German Language
COLLEGE PROFESSOR SAYS
“The remote areas of Pendleton County could be the last stronghold of the use of the German language (in this section of the country as a principal means of communication).”
This is the opinion of Dr. Kurt Kehr of Marburg, Germany, who has spent the last eight years doing research on the use of German language in Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley and surrounding area. Dr. Kehr said here Saturday that the German language is still used more extensively in the Sugar Grove, Brushy Fork and Moatstown areas than anywhere else in this section of the country.
Dr. Kehr said there have been two significant discoveries in Pendleton County concerning German customs and folkways.
One of the discoveries was a “Pow Wow Book” for manuscript found several years ago in a local family which was written in German and contained many cures, customs and other folkways of German origin.
The second discovery was one which he had made on Brushy Fork. It was a “cure” of inflictions affecting horses. Dr. Kehr said this cure, which was still being used by the individual, involved rubbing the hands over the horse and down his legs while saying German words. Dr. Kehr said this probably is the only place in the country where this cure still is practiced.
The college professor said immigrants came to America from Germany as early as 1683. Many of them settled in Pennsylvania, then moved down into the Shenandoah Valley along what is now Route 11.
The first German settlement in the Shenandoah Valley dates back to 1720, and about 20 years later, they started migrating into the South Branch Valley. Much of the movement into the South Branch Valley counties of Pendleton and Highland was through gaps extending from the Shenandoah Valley.
Dr. Kehr said the party line telephone was one of the strongest influences in preserving the use of the German language. “When people didn’t want their neighbors to know what they were saying, they would speak in German,” he said.
60 Years Ago
Week of January 20, 1966
STRANGE DOINGS AT BRANDYWINE
Much has been said recently about the high cost of pork which is due to the scarcity of hogs in the United States.
Seeing that man with all his technical knowledge and know-how, was doing little about it, a sow at Brandywine took things into her own hands and farrowed 21 pigs Monday.
Mr. Arlie Raines who operates the Temple Farm, where the sow is owned, said that the Yorkshire has had three previous litters with 10 or 11 pigs in each one of them.
Denver Bennett and Allen Rexrode transplanted two tomato plants in buckets last fall at Brandywine Grade School and one plant is now bearing with one tomato already ripened and another beginning to ripen. The other plant is in bloom.
Thirteen From County Inducted
The following men have been inducted into service and are now taking their basic training:
Jerry Auvile, Riverton; Mitchell Moore, Sugar Grove; Dallas A. Hedrick, Mouth of Seneca; Gary W. Armstrong, Doe Hill.
Paul Bolton, Jr., Brandywine; Larry D. Hedrick, Upper Tract; William O. Simmons, Ft. Seybert; Edward A. Wimer, Franklin; Larry R. Hedrick, Franklin;
Olin R. Landis, Cherry Grove; Benny F. Scott, Brandywine; Dolan E. Harper, Riverton; Jerry Sherrill Propst, Moyers.
70 Years Ago
Week of January 19, 1956
EDITORIALS
Listen to Our Former Presidents – – –
In his memoirs, Harry Truman speaks of the incredibly heavy burden of work that is imposed upon the president. Now Herbert Hoover suggests that Congress create the office of an administrative vice-president, legally empowered to administer many duties of a relatively routine nature that are borne by the president.
We should certainly heed the words of our only two living former presidents. The job, as now constituted, is a potential killer. In addition, it is absolutely impossible for any man to discharge the unnecessarily multitudinous responsibilities of the presidency efficiently and fully.
