By Stephen Smoot
Kris Warner, West Virginia Secretary of State, has made a point to visit the clerks of all 55 counties in the state as part of his purview as chief election and business licensing officer.
His visit to Pendleton County, however, had a bit of a personal note as well. Warner came to Pendleton County to explore family roots. Those family roots happen to intertwine with, and extend deep into Pendleton County history – all the way back to Captain John McCoy of Doe Hill, Virginia.
When McCoy settled there, Highland County had not yet hived off of Pendleton.
“The McCoys are of Scotch descent and have been prominent in Pendleton County,” according to Dyer Anderson and Eric Hedrick in “Selected Profiles from Pendleton County History,” They added that “the pioneer was named William and his grandson was General William. There have been William McCoys in every generation down to the present. Those McCoys not named William were named John with an occasional Robert.”
Warner traced his ancestry back to, as he states, “William McCoy who was born in 1700 in Ulster and arrived in the New World as a teenager in 1715 at the onset of the great Scots-Irish migration to America.”
Historian David Hackett Fischer in his seminal work, “Albion’s Seed,” identifies this culture, which originated in the borderlands between north England and lowland Scotland, as one of the four primary original cultures of the United States.
The Quaker elite who ruled the colony of Pennsylvania through much of the 1700s were not so much pacifist in principle as in just their own practice, a policy that Benjamin Franklin often gleefully mocked in his persistent opposition to them. They encouraged immigration of the pugnacious Scots-Irish to the Allegheny frontier so they could take on threats from the French and their Indian allies instead of the Quakers.
Warner shared from his research that “a quarter million Scots-Irish migrated to America in the 60 years from 1715 to the start of the Revolution.” He described them as “oppressed, hardened, proud, prolific people who sought nothing but unbridled freedom. What they craved most was to be found up along the mountainous frontier.”
It was the most natural reaction for those people with guts full of grit to see these mountains as home. The ancient Appalachian Mountains predate the Atlantic Ocean and run from central Georgia, up eastern North America, as well as Morocco and Spain. They form the backbone of the British Isles and extend through Greenland to the northern tip of Norway.
They had never seen these mountains, but had known of them all their lives.
Like almost all migrants in that time, they desired their own tract of land to support their family and earn a little cash. “Since,” as Warner stated, “all the good tillable tidewater and coastal lands had been taken . . . they streamed inland.” Thus was the incentive for many to accept the Quaker invitation.
“The upper Potomac regions were largely settled by recent German immigrants, so the Scots-Irish ascended up the James River watershed in the highlands west of Shenandoah,” stated Warner. German immigrants, by and large, came through Philadelphia. Franklin criticized them as unwilling to assimilate in language or manners and also accused them of taking native jobs.
German immigration expanded westward, then south, with each generation. They followed cheap and open land, first filling Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and then moving up the Shenandoah. Many of these families came through the gaps in the ridges of the Alleghenies to find new homes throughout West Virginia.
In this fashion, families named Conrad, Hawse, Hinkle, Hedrick, Mallow, and Warner found homes, then fought, farmed, manufactured, worshipped, recreated, and traded alongside those named Anderson, Boggs, Cunningham, Harman, and McCoy.
Warner told of his ancestor John as well, adding that “as a very young man, John co-owned a farm just above Staunton, Virginia. When he married Sarah Oliver, they moved up further into the highlands region.” He noted how “with the onset of the French and Indian War in 1755, Shawnee raids against the frontier settlements became routine and horrific.”
Chief Cornstalk of the Shawnee Nation, an ancestor of former United States Senator from West Virginia Carte Goodwin, led one of the most murderous. He led his band to join a large group of frontiersmen in celebration in modern Greenbrier County. The celebrants invited the Shawnee to join them in consuming libations and eating. Once the settlers drank and ate themselves into a stupor, Cornstalk ordered his men to their primary mission, killing the settlers and taking every bit of iron they could find.
The quest for iron, which American Indians valued above almost all else, may have also attracted Chief Killbuck to the ill-fated Fort Seybert, located not far from Doe Hill.
John McCoy, all of 22 years old, raised a company of militia to protect the area against Shawnee and other Indian nations. He served under the equally youthful Colonel George Washington commanding Virginia forces and leading the construction of a belt of forts from north to south on the frontier.
Shawnee warriors feared and respected Virginians more than any other, referring to the colony as “the Big Knife” and its people as “the Long Knives.” They knew what Washington did, that the Scots-Irish who filled the ranks had fighting spirit and ability. Scots-Irish militia would defend their homes to the death; they could, and would, match the Indians’ tactics in aggression and sometimes even cruelty.
Washington called on John McCoy during both the French and Indian War and the War for Independence. Both times the captain served faithfully and well.
The branch of the McCoy family that led to the current member of the board of public works extended through Joseph, who was born in 1776, and then Benjamin McCoy who was born in Lewis County sometime in the 1820s. That branch settled in Barbour County, where the Warner family still enjoys their homeplace.
The Warner family continues the traditions of the McCoys in service to both country and community. Many have proudly matriculated at one of the United States military academies and have given many years of service in that fashion. Kris Warner serves currently as secretary of state, an office his brother, Mac, held for eight years. Mac Warner also served in Afghanistan overseeing free elections during the United States presence there.
General William McCoy, born in 1768, stayed close and represented another major branching of the family tree. He acquired and farmed the lengthy tract of South Branch lands between Franklin and Trout Rock and represented the area for 22 years in the United States House of Representatives. Alongside these holdings, the family constructed the historically significant mill that still bears their name.
McCoy also held the rank of brigadier general in the Commonwealth militia and had served as both a county justice and a member of the Virginia General Assembly.
His nephew, also named William, built the mansion now owned and operated by Jared and Katie VanMeter, another family name often appearing in Potomac Highlands history annals. Judge H. M. Calhoun recalled in “Twixt North and South” how Union soldiers tormented one of McCoy’s bulls, chasing it through the streets of Franklin during their occupation, trying to shoot it as it ran.
Union forces used his mansion as a center for military communications as well. McCoy was serving as a third lieutenant in the locally raised Franklin Guards. They fought in the “Philippi Races,” the opening land battle of the Civil War, as well as with Major General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson at times.
Warner’s work last also took him to Webster County where he met with the county clerk. He also traveled to Upshur County, where he joined Kristie Tenney, county commissioner, on a Mountaineer Mile. He also conducted several interviews to help recruit poll workers while touting the benefits of the office’s business registration system.
West Virginia has the good fortune of having so many long-standing families with roots established centuries back. This provides a foundation of tradition that the state and its people can look back on with pride while also referring to it as it forges into the future.
