Thursday, August 10, 1922
While on Knapps Creek last week, county agent Willey got an old bear trap from Hon. I. B. Moore. This trap belonged to Moses Moore, the Indian fighter and pioneer and has been in the Moore family for five generations. The tradition about the trap is that it was traded for lands which comprise five fine Knapps Creek farms worth perhaps $75,000. The trap will be a part of the pioneer exhibit at the County Fair at Marlinton.
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F. L. Cackley, of Millpoint, has furnished an old tar bucket for use at the Pioneer Exhibit at the Fair. Also an old mold board of a plow made by John Bruffey. George F. Alderman, of Burr, brought in a bayonet and two minnie balls from the Droop Mountain battle ground as part of the historical exhibit.
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The first brick on the new Methodist church in Marlinton was laid Monday morning. Charles J. McCue, of Elkins, is doing the brick work, and he expects to have a force of four of five masons at work before the week ends. The walls will be of concrete brick faced with a cream finish brick.
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W. W. Kinnison has the contract for the new school house at Hillsboro. It will be a brick veneer building, 70 x 90 feet, two stories high. It will have a fine auditorium 56 x 56, not including a large stage.
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Zed Smith, Jr., will probably buy the farm lying on the eastern edge of the corporation of Marlinton from his father, Z. S. Smith. This is a farm of over a hundred acres, and has been put in fine condition the past few years. Mr. Smith expects to build a handsome residence and move here as soon as possible. The paper gladly welcomes these folks back home.
STORE ROBBED
Cass, W. Va. – The store of J. A. Whitelaw and Jack Bird at Green Hill, Va., was broken into last Saturday night and near a thousand dollars’ worth of goods stolen. Evidently the thieves figured that the loss would not be discovered until Monday morning, but as the best laid plans of men and mice fall to the ground however J. Lute Bird and James Chestnut, of the vicinity of Green Hill, in passing by in their auto found they needed some oil for their car, and calling a clerk to get that much needed article they discovered the fact that the store had been robbed.
The prosecuting attorney at Monterey was immediately called to the scene of the robbery, and as some well known characters of Cass, W. Va., had been seen loitering in the neighborhood all the day before, the finger of suspicion pointed strongly toward them as the robbers. At five o’clock in the afternoon the trail of the robbers was picked up at a creek where they had lost a plug of tobacco of the brand kept in the store. The trail led towards W. Va. It was immediately followed, and additional evidence was picked up from time to time and, by 8 p.m., Mr. Bird and Mr. Chestnut had traced their quarry to Cass. There they quietly got in communication with the local officer and, with the necessary papers, commenced a vigorous search for the thieves, and stolen property, as well. A long hard drive across Elk Mountain in the middle of the night resulted in the arrest of Dewey Rose and Wallace Phillips, and the recov- ery of numerous articles of the stolen property in their possession. Returning to Cass, and locking up the prisoners, the searchers motored to the home of J. Henry Rider, near Greenbank, and arrested Sydney Ryder and Roy Rogers, and recovered some more of the loot. The prisoners, realizing they were squarely up against the long arm of the law, waived examination and readily allowed themselves to be taken back to the scene of the crime.
Sunday School Convention
The annual County Sunday School convention was held last Friday and Saturday at Westminster church on Knapps Creek… This is the first time since the conventions have grown so large that a rural community has attempted to entertain it, but the people of Knapps Creek took care of it in a manner that bespeaks their openhanded hospitality.
A feature of the convention was the attendance, which was good at every session, and on Saturday the crowd most have numbered one thousand people. There were by actual count 115 automobiles besides trucks, buggies and wagons parked at the church at one time. Mention should be made, too, of the wonderful basket dinner spread on the beautiful church yard, of which a thousand partook, and there was much left.
It was foreseen that the church would not hold the people, so seats were arranged on the shady hillside in amphitheater-style, with a big stage the whole length of the church. At night the grove was lighted by a Delco light plant…
FAIRGROUNDS
The Fairgrounds are historic. It was here the Drinnen cabin stood that was besieged by the Indians in 1778, on the occasion of their last appearance in this valley. It was a war party of Indians sent out by the British to destroy the settlers on the western waters…
The exact place where the cabin stood was in the uppermost meadow, a hundred yards or more from the river bank, right on the line of the Carter farm. It was on this raid that the Indians succeeded in killing thirteen persons in this part of the county. They never returned, but the people lived in dread of them for thirty or forty years after that time.
