Thursday, July 23, 1925
OVER ON CRANBERRY
Last week I went to the Glades of Cranberry River. The orchids were in bloom. It was a wonderful sight. Acres and acres of soft pink flowers on a carpet of moss. I came back full of skeeter bites, bog water and enthusiasm and strength renewed.
In my time, I have had many a camping trip in the glades. I have always carried a gun or a fishing pole. In the days before the game laws, I usually took both. This time I had neither hook and line nor gun. It was the best trip in the woods I ever had. I learned a lot about plants and flowers, birds and bugs, but the most I learned is that after a life in the woods, I am densely ignorant of the works of creation. My spirit is chastened, my heart contrite and humble, and an inferior complex is painfully apparent…
I will not write anything about the trip home. We expected to return by way of the High Rocks above Stamping Creek, but the last person there must have misplaced them, as they were not where we expected to find them.
NAZARENES
The Nazarene Tent meeting at Marlinton closed last Wednesday night. There were more than 130 conversions. The evangelists both endeared themselves to the town and community. The result of the meeting was the organization of a Nazarene Church with 48 members. A beautiful corner lot on Court Street has been purchased for the erection of a church. The pastor from Woodrow is supplying the new church until the arrival of the permanent pastor, which will be about the middle of September. The new church coming to town will be an asset to the entire community.
GREENBRIER VALLEY
Having just returned from a 10-day sojourn in the beautiful and historic Greenbrier Valley, I thought some of your readers might be interested in a few observations of a traveler. While it seems away over east of the mountain, you can eat breakfast in Fairmont, dinner in Elkins and supper in Ronceverte and enjoy a day of delightful sightseeing. From Elkins to Durbin is wild enough for the most ardent lover of majestic grandeur; and the 100 miles from Durbin to Ronceverte is a vale of surpassing beauty, with a new vista at every one of the thousand turns in the road. Road, mountain, peak and wooded slope, towns and villages and fertile fields and stately homes.
Marlinton, the county seat of Pocahontas County, is situated on a pretty little plain at the confluence of Knapps Creek with the Greenbrier River. While there are only about 2,000 persons living there now, there is ample room for a city of 10,000 population, all on perfectly level ground. They have splendid grade and high school buildings, many beautiful homes and at least two fine churches, one of them costing $75,000…
While in Marlinton, I was a dinner guest in the home of Editor Price of The Pocahontas Times and his delightful family. The office of the Times is a veritable museum of pioneer relics. Here is the finest private collection of arrow heads, spearheads, axes, pottery and other Indian artifacts that I have seen anywhere. There are some interesting geological formations in this region. There are mountains of solid limestone from 500 to 1,000 feet high, and mountains not far away in which there is no limestone at all. The uplands around Hillsboro are a beautiful and fertile farming plateau, while Droop Mountain, of solid limestone, lifts its head above the clouds 2,000 feet from the river at its base. I stopped to rest awhile in the very lap of old Droop and eat a fine dinner of stewed chicken, honey and biscuits. (Don’t tell this to Larry Boggs.)
There are springs issuing from some of these limestone mountains large enough to turn a mill wheel. One spring, near Buckeye, issues from a cave in which there are plenty of brook trout, and a mile below the spring is an old mill that used to be run by the stream from this and a smaller County, I drank from an alum spring that seemed capable of supplying all the people of West Virginia with alum. Some of these springs contain almost every soluble mineral. This is especially true of the Blue and White Sulphur Springs of Greenbrier County. Four or five miles east of Renick, on a limestone upland, is the finest view that I have ever looked upon, and I have looked over Uncle Sam’s farm from Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts to the border of Texas. I wish I could describe it that you might see it through my eyes.
Both Pocahontas and Greenbrier counties are raising a great many fine sheep, and on these limestone uplands they are growing as fine of wheat as one could wish to see. The large tanneries and lumber mills along the river furnish employment to many men and the people seem to be prosperous and happy…
MARRIED
July 1, 1925, at the Methodist Parsonage at White Sulphur Springs, Miss Amanda Susan Taylor and Mr. Pinkney Edwin Doyle, of Stony Bottom.
BIRTHS
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Oley Jackson, near Marlinton, July 1, a daughter.
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Howard McNeill, of Onoto, July 17, a son.
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Vaughan, at Raywood, July 16, 1925, a 10-pound boy.
DIED
Thomas Houchin died at a hospital in Ronceverte Monday evening, July 13, 1925. His age was 67 years. On Tuesday his body was buried at the cemetery near his late home on Back Alleghany Mountain. Mr. Houchin is survived by his wife who was Miss Mary McNeill, a sister of Joe B. McNeill, near Marlinton. Their children are Mrs. Walter Beverage, of Hosterman; Mrs. Clara Ronner, of Salty Fork; Cecil, Elmer and Harper. One son, Ward, was killed in France in the World War as a member of the American Expedition Forces.
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Infant son of Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Ervine, July 17, 1925, aged six weeks.
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Elijah Cogar, 81, died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Fred Galford, July 17, 1925. The funeral service was conducted from the West Union Church with burial in the Cochran Graveyard.
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Miss Ethel Dean, aged about 22 years, died at the home of her father, Issac Dean, near Rimel.
