Thursday, August 13, 1897
NEAR THE road on the farm of Mr. Tom Callison at Locust, may be seen the grave of an Indian. Stones were collected and heaped in a pyramidal form to the height of five or six feet – probably as a protection from the attacks of wild animals and as a mark of respect for some distinguished warrior and hunter – whose name and deeds, as those of his tribe, are lost in oblivion. Imagination is left to the visitor of this spot to recall the history of this native monarch of the soil; aided by such implements of stone as are often picked up, illustrating that manner of life of an interesting and ingenious people.
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MULVEY PRICE MOORE, the seven-year-old son of William Moore, on Brown’s Creek, did all the dropping for seven acres of corn and all the thinning out for five acres and a good deal of the hoeing. We would like to hear from other farmer boys of similar age.
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BURKE MCCALL, Rockingham County, Virginia, an experienced horse trader, camped near Marlinton for a few days last week. In summer, he travels with his family with a wall tent and two covered wagons, a cooking stove, a negro cook, a hostler or two, and about a dozen horses. They pitch their tent by some stream, and tie up the horses near the tent. The local traders accept the implied challenge and rush in to contend with him. McCall has helped many a young trader to cut his eye teeth.
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IT LOOKS as if Kentucky has gone into the crime-fostering business. In the last four hundred and eighty-four working days, six hundred and seventy-five pardons have been granted to criminals by the Governor of Kentucky and the Lieutenant Governor. Ninety-six of these were murderers and had been sent up for life, and the another sixty-four had been convicted of man-slaughter and sent up for limited terms. Three men were sentenced to be hung, and these the Governor changed to imprisonment for life. It seems the masses are catching the idea of no serious punishment for crime. No one seems surprised that crime should be on the increase. Hence the temptation to that crime and dire evil – lynch or mob law.
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COLONEL J. W. Cochran, of Folly Mills, Augusta County, and a prominent citizen, passed Marlinton Saturday on his way to Webster Springs. He was accompanied by Colonel Brown. Colonel Cochran says he was shown a deed dated 1769 conveying a tract of land from a Mr. Gay to Lieut. John Warwick. This land is the Dunmore property, and settles the parentage of Jacob Warwick, the noted pioneer. Lieut. Warwick was a British officer, and served in Captain Charles Lewis’ company in the Braddock expedition.
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A VERY large bear came into William Sharp’s yard on Clover Creek last Saturday. William scared the bear and the bear scared William.
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About 400 people attended Rev. D. C. Hedrick’s meeting on Back Alleghany Sunday. Five large rattlesnakes were killed near the preaching ground.
BIOGRAPHIC
Among the citizens of our county in later years from the forties to the sixties that took a lively interest in everything that promised to promote the interests of education, morality and the prosperity of the county generally, John Hartman Ruckman, Esq., deserves more than a brief notice.
He traced his ancestry to one, Samuel Ruckman, a native of England, and born in 1643. The Ruckmans had lived awhile in Northeast Wales, bordering England, and thence came to Long Island, New York, in 1682. Thomas Ruckman, son of Samuel, the Welsh emigrant, was born on Long Island, in 1682, and his son, James Ruckman, another link in the ancestral chain, was born in New Jersey in 1716. James Ruckman’s son, David Ruckman, was born in New Jersey in 1747. David Ruckman is the progenitor of the Ruckman relationship in Highland and Pocahontas counties…
The settler married a New Jersey wife, who seems to have been a lady of high aspirations, and longed for something far better than she could have in New Jersey. Marvelous accounts seemed to have been reported about the beauty, wealth and happiness of southern homes. That, in Virginia, people lived in houses with earthen floors, discarding the use of wood. She seems to have gathered from the reports that the floors were of mosaic work, such as princes have about their homes in the old country. Upon reaching the place of destination and finding what earthen floors meant on the Virginia frontier, her disappointment was so intense that she wished to return at once; but circumstances were such that this was impossible, and so the situation was accepted, they went to work and a home was reared out of the Virginia forest.
Her name was Susannah Little…
POOR FARM
THIS COUNTY owns a poor-farm as is required by the laws of the State. This farm is situated near Hillsboro in the Levels, and was purchased for about $8,000.
It is the farm formerly owned by Gratton Miller and is a very valuable tract of land. At the present time there are three paupers on the place and this is about the usual number. The farm rents for $333.
This rent is paid partly by keeping the three paupers and improvements. It would seem a very poor investment to own as expensive a farm as this to maintain three indigent people who could be kept without this large sum invested in land, but the County Court argues that in case we did not have a poor-house there would be drains on the public treasury from a hundred persons where there is one now.
The rule seems to be, when a poor person applies to the overseer for help, for the overseer to offer him a pass to the poor-house, and that word has such an effect on him that he will beg, borrow, steal or work before he will go there. They have a holy horror of being consigned to the poor-house. The poor-farm lacks a dwelling house, and the court at a recent term laid a levy to build one.
