Thursday, November 5, 1897
WHEN the timber of our mountains has been harvested, yielding great gains to those who put it on the market, the lumberman will give way to the stockman and farmer, and instead of great wastes of brush growing up where the large timber stood, there will be farms, farmhouses, fences and cattle, and these prosperous farming communities will feed towns, boom or otherwise, on the 300,000 acres.
We certainly have room in Pocahontas county for a farming population of 50,000 people. We have barely 7,000 now. After the timber is taken off, the farmers will come, and to them we will have to look as the main promoters of this new county, and to them will be due the lasting prosperity of this section. Our true benefactor is the man who will make two blades of grass grow where one grew before.
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INTERESTING news comes from the Russian oil fields on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The whole district is in flames, and the appearance of things beats anything ever seen on earth since historic times in the way of fire. There are four hundred wells, and two or three of them whose output is said to exceed all the wells of the United States put together.
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THERE is a very serious uprising in the southern provinces of the Chinese empire. On the 27th of August, the city of Kuang Yang was captured. The officials of the city and many thousands of the citizens were put to death. The avowed purpose of this attack was to release rebel prisoners from the city prisons.
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A MR. HUGHES, correspondent for an English journal, had a hard time of it in Cuba quite recently. In nosing around for something to write about in Pinar de Rio, he fell among some Spanish guerrillas and was robbed of everything but his clothes. Upon appealing to the Spanish authorities for redress he was simply laughed at, and so he had to walk to Havana ragged and without anything to eat. Having lost his passport, he could not establish his identity and died of starvation in the streets of Havana.
DUNMORE
IT raineth and the wheat and grass groweth, and the wind bloweth and its apt to snoweth later on.
The singing association closed Saturday night last. It was a grand success.
Squire P. D. Arbogast has sold his house and lot at Point Lookout.
S. C. Gay, the hospitable hotel keeper, is going to move to Greenbrier County this week.
Two hotels will open at Green Bank this week, W. A. Gladwell and Leslie Beard. Opposition is the life of trade.
Wise Herold started to market Monday with 1,000 sheep. He has shipped this season 3,400 sheep.
Misses Kate McElwee and Pearl Sharp, of Driscol, spent a week at Dunmore.
Our mail carriers make good time and the hacks are a public convenience.
CLOVER CREEK
Wanted: a first class cook at Clover Lick.
There is to be a wedding on the Creek soon. Keep your eyes open. Mr. —- says he is tired of boarding.
Dr. Ligon has arrived with forty-two head of two-year olds.
James Rhea has made 18,000 shingles in the past few weeks. Look out for new roofs.
J. H. Doyle complains that the rats are destroying his winter fruit.
Mr. Bell left Monday with 100 hogs for the eastern markets.
BIOGRAPHIC NOTES
John Smith, of Stony Creek.
This paper is designed to perpetuate the memory of two very deserving persons, who were among the first to open up a home on Stony Creek near its source, now known as the West Union neighborhood.
Mr. John Smith was a native of Ireland and was of Scotch-Irish ancestry. A large percentage of the Pocahontas citizenship is of this stock, and it should be the aim of our younger people to inform themselves about this people so as to learn what may be expected of them in order to be truly worthy sons and daughters of one of the best of living races. A race of people who, according to Macauley, Bancroft, Thomas Carlisle and others, has done more for human liberty and advancement than any other people now in the world.
John Smith came to this region in the seventies of the previous century, from Pennsylvania, and on becoming acquainted with the family of Levi Moore, the pioneer at Frost, he made love to Sally Moore, one of the daughters. Upon their marriage the two young people took a fancy to the large spring that gushes so copiously and beautifully from the rocky cliffs near the source of Stony Creek and settled close by it and built up their home, one of the best of its kind in their day. The place is now occupied by the family of the late Captain William Cochran… There they raised their two sons and six daughters…
In their day, their home was a place where the young people had good times, as good times went in the pioneer era. At log-rollings, wool-picking, quilting, and flax pulling, the youngsters met, fell in love and did much of their courting. Sunday, it would be preaching or all day prayer meetings when it was not deemed right and proper to think and talk about anything but Heaven and heavenly things.
The grandest social events would be the weddings that occurred just as fast as the young people thought themselves old enough to get married and go to themselves. Thursday was the usual day for the marriage. The first three days were spent in preparation, and the last three in the wedding, infare, and returning home. These nuptial occasions were usually seasons of such exquisite enjoyment that all the young people, seemingly, came to like weddings so well that nothing would do but they must have one of their own as soon as convenient, and so it came to be a proverb that one wedding soon makes another…
It is touching to reflect how widely apart are the graves of their children. Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri and West Virginia have graves where members of this family are waiting for the coming of the Redeemer they learned to know and love in the old parental home on Stony Creek…