Thursday, October 26, 1899
A group of neighbors in The Hills, consisting of four or five families living in sight of each other, have between three and four hundred turkeys roaming their fields in common.
Last week, two persons shucked about seven bushels of corn in W. T. Moore’s cornfield, Browns creek, and carried it away. And while at work, they were so merciful to their beast as to give it a good feed.
C. B. Codah has purchased the tract of 904 acres of land on the head of Clover Creek belonging to Moore, Barlow, McAllister and Price, and 270 acres belonging to Rev. William T. Price adjoining the same.
The Webster Echo publishes the shame of Webster county when it says twelve divorce suits have been brought in that county since August court. Pocahontas, a more populous county, averages about one divorce suit a year.
The late forest fires damaged Messrs Ginger and Messer considerably in Buckley mountain, destroying corn in the shock and fencing.
The telephone wires and poles were wrecked by burning trees for near a half mile from the upper end of Spice Island to the falling rocks between Huntersville and Marlinton.
Kenny Kennison, aided by a number of railroad hands, succeeded in protecting Dr. Cunningham’s “Moore place” from the fire that has been ravishing the surrounding forests.
The reviewers, Messrs Bird, B. M. Yeager and Curry, relocated the road last week between Marlinton and Huntersville on a grade so nearly level that the water will hardly know which way to run.
There was a fire alarm raised in the vicinity of Edray last Friday evening. Mr. Yeager fired around his farm and made it safe. Saturday morning early, some of our citizens whose property was in the most danger raised the cry of fire again and began firing against the destructive enemy on both sides of the pike leading from Stony Creek to Edray. By nightfall they had succeeded in making themselves to all appearances safe.
SUNSET
We are having terrible fires in the Alleghanies at present. The lumbermen are having some trouble in saving their logs.
Considerable excitement was occasioned by a fire breaking out in Newton Moore’s house. A panther attacked some boys one night long since opposite Hugh Dever’s on the spruce bank.
DUNMORE
Keep your smokehouses and granaries locked. A lot of dogs have been shot about Dunmore.
Very dry and smokey. It has been trying to rain for several days, and the smoke is so thick that the rain cannot get through.
There is enough rock in the road between Dunmore and Frost to build a wall around Jericho 40 feet high.
RAILROAD WORK
Pitts Camp is working about 120 hands, divided into five gangs, working on the hillside opposite the mouth of Stony Creek. While there are a few teams and carts at work, most of the force is employed in pick and shovel work. A large force of men and teams worked several days in breaking up the surface soil two hundred feet through a dense thicket of small laurel and other brush. This is where the road emerges into the bottomland and the fill commences.
Solid rock, covered with a thin layer of soil was struck above Colonel Gay’s fields. Here the rock is broken up by blasting, and the debris removed by crowbar, pick and shovel. The work is interesting to watch. After a shot, the air is full of small stones for a hundred feet around, and large rocks are blown into the middle of the river…
DIED CAPTAIN WILLIAM L. McNEEL
It becomes our mournful duty to announce the death of this distinguished citizen of our county, which occurred at his residence near Hillsboro Friday, October 13, 1899, aged about 78 years.
For more than fifty years, he was a prominent busy man of affairs on various lines of business endeavor, merchandising, farming, grazing, and dealing in livestock on an extended scale.
In the War Between the States, his lot was with the Confederate cause, and he made a distinguished record for fidelity to duty, unflinching judicious bravery in battle and extraordinary kind- ness and consideration for the soldiers under his command. Since the war, his fellow citizens were ever ready to honor him by any means in their gift. He represented his senatorial district in the West Virginia Legislature.
He was a well-informed person and was a friend of good moral, honorable business methods and liberal education, and would rank anywhere as a model citizen, and a high-toned West Virginia gentleman. From early youth to the present time, the writer has known and esteemed this lamented man as a special friend and feels this to be a notice by no means such as his true worth deserves…
When the supreme moment came, this good, brave and honored man went to rest, gently as a little child, and now bivouacs in his silent tent in dreamless repose. – W. T. P.