June 18, 1897
THE DELINQUENT tax list of Monongalia county shows a total of only 160 names. The list recently published by Mason county reveals 1,700, and brings forth some caustic comments from the Point Pleasant Register. The Hon. George Washington Tippett says, “the vast majority of these dead beats are voters,” and strongly advocates a law to compel a man to pay his taxes before allowing him to vote.
BIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES
Jacob Cassell, ancestor of the numerous relationships of that name, was a native of Pendleton County. In early manhood, he came to Bath, where he married Nancy McLaughlin, a sister of Squire Hugh McLaughlin, late of Marlinton. After living several years in Bath, he bought out Mr. Deaver, on Greenbrier River three miles west of Green Bank, now known as Cassell’s Fording.
Here he settled and became a well known citizen of our county, about seventy years ago. His family consisted of two daughters and five sons: William, Jacob, John, Samuel, James, Nancy and Jane…
A Pioneer of Adventure
JOHN JOHNSON, the ancestor of the Johnson relationship, and the pioneer of West Marlinton, whose log cabin stood near where The Times office now stands, heard that corn had matured in Nicholas. He set out to bring in some of the Nicholas corn for seed and lost his way in Black Mountain and was bewildered for nine days, having nothing to eat most of the time.
In his desperation, he tried a morsel of garter snake but he could not swallow it, and concluded that he would rather die than eat such “eatings as that.”
Upon coming to a house, he was just able to move and scarcely able to talk enough to make the mistress of the place understand what had happened.
She, at once, proceeded to prepare a bountiful meal, thinking a man as hungry as he was would never know when to quit.
In the meantime, the proprietor came in and countermanded all this preparation and directed a little thin mush to be boiled and little skimmed milk be brought from the spring house. He prepared a saucer of mush and milk and gave the famished stranger one spoonful, and then waited for results. In a few minutes there was a violent emetic disturbance and it looked as if he was about to turn inside out. When this subsided, a little more of the mixture was given with more favorable results, and in the course of a few hours the pangs of hunger were somewhat appeased. Nourishment was carefully dosed out for some days, and he finally made the trip, bringing the corn, which planted one of the first crops ever produced in the vicinity of Marlinton.
A RUSTIC CABINET
IT IS with a good deal of comfort that the ambitious country boy reads of the success of those who were born and raised “far from the madding crowd.” President McKinley has a cabinet composed of eight men, of whom six were country born and bred.
Secretary Sherman had an eminent lawyer and judge for his father, but was thrown on his own resources at the age of fourteen, was a flat boatman for several years and studied law and was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-one.
Lyman Gage, Secretary of the Treasury, left school at fourteen, and was a night watchman for several years.
General Russel A. Alger was a farm hand.
Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long, was a poor country boy, but had the advantage of a college education, secured partly on means raised by teaching school.
Cornelius N. Bliss, Secretary of the Interior, was a low-salaried clerk for a number of years.
James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, is a Scotchman by birth, of poor parentage, and the eldest of fourteen children. His home is in the country town of Ames, Iowa, where he is a professor in an agricultural college.
Attorney General Joseph McKenna, of California, and Postmaster General Gary are the two who were raised in plenty and who have never known the pinchings of poverty. The other six have had their own experiences.
Such an administration should be able to feel another’s woe.
