History of West Virginia, Old and New - Chapter V THE FIRST ADVANCE

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From The History of West Virginia,
Old and New, by James Morton Callahan, 1923, 
Vol. I, pg. 49-56

[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes appear at the end of each page in the original book. 
All footnotes are located at the end of this work. vfc]

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST ADVANCE

Over two hundred years ago (1) the cosmopolitan Lieutenant-Governor
Alexander Spotswood of Virginia led an expedition which, by penetrat-
ing the fifty miles intervening between the frontier and the peaks of the
Blue Ridge, and descending beyond the valley of the Shenandoah, broke
down the first barrier which had checked the westward expansion of the
English in America and began a conquest which made Virginia the
mother of an empire.

Born in 1676, at Tangier in Morocco, of an illustrious Scottish family
which had furnished an archbishop who had found a sepulchre in West-
minster Hall, and he himself a soldier who had fought with Marlborough
at Blenheim, Spotswood became the first great expansionist and one of
the first true republicans of the Old Dominion.

Coming to Virginia in 1710, he soon took an active interest in plans
to break through the mountain blockade beyond which the traditional
enemies of England and their Indian allies were already actively en-
gaged in trade. He was confident that the colonists with proper en-
couragement would soon extend their settlements to the source of the
James.

Riding at the head of a gay and merry body of thirty cavalier adven-
turers, marshalled and guided by the sound of the hunter's horn, and
followed by a long retinue of negro slaves and Indian guides, spare
horses, and sumpter-mules laden with provisions and casks of native
Virginia wine, he left Williamsburg on June 20, 1716, traveled via
King William and Middlesex counties and via Mountain Run to the
Rappahannock, thence up the Rapidan to his own estates at Germanna,
(colonized by Germans 1714) where all their horses were shod, thence
to Peyton's Ford and via the present site of Stannardsville (in Green
county) and over the rugged road through the Blue Ridge by Swift
Run gap to the Shenandoah about ten miles below the site of Port Re-
public, and some writer has said that he continued westward through
mountain defiles to a lofty peak of the Appalachian range (perhaps in
Pocahontas county).

According to John Fontain's journal of the expedition, each day's
march was enlivened by the chase and each night's rest, after the meal
of grouse and pheasants shot in forest glades, was enlivened by laughter,
song and story which were stimulated by stores of various liquid mix-
tures from the vineyards of Virginia lowlands. Looking westward from
a peak of the mountains, Spotswood was fascinated by the suggestion
awakened by the view of a more distant mountain peak, to the west and
north, from which Indian guides said one could see the sparkle of the
fresh-water sea now called Lake Erie. On the Shenandoah, which Spots-
wood at first named the Euphrates, "with ceremonious salute, and
appeal to the store of creature comforts," the adventurers took formal
possession of the "Valley of Virginia" in the name of the Hanoverian
monarch of England and buried the record in an empty bottle near the
camp which they had pitched.

Returning to Williamsburg he gave a glowing description of the
healthful region visited; and, perhaps in order to commemorate the
recent jovial invasion of a wilderness, previously unbroken by the white
man, he established the "Transmontane Order" of the "Knights of
the Golden Horeshoe," and gave to each of the members of his expedi-
tion (and to others who would accept them with a purpose of crossing
the mountains) miniature horseshoes bearing the inscription "Sic jurat
transcendere montes." Howe in his Historical Collections of Virginia
states that in commemoration of the event the king conferred the honor
of knighthood upon Spotswood and presented to him a miniature golden
horseshoe on which was inscribed the above motto.

From his excursion and hunting picnic among the hills he obtained
visions which expanded his views as an expansionist and induced him
to propose ambitious and aggressive imperial plans for control from the
mountains to the Lakes - plans which although held in abeyance at
the time and for many years after his removal from office in 1722, and
after his death in 1740, were finally revived under a later expansionist
governor, also a Scotchman (Dinwiddie) - and pressed to execution at
a fearful cost.

Spotswood gave the stimulus which soon attracted to the passes of
the mountains the pioneers who were later gradually awakened to the
possibilities of a great movement which resulted in the winning of the
West. The short journey from Germanna to the Shenandoah was the
first march in the winning of the territory now included in West Vir-
ginia. The leader of the expedition continued to encourage western
settlement by treaties protecting the frontier from Indians and by
legislation for exemption of the inhabitants of newly-formed counties
from quit rents. Some of his followers led in the westward movement
along the Potomac and in the Northern Neck.

The earliest permanent settlers in the eastern panhandle, however, en-
tered from Pennsylvania by the "Old Pack-horse Ford" (at Shepherds-
town). By 1727 Morgan Morgan settled on Mill creek (in Berkeley
county) and Germans began a settlement which later grew into a vil-
lage called New Mechlenberg (now Shepherdstown).

Probably there were hunters and a few settlers on the Virginia
side of the Potomac above Harper's Ferry before the date of recorded
settlement. As early as 1715, the Shepherds and others held plantations
on the Maryland side of the river in that vicinity, at the mouth of
Antietam creek. This seems to indicate that the Valley was well known
to Marylanders at that early date. Possibly there was a small settle-
ment on the Potomac on the site of Shepherdstown even before the
place was named Mecklenburg. The earliest name applied to the place
was Pack Horse or Pack Horse settlement. Among the earliest families
in the neighborhood were the Cookuses, Kepharts, and Mentzins. In
the common burial ground on the Cookuses' land, were old burial stones
which appeared to bear the date 1720, 1725 and 1728. After 1755 the
Pack Horse settlement was known for a short time as Swearingen's
Ferry, in honor of Thomas Swearingen who at that date established a
ferry on his own land at the bottom of what was later called Princess
street. Soon thereafter, during the French and Indian war, Thomas
Shepherd began to lay out his recently acquired land into streets and
lots to form a town which at first was called Mecklenburg but was
later named for its founder. The settlement of the village was inter-
rupted and delayed by the war with the Indians. Finally, in 1762,
under an act of the Assembly the town was formally created under the
name of Mecklenburg.(2) 

In 1730 and within a few years thereafter, other daring pioneers
settled upon the Opequon, Back creek, Tuscarora creek, Cacapon, and
farther west on the South Branch. Among those who founded homes
along the Potomac in what is now Jefferson arid Berkeley counties
were the Shepherds, Robert Harper (at Harper's Ferry), William
Stroop, Thomas and William Forester, Van Swearinger, James Forman,
Edward Lucas, Jacob Hite, Jacob Lemon, Richard and Edward Mercer,
Jacob Van Meter, Robert Stockton, Robert Buckles, John and Sam-
uel Taylor and John Wright. In 1736 an exploring party traced the
Potomac to its source. Charles Town was begun about 1740, two years
later than Winchester.

In 1732 Joist (Yost) Hite and fifteen other families cut their way
through the wilderness from York, Pennsylvania, and crossing the Po-
tomac two miles above Harpers Ferry proceeded to the vicinity of
Winchester and made settlements which exerted a great influence upon
the early neighboring settlements in the territory now included in West
Virginia. He also became involved in a famous land dispute (3) of in-
terest to settlers in the eastern panhandle - a dispute with Lord Fair-
fax who had inherited under a grant of 1681 a large estate south of
the Potomac including the present counties of Mineral, Hampshire,
Hardy, Morgan, Berkeley and Jefferson and one-eighth of Tucker and
three-fourths of Grant. This lawsuit, which Fairfax began against
Hite in 1736 and which was not settled until all the original parties
were resting in their graves, a half century later, arrested development
of the lower valley and stimulated settlement farther west. Several
German immigrants, induced by insecurity of titles in the lower Shenan-
doah crossed the Alleghanies and built cabins in the New, the Green-
brier and the Kanawha valleys.

Farther up the Shenandoah at "Bellefont," one mile from the site
of Staunton, John Lewis in 1732 established a first location in Augusta
county which at that time comprised all the undefined territory of
Virginia west of the Blue Ridge mountains. The issue of patents in
1736 brought to Augusta and Rockbridge from the lower Shenandoah
and from England a stream of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, some of
whom pushed their way with their descendants into the adjoining coun-
try known as Bath, Allegheny and Craig counties.

The descendants of these first settlers of the Shenandoah were
among the pioneers who later crossed the Alleghenies and established
homes in the valleys of the Monongahela, the Kanawha and the Ohio.

From the Shenandoah to the South Branch the advance was rapid - 
unobstructed by difficult mountains adventurers and home-seekers could
either ascend the Potomac or take the shorter route across North Moun-
tain. As early as 1725 John Van Meter, an Indian trader from the
Hudson river, traversed the Upper Potomac and South Branch valleys.(4)

In 1735 the first settlement in the valley of the South Branch was made
in what is now Hampshire county by four families named Cobun, How-
ard, Walker and Rutledge. A year afterwards Isaac Van Meter, Peter
Casey, the Pancakes, Foremans and others reared homes further up the
South Branch - some of them located within what is now Hardy county.(5)
By 1748 there were about 200 people along the entire course of the
stream.(6)

The expansion of settlements was influenced by conditions result-
ing from the great land grants owned by Lord Fairfax. In 1736 hear-
ing glowing accounts of the South Branch (from John Howard who
had gone via South Branch, crossed the Alleghenies and gone down
the Ohio), Fairfax ordered a survey of his boundary and soon began
to issue 99 year leases to tenants at the rate of $3.33 for each hundred
acres, and to sell land outright on a basis of an annual quit rent of
33 cents.

In 1747-48 following the erection of the Fairfax stone at the head
of the Potomac in 1746 much of the land within the Fairfax grant in
the South Branch country was surveyed by Washington and laid off
in quantities to suit purchasers. Nearly 300 tracts were surveyed in
the two years.(7)

Coincident with the surveys and sale of Lord Fairfax's land on the
lower South Branch many frontiersmen - not approving the English
practice wanted full title in fee - pushed higher up the Shenandoah
and South Branch valleys. New settlements crept up the South Branch
into regions now included in Pendleton county, whose triple valleys
had already been visited by hunters and prospectors - one of whom had
built a cabin about 1745 a half mile below the site of Brandywine. In
1746-47 Robert Green of Culpeper entered several tracts giving him a
monopoly of nearly 30 miles of the best soil. In 1747 he gave deeds of
purchase to six families who were probably the first bona fide settlers
of Pendleton. In 1753 there was a sudden wave of new immigration
and four years later the territory now included in Pendleton had a
population of 200 - equally divided between the South Branch and the
South Fork, and most numerous toward the Upper Tract and Dyer
settlement. The earlier settlers in the region now occupied by Hamp-
shire and Hardy counties included Dutch and Germans and Irish and
Scotch and English. The territory included in Pendleton was largely
settled by Germans from the Shenandoah.

Considering the needs of the South Branch region, the Assembly
in 1754 made provision for the formation of the new county of Hamp-
shire from the territory of Frederick and Augusta with boundaries
extending westward to the "utmost parts of Virginia." The county
was organized in 1757. The presiding justice of the first county court
was Thomas Bryan Martin, a nephew of Lord Fairfax. Romney was
established by law in 1762 (by Fairfax).

In the meantime, to meet the exigencies of the expansion of west-
ern settlers, commissioners of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland in
1744 negotiated with the Six Nations (at Lancaster, Pennsylvania), a
treaty by which for 400 pounds they ceded to the English all the region
between the Alleghenies and the Ohio. Settlements were delayed, how-
ever, first by the barrier of the Alleghenies and later by the uninvit-
ing character of narrow defiles and dense wilderness, and uncleared
valleys beyond, which furnished ample cover for treacherous Indians
opposed to the adventurous pioneers seeking to penetrate the wild hunt-
ing grounds.

The first direct stimulus to settlement farther west came from the
earlier settlements established about 1732 on grants including the site
of Winchester and the site of Staunton. Following the expansion of
settlements up the Shenandoah and the James, the most adventurous
settlers following the hunters began to push their way across the divide
to the New river and then farther west to lands now included in West
Virginia. A century before the establishment of permanent settle-
ments, the New river region of West Virginia westward to Kanawha
Palls was visited by a party of Virginians under Captain Thomas Batts
with a commission from the General Assembly "for the finding out the
ebbing and flowing of ye South Sea." The earliest settlements in the
New river region of West Virginia had their bases in the earlier settle-
ment of 1748 by the Ingles, Drapers and others at Drapers Meadows
(later known as Smithfield near Blacksburg, Virginia) and were pos-
sibly also influenced by the settlement of 1749 by Adam Harman near
the mouth of Sinking creek (Eggleston's Spring, Giles county) and
the neighboring settlement made by Philip Lybrook in 1750. They
received their direct incentive from the report of Christopher Gist who
in returning from his Ohio exploring expedition of 1750 passed down
the Bluestone valley and crossed the New river a short distance below
the mouth of Indian creek at Crump's Bottom (in Summers county).
In 1753 Andrew Culbertson induced by fear of the Indians to leave
his home near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, journeyed via the settle-
ments in Montgomery and Giles county to Crump's Bottom. A year
later Thomas Farley obtained the Culbertson tract and erected a fort
at Warford farther west. Around the scattered settlements several
others were begun in the same year. Pioneers from Pennsylvania came
both by the James and by the South Branch and Greenbrier rivers.

The discovery of the Greenbrier by a lunatic citizen of Frederick
county in 1749, excited the enterprise of two men from New England,
Jacob Marlin and Stephen Sewell, who took up residence upon the
Greenbrier where they were found in 1751 by General Andrew Lewis,
agent of the Greenbrier Land Company which had obtained a grant of
100,000 acres of land of which about 50,000 acres was surveyed by
1755 when operations stopped until about the close of the French and
Indian war (after which they were renewed in spite of the King's
Proclamation).

The earliest incentive to actual occupation in the Monongahela and
Ohio region was furnished in 1748 by the formation of the Ohio com-
pany which received from George II a grant of 500,000 acres along
the Ohio between the Monongahela and the Kanawha and which planned
settlements by which to divert the Indian trade from Pennsylvania.
Plans for settlement by Germans from Pennsylvania were prevented by
Virginia's law against dissenter.(8) Four years later, transmontane set-
tlements were encouraged by the house of burgesses through an offer
of tax exemption for ten years.

Many of the first settlers, west of the mountains considered the soils
of the region nonsupporting and intended to remain only until the
game should be exhausted.

Daring frontiersmen began to seek trans-Allegheny homes farther
north. The earliest attempts at settlement along the waters of the
Monongahela were made by David Tygart and Robert Foyle on Tygart's
Valley river (in Randolph) in 1753, by Thomas Eckarly and his brothers
on Cheat at Dunkard's Bottom (in Preston) in 1754 and by Thomas
Decker and others near the mouth of Deckers creek (in Monongahela)
in 1758. Permanent settlements were not made until after the close
of the French and Indian war, and until the treaty negotiated with
Pontiac at the forks of the Muskingum by General Bouquet rendered
peace on the border more certain.

The center of the region which in 1754 (at the formation of Hamp-
shire county) contained the pioneer settlers of West Virginia may be
indicated by an irregular line drawn from the Blue Ridge through
Harpers Perry, Charleston, Martinsburg, Berkeley Springs, Romney,
Moorefield, Petersburg, Upper Tract and Franklin, Marlinton, and
thence down the Greenbrier and through Monroe county to Peters
Mountain. The total population has been estimated at 10,000 whites
and 400 blacks.

Soon after the Lancaster treaty of 1744, by which the Iroquois
granted to the English the control of the region north of the Ohio, a
small number of pioneer farmers made at Draper's Meadows (upon New
river) the first permanent English settlement on waters flowing into
the Ohio - a settlement which prepared the way for the later first set-
tlements on the Middle New in the territory which is now a part of
West Virginia.

For nearly a quarter of a century civilization halted at the eastern
base of the trackless Alleghenies in the valleys west of the South Branch
country. There the frontiersmen toiled in clearings and gained strength
to force the barrier which for a time stopped their advance to lands of
another drainage system. Gradually their interest in the trans-Alle-
gheny region was quickened through information brought by a few
daring traders, adventurers or explorers.

By 1749 the preparation for a new advance was illustrated in the
formation of the Ohio company and the Greenbrier company. In
that year also two men, Jacob Marlin and Stephen Sewell, the first
trans-Allegheny pioneers, were occupying a cabin in the wilderness on
the Greenbrier (near the site of Marlinton, West Virginia), near a
branch of the old Iroquois war path from New York to the headwaters
of the Tennessee. In 1751 John Lewis and Andrew Lewis reached the
Greenbrier to survey land. By 1753 Robert Files and David Tygart
with their families had settled in Tygarts Valley near the Seneca war
path - Files having built a cabin at the site of Beverly on the creek that
bears his name, and Tygart three miles above on the river that bears
his name. About the same time three men named Eckarly, members
of the Dunkards religious organization, and hiding in the woods to
escape military duty, built a cabin on Cheat river (on Dunkard Bot-
tom) near the old Catawba war path and two miles from the site of
Kingwood on land still claimed by the Iroquois Indians.

These settlements were on territory which the settlers had no legal
right to occupy. Both those on Tygarts and that on Cheat were soon
broken up by the Indians. The entire Files family was murdered.
Tygart, being warned, fled eastward with his family, crossed the Alle-
ghanies by an obscure path (probably the Fishing hawk trail) and
reached settlements in Pendleton county. Two of the Eckarlys were
killed but one was absent and escaped.

Meantime the colonization schemes of the Greenbrier company and
the Ohio company had failed, partly through fear of the Indians and
partly through failure to attract German protestant immigrants from
eastern Pennsylvania. The German protestants, with whom the Ohio
company had arranged for settlement in the territory between the
Monongahela and the Kanawha, learning that they would be subject
to extra taxes laid on dissenters from the English church in Virginia,
refused to go. In 1752 the Virginia House of Burgesses attempted to
encourage trans-Allegheny settlements by an offer of ten years' exemp-
tion from taxes to all protestant settlers in that region, but under the
changed conditions existing two or three years later, protestants doubt-
less preferred to pay their taxes in the East than to risk exemptions in
the West.


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Chapter Footnotes:
(1) At the end of one hundred years, the Virginians knew little or nothing of
the country except along the coast and on the rivers where they could go in ships
and boats. They found more territory east of the mountains than they could well
care for and protect, and much more than they then had any use for, and they
had not deemed it prudent to go to or to attempt to investigate the country
beyond the high mountains, and it was proven by Col. Wm. Byrd that in 1709 it
was not known that the Potomac passed through the mountains. There was no
attempt to extend their missionary work beyond the vicinity in which they lived,
and no doubt they had all the work of that kind they could do, and the country
and the people beyond the mountains were unknown to them.

(2) In the year 1765 the famous town ordinance was made against the rats and
mice which afflicted the housekeepers of the old town so sorely. A town meeting
was appointed to determine the best course to pursue in order to rid the village
of these pests. The result of the meeting was that it was "ordered that Jacob
Eoff is authorized to procure a sufficient number of eats to destroy the rats that
infest this town and to procure the same on the most reasonable terms in his
power, as soon as possible, and that the money he expend in procuring the same
be levied for him the tenth day of June next." All the country people came to
the village on the next market day with bags and baskets full of cats and kittens,
and held a cat market, probably on the spot where, later, the old market house
was erected. Mr. William Briscoe wrote a most amusing poem based upon this
order of the old town council.

(3) Hite's litigation with Lord Fairfax which began in 1736 was not decided
until 1786. The decision was finally in favor of Hite and those claiming under
him. In this controversy the right of the ease was undoubtedly with Hite. While
the lands in dispute unquestionably fell within the boundaries of the Northern
Neck as fixed by the commission of 1745, yet Lord Fairfax, in accepting the
Rapidan as the southern boundary of his grant, agreed that all crown grants made
prior to that date should be confirmed. This agreement was not kept, and his
litigation with Hite served in considerable measure to arrest the development of
the lower Valley.
   William Russel, with whom Hite's litigation was speedily settled, was a Horse
Shoe Knight, who came over with Gov. Spotswood from England in 1710, accom-
panied the Governor across the Blue Ridge in 1716.
   In 1733 Lord Fairfax addressed a petition to the King, setting up his claims
to the lands in controversy. This resulted in an order in Council restraining the
Virginia Government from perfecting those grants until the boundaries of the
Northern Neck could be settled. This order is evidence that in 1734 forty families,
numbering about 250 persons, were settled on and near the Opequon in the vicinity
of Winchester.
   By the year 1736 Hite and his partners had succeeded in settling 54 families
upon the tract, when Fairfax entered a caveat against the issuing of patents in
them. When the dispute between Fairfax and the Crown ended in 1745, Hite and
his associates claimed their patents, insisting that the Council orders for their lands
should be construed as grants within the meaning of the Act of 1748, which con-
firmed the grantees of the Crown in possession of their lands. This Fairfax re-
sisted, claiming that the only titles confirmed by that act were those eases in
which patents had actually been issued by the Crown.  Hite and partners then
instituted a suit against Fairfax (in 1749). In October, 1771, a decree was entered
in favor of the plaintiffs.  Fairfax appealed to the King in Council, but the
Revolution ended the appeal. The case was finally decided in the Virginia Courts in
1786 in favor of Hite and his associates.

(4) When Mr. VanMetre returned to New York he advised his sons, that if they
ever migrated to Virginia, to secure a part of the Souch Branch bottom. He
described it as "The Trough," and the finest body of land he had ever seen. One
of his sons, Isaac VanMetre, who was about to migrate, took his father's advice, and
about the year 1736 or 1737, settled in Virginia. Mr. VanMetre returned to New
Jersey shortly afterward, and in 1740 came back, only to find other settlers on
his place. He went back to New Jersey again, and in 1744 returned with his
family to make a permanent settlement. In the meantime a large number had
settled in the neighborhood, and already much progress could be noted.
   In 1763 many of them were giving their time and attention to rearing large
herds of horses, cattle, hogs, etc. Some of them became expert, hardy and ad-
venturous hunters, and depended chiefly for support and money making on the sale
of skins and furs. Considerable attention was given to the culture of the pea vine,
which grew abundantly late in the summer season.
   The majority of the first immigrants were principally from Pennsylvania, com-
posed of native Germans or German extraction. A number, however, were direct
from Germany, and several from Maryland, New Jersey and New York. These
immigrants brought with them the religion, customs and habits of their ancestors.
They constituted three religious sects, viz.: Lutherans, Menonists and Calvanists,
with a few Tunkers, and were very strict in their worship.

(5) All these settlements were at that time in Orange county (formed from Spotts-
sylvania in 1734) which extended to the "utmost limits of Virginia," including
in its boundaries all of what is now West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and
Illinois.

(6) The Moorfield settlement became a center of later dispersions not only
upstream bat also across the divide - especially by the McCulloch trail later (about
1785-86) widened into a state road from Moorfield to the Potomac, and by the
branch trail known as the Horse shoe trail. Among its people who migrated to
the Ohio was Ebenezer Zane who began the settlement at Wheeling and later cut
"Zane's Trace" across southeastern Ohio and thereby determined the sites of
Zanesville, Lancaster and Chillicothe.

(7) Lord Fairfax always considered himself a British subject, although he re-
mained quietly on his estate near Winchester daring the revolution. His sympathies
with the royal cause were well known; and had he been an ordinary person he
would have been roughly treated by the patriots in the valley of Virginia. But
the great friendship that existed between him and General Washington saved him.
Out of respect for Washington, Fairfax was spared. But when Cornwallis sur-
rendered at Yorktown, October 19, 1781, Fairfax saw that all was over. It may
be said that it was his "death blow. He took to his bed and never again left it,
dying soon after in his ninety-second year.
   He never married and, of course, left no child to inherit his vast estate. All
his property, or the greater portion of it, was devised to his nephew in England,
the Rev. Denny Martin, on condition that he would apply to the Parliament of
Britain for an act to authorize him to take the name of Lord Fairfax. This was
done, and Denny, Lord Fairfax, like his uncle, never marrying, he devised the
estate to Gen. Philip Martin, who never marrying, and dying without issue, devised
the estate to two old maiden sisters, who sold it to Messrs. Marshall, Colston and Lee.
   During the Revolution Virginia Legislature enacted laws against such an
estate as that of Fairfax. One of these laws against estates entail was proposed by
Thomas Jefferson as early as October, 1776. It abolished the system of perpetual
rents and favored estates in fee simple. Although it did not break up the Fairfax
estate at once it stopped the rent on land already sold. A later law confiscated
the estates of Tories.
   At the close of the Revolution the Fairfax lands were confiscated by Virginia
and thrown open to settlement under the regulations for other state lands, and
in time they became the property of many farmers. The project for large manors
on South Branch and Patterson creek was never realized. In 1782 the Assembly
confiscated the claims of the Fairfax heirs, having previously declared invalid the
claims of the Vandalia and Indiana companies. In 1789 David Hunter received a
patent for lands which had formally belonged to Fairfax, but being refused pos-
session he brought suit in the court of Shenandoah county, which decided against
him in a decision which was later reversed by the Supreme Court of the state.
Later David Martin to whom Fairfax had bequeathed the right to the disputed
property appealed to the United States Supreme Court which sustained the lower
court of Shenandoah (1813) and in 1816 causing many to fear that the confiscation
of the Indiana and Vandalia claims might not prove a permanent settlement of
their title to western lands.
   Lord Fairfax had an eye to money-making and resolved to realize as much
as possible from his property. His desire was to provide a perpetual income. It
amounted to the same thing as renting his land forever at a fixed yearly rental.
He required a small sum, usually two and one-half cents an acre, or even less, to
be paid down. He called this "composition money." He required a sum of
about an equal amount to be paid every year "on the feast day of Saint Michael
the Archangel." He did not always charge the same sum yearly per acre. He
was greedy and overbearing, and if a person settled and improved his lands
without title, and afterwards applied for title, he took advantage of it, and
charged him more, thinking he would pay it sooner than give up his improvements.
   In making these early deeds it was stipulated that the person who bought
should "never kill elk, deer, buffalo, beaver or other game," without the consent
of Fairfax or his heirs.
   Land along the South Branch in those days was not so valuable as at present;
yet it found ready sale. Four hundred acres, near Moorefield, sold for one hundred
and twenty-five dollars in 1758. Under the British rule the land all belonged to
Fairfax, and all who occupied it must pay him perpetual rent. No man could
feel that he absolutely owned his own land.

(8) In 1751 the Ohio company desiring to obtain an additional grant for the
region between the Great Kanawha and the Monongahela sent Christopher Gist
to make explorations along the Ohio. After Gist made his report in 1752, the
company petitioned the King for the grant and for permission to form a separate
government in the region between the Alleghenies and the Ohio, After years of
waiting and negotiation, the Ohio and Warpole companies were merged into the
Grand Ohio Company, which continued the efforts to secure the formation of the
proposed province of Vandalia with its capital at the mouth of the Great Kanawha.