"This vast work details the first explorations, settlements, Indian wars, with...biographies of the border scouts and pioneers...hair-raising account upon hair-raising account." -Times-Mail (Bedford, Indiana), April 17, 2005
"McWhorter was born in a log cabin in West Virginia...he is the author of Border Settlers." -Caribou County Sun, May 21, 1953
Why is Jesse Hughes of wonderous fame as a scout, guide, and fighter considered the hero of early American border warfare by West Virginia historian McWhorter?
Nowhere in the conquest of the New World is there a territory so fraught with dramatic tragedy, personal prowess and adventure, as the Trans-Allegheny, notes Lucullus Virgil McWhorter in his 1915 book "The Border Settlers of Northwestern Virginia."
By instinct and training the contestants stood fairly matched. Nowhere in the early annals can we find such reckless dare-devil bravery as displayed by the Virginia frontiersman; where every settler was a warrior. Pathos and tragedy are the component parts of the early history of this region.
In his intriguing book on the border settlers, McWhorter gives particular attention to Jesse Hughes, a pioneer in Northwestern Virginia, that region so designated in early annals and now principally included in the State of West Virginia.
When Jesse Hughes and those who came with him arrived in this mystic wilderness, it was a solitude well-nigh tenantless. Indian tribes claimed it for a hunting-ground. They roamed over it in quest of game. They hunted through its mazes for the settler who dared defile it with axe and plow.
In the contest for the land Jesse Hughes bore a part far beyond that of the average settler. He was one of those woodsmen in whom was concentrated the hardihood, the daring, the fierce and uncontrollable spirit of our barbarous ancestors in the fens and on the swamp shores of Northwestern Europe. The wild life of the great woods appealed to him. It suited his rancorous humor. It was in accord with the fountains of his life. He gloried in it. It was war, danger, adventure.
Not only was the early pioneer at war with the native tribes of the region, but the area was still inhabited by dangerous wild beasts. McWhorter described one settler's brush with a wolf-pack:
"Before the hunter realized his danger he heard the swift patter of feet among the dry leaves, and hastily dropping his rifle, he had barely time to spring into the branches of a large dogwood hush. He was immediately surrounded by a cordon of hungry beasts, which, made fearless by numbers, surged and snarled at the root of the tree. Safely ensconced in the branches of the sturdy dogwood, the hunter gazed down into the green and baleful eyes of the hungry pack. The deadly fangs of a hundred froth-covered jaws gleamed and snapped in the fitful starlight. The sanguine hunter was now himself hunted...."
This vast work covers the first explorations, settlements, and Indian wars, as well as notes, anecdotes, and biographies of the Border scouts and pioneers, with copious memoranda and remarks concerning the military careers--mostly Revolutionary--of numerous Border settlers. Sown throughout the work are biographical sketches, genealogies, and thumbnail portraits of the early pioneers and settlers.
About the author:
Lucullus Virgil McWhorter (1860 -1944) was an American farmer and frontiersman who documented the historical Native American tribes in West Virginia and the modern-day Plateau Native Americans in Washington state. McWhorter was born one of twelve children to Reverend John Minion McWhorter and Rosetta Marple McWhorter on January 29, 1860 in Harrison County, Virginia (an area later admitted into the union as a part of the state of West Virginia).
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