Strolling through the Fall Festival at Pricketts Fort

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Fort attacked by Shawnee war party

I participated in my first re-enactment this past weekend during the Fall Festival here at the fort. I was working outside the stockade, gleaning the field for the last few ears of corn and gourds. Some distance away, a young woman from the fort was collecting buckwheat kernels into a basket. It was hot, and [...]

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The price of freedom is eternal vigilance . . .

Mornings are busy times at the fort, before the first visitors arrive, with invariable chores relating to opening the cabins, driving the sheep to and from pasture, feeding & watering all the animals, etc. As a member of our staff with special surveillance skills, the cat Queen Aliquippa begins her mornings by climbing to the [...]

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Backwoods Virginians and the “First Declaration of Independence”

There are many stories to be told of the earliest days of what is now West Virginia, and most have been told elsewhere already. But one story, which ties the origins of this region to the origins of the nation, deserves to be told more often. It involves a document which, while little known except [...]

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Memorial Day observations

In honor of Memorial Day here at Pricketts Fort, Okey Simmons gave a brief talk about the sacrifice made by the original militiamen and their families at Pricketts Fort during Lord Dunmore’s War and the American Revolution.  After the talk he hung a memorial wreath on the front of the fort, after which the current [...]

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These past two days . . .

These past two days have really taken it out of me.  Giving talks to several hundred children from four schools, followed by a long afternoon of hauling a wagonload of mule manure from one field to another in a wheelbarrow and hoeing it into the sod.  My brain is numb and every other part of me [...]

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miserable, wet & cold

A cold wet miserable Saturday morning — just the sort of morning I especially enjoy at the fort, particularly after a long hectic week of school tours and crowds of children.  Saturday means no field trips and a cold miserable rain means few visitors to speak of, and a chance to catch up on essential tasks.  The passage [...]

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Chief Logan & the birth of Pricketts Fort

On this date, in 1774, at a trading post in Baker’s Bottom, near Wheeling on the Ohio River, a peaceful band of Mingo Indians were set upon by rogue frontiersmen under Daniel Greathouse and brutally slaughtered.  Among the dead were members of the family of Chief Logan, who had until this time always been a [...]

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a mingling of eras

On this day, two hundred and thirty-one years ago, in 1777, when the original Pricketts Fort was only about three years old, Daniel Boone and about a dozen men were ambushed and cut off from the stockade at Boonesboro by over a hundred Shawnee warriors.  In the resulting melee, Boone’s life was saved by another legendary [...]

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a new season

We just opened here at the fort a couple of days ago.  The weather has been about perfect, sunny but not too warm, and with great cumulus clouds sailing slowly overhead to temper the sun.  Already busloads of children are arriving, and will keep arriving nearly every day until the end of the school year. In addition to the [...]

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