War dead honored at Pricketts Fort

On May 31st, Memorial Day, Pricketts Fort held observances in memory of the men from Pricketts Fort who served in the following wars: the French & Indian War, Pontiac’s Uprising, Lord Dunmore’s War and the American Revolution. The observances also memorialized the descendents of these men who served in the Civil War. At the time [...]

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School of the Longhunter: scenes from the encampment

 ~ ~ ~ When I arrived at the encampment at Pricketts Fort on Friday morning, there was still a bit of snow on the ground, and large flakes were falling.  Earlier the ground had been white, but by now only the hills above Pricketts Creek, where they emerged above the mist, were still mantled in [...]

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Tales of the Early Pricketts

Owing to conflicting claims in the Monongahela Valley, no land patents were issued before 1779, but many tomahawk entries were made prior to that time. Jacob Prickett, who located his claim in 1766, seems to have been the first settler in Marion County. In a deposition sworn to by the well-known Capt. William Crawford at [...]

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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 observances at Pricketts Fort honor war dead of five early American wars

On May 31st, Memorial Day, Pricketts Fort held observances in memory of the men from Pricketts Fort who served in the following wars: the French & Indian War, Pontiac’s Uprising, Lord Dunmore’s War and the American Revolution. The ceremony also memorialized the descendents of these men who served in the Civil War. At the time [...]

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Ancestral Wars

On May 25th, Memorial Day, Pricketts Fort held observances in memory of the men from Pricketts Fort who served in the following wars: the French & Indian War, Pontiac’s Uprising, Lord Dunmore’s War and the American Revolution. The ceremony also memorialized the descendents of these men who served in the Civil War. At the time [...]

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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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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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