School of the Longhunter II: the native presence

Continuing my leisurely saunter through the encampment, I ventured inside the fort and happened into the meetinghouse, where I chanced upon a scene which might have come straight out of Withers’ Chronicles of Border Warfare: a pioneer woman walking into her cabin to find a Shawnee warrior warming himself at her fire: surely every frontier [...]

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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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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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