Settling the western Virginia backcountry: part 1

As part of an effort to employ this blog, not only as a source of news about current events at Pricketts Fort, but also as a resource of information about the early history of the lower Monongahela valley, and of the Virginia frontier generally, I began last winter posting, in three parts, the third chapter [...]

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Winter on the frontier: what they lived in

When we think of pioneers on the Allegheny frontier, and how it was that they passed the long winter months, our imaginations may have been influenced by having seen too many old-fashioned paintings of frontier life, such as the famous one by Eastman Johnson showing a young Abe Lincoln reading by firelight, or too many [...]

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