NovpinlMT 10. 1!)17 



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•^ Early Sawmill and Its Builder "y^ 



Writers wlm coiu'cni tlieiiiselvcs with the history of luinheriiig iike 

 to get liiiok to the liegiiiniiig. Much has been written of pioneer saw- 

 mill men of various regions; but one short ehaptcr seems to have been 

 overlookeil. It deals with the eentral Ajipalaehian region in West 

 Virginia and concerns the building of what was probably the earliest 

 sawmill on the upper tributaries of the Ohio river. It preceded by one 

 year the earliest known mention of a sawmill in tlic xicinity of I'itt-s- 

 burgh. 



The history of that oldest sawmill and its builder was recently 

 investigated by a representative of H.MiDWOOD Rkcohu while spending 



S.WVMII.I, CKAXK 141 YEAKS OLD 



I'ncarthcd ami phntciKraijlieil in Tucker County, West Virgiuiii. li.v a 



rcrn-eseutativc of II.xkdwood Rkc<^I{D 



a few days at St. George, W'. Va.; and certain dates and facts were 

 subsecjuently verified by records in the Pension Office, Washington, 

 D. C, where a sort of biography or autobiograpliy of the builder is 

 on file as a part of his pension record in the Revolutionary War. 



The sawmill builder was David Minear, and the Pension Office recorii 

 says he was born in Bucks county, Pa., in 1755; and his grave stone in 

 an elder thicket near the site of his old mill gives the same place and 

 date for his birth, and 18.34 as the date of his death. 



When nineteen years of age he explored the wilderness a hundred 

 miles west of the extreme frontier, which was then in the vicinity of 

 Cumberland, Mil., and having chosen a site for a settlement in what 

 is now Tucker county, W. Va., where St. George was afterwards built, 

 he led a colony of thirty or forty settlers to the ne*v land two years 

 later, that is, in 1776. The only road was an Indian war trail across 

 the Alleghan}' Mountains. 



Among the articles carried on |jackhorses over the trail when tlie 

 colonists .journeyed to the west were the irons for a sawmill, consisting 

 of a crank for the waterwheel, an up-and-down saw, dogs and a few 

 bolts. All other parts of the mill were of wood and were made on the 

 site. Arriving on the ground in April, he first built a fort as a refuge 

 against Imlians, and then built the mill to provide the settlers with 

 lumber. The stream which furnished the power is called Mill Run to 

 this day. The dam was of oak logs, and part of it stood exactly one 

 liundred years, the last of it going out during a flood in 1876. So 

 well preserved were the logs that the ax marks were plainly seen after 

 a century. The mill race yet remains visible, crossing gardens and 

 yards ami passing beneath housas. 



No statistics of the quantity of lumber cut by the mill have been 

 preserved; but it must have been small. Soon after the mill was built 

 David Minear 's father, brother, and several other settlers were killed 

 by Indians. It may be supjiosed that the mill was idle during that 

 strenuous period, which extended through the Revolutionary War. 

 David Minear shouldered his rifle in defense of his colony and his 

 country. The Pension records at Washington tell what he did. He 

 fought through five campaigns against the savages, and ranged the 

 forests almost continuously during twenty-seven months, extending 

 his campaigns to Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. He was with General 



—40— 



Cl.irk, the conqueror of Kaskaskia and Vinceunes. He was in an 

 Indian fight at the mouth of Licking River, opposite Cincinnati, and 

 nine of his companions were killed then', but lie escaped. Again 

 he fought the Indians, this time fifteen miles from Chillicothe, Ohio, 

 where fifteen men were lost. Minear helped cut down the Indian 

 corn, aggregating 300 acres, the purpose being to destroy their food 

 so that the warriors would be obliged to support their families by 

 hunting and would have less time to attack the settlements. 



It is said that the old lumberman and Indian lighter ilied of 

 starvation. A disease that attacked his face madi- it imjiossible for 

 him to eat, and he died at the age of seventy-nine. 



Though a jiroducer of lumber, David Minear folhiwerl his I'cnnsyl- 

 vania training and built a stone residence for himself. He was several 

 years in building it. Kither the foundation was insecure or the super- 

 structure was too heavy, and the walls craeke<l before the death of 

 the buililer. He provided in his will that the house should be torn 

 down, when it should be no longer safe as a residence, and the stone 

 be used in building "a high, strong, and durable wall round the 

 plot where my bones shall lie in hope of rising again in the resur- 

 rection of the dead. ' ' 



The wall was never built. The stone house stooil the storms of 

 sixty years after its builder had passed on, and was then demolished 

 by a contractor and the stones were used in bridge piers. The plot 

 of ground which contains the grave lies uufeuced yet, in the rear of a 

 blacksmith shop, and is an alnuist impenetrable thicket of elders. 

 It was within a few rods of his mill. 



There may be none of the lumber that was sawed in the old mill 

 in existence. An old yellow poplar door, now doing service in a 

 vegetable cellar, is thought to have come down from that period. 



•ANN ELIZA" MEMORIAL CHURCH 



Perhaps the oldest memorial building west of the .\paiachiau iiiountains. 

 riioto made for II.^udwood Record 



When the stone house was torn down twenty-five years ago, the last 

 lumber that certainly came from the old mill disappeared. The floors 

 were oak, and all else was yellow poplar, according to the recollections 

 of jjersons present when the house was torn down. 



