A Woman of Courage on the West Virginia Frontier

by Robert N. Thompson

  One woman who was held captive learned from her captors that they had observed the farm for some time prior to their attack. They told her they had “looked through cracks around the house, and saw what [we] had for supper” two days prior to her kidnapping. As she walked to the nearby blockhouse the next day, her two dogs sprinted away into the woods and came back “growling and much excited.” Later, she would find out that the dogs had indeed approached the warriors hiding in the woods before returning in an attempt to warn her of the danger. Eventually, she and her family decided to seek the protection of the blockhouse. However, as they walked toward the safety of its walls, she fell behind her husband and son. Seeing this opportunity, the Indians “reached from the bushes, and took hold of her, charging her to make no noise, and covering her mouth with their hands.”115

  On the upper Monongahela, similar events had a telling effect. One historian studied all the records and anecdotal evidence available in an attempt to determine the costs of Indian raids during the period from 1777 to 1780. The data indicates that at least forty-seven attacks took place in the upper Monongahela Valley during this four-year period alone. In these reports, 84 settlers are specifically reported to have been killed, while in four of the attacks, the accounts are too vague to determine precisely how many settlers may have become casualties. However, by applying a conservative standard of “some” equaling at least 4 people, “several” as 3 and “children” as 5, the deaths from Indian attacks in the region can be calculated to have been at least 100. Given that Monongalia County’s population in 1782 included less than 2,300 residents, this means that Indian raids accounted for the deaths of approximately 5 percent of the county’s populace in only four years. Add an approximate figure of 42 additional people taken into captivity during the same period, and you have 142 casualties, or more than 6 percent of the population.116

  It is not surprising, therefore, that many settlers abandoned their homes and moved east of the Alleghenies during the period from Dunmore’s War until the late 1780s. Although no data on settler desertions in Monongalia County is available, one resident of nearby Fayette County, Pennsylvania, wrote in 1774 that “the country at this time is in great confusion…I suppose there have been broken up and gone off at least 500 families within one week past.”117 That same year, it was reported that some settlers near present-day Bridgeport, West Virginia, “broke up” their farms and “moved down to Prickets [sic] Settlement and Built a Fort.”118

  FORTING UP

  Those hardy souls who elected to stay west of the mountains had no choice but to try to defend themselves. To that end, they organized county militia units and began building refuge forts. Any advance warning of potential Indian attack was crucial, so the militia employed what they called “Indian spies,” essentially scouts who constantly patrolled the woodlands watching for any signs of raiding party activity in the vicinity. Should these scouts discover footprints or other evidence, such as the remains of a recent campsite, they tried to determine the size of the party, what tribe they might be from and if there was hostile intent. They then sent word to the nearest militia commander and “would fly from Fort to Fort and give the alarm.”119

  Joseph Doddridge later wrote of those nights when, as a young boy, his family received the alarm from scouts, what they called an “express,” and hurriedly gathered what they could before fleeing to the safety of the refuge fort:

  I well remember that, when a little boy, the family were sometimes waked up in the dead of night by an express with a report that the Indians were at hand. The express came softly to the door, or back window, and by a gentle tapping waked the family. This was easily done, as an habitual fear made us ever watchful and sensible to the slightest alarm. The whole family were instantly in motion. My father seized his gun and other implements of war. My stepmother waked up and dressed the children as well as she could, and being myself the oldest of the children I had to take my share of the burdens to be carried to the fort. There was no possibility of getting a horse in the night to aid us in removing to the fort. Besides the little children, we caught up what articles of clothing and provision we could get hold of in the dark, for we durst not light a candle or even stir the fire. All this was done with the utmost dispatch and the silence of death. The greatest care was taken not to awaken the youngest child. To the rest it was enough to say Indian and not a whimper was heard afterwards. Thus it often happened that the whole number of families belonging to a fort who were in the evening at their homes were all in their little fortress before the dawn of the next morning.120

  Sometimes the settlers’ stay at the fort might be only a matter of a few days, but at the height of Indian raiding in the mid-1770s, they often remained for months at a time. Given the small size of many of the forts and the number of settlers seeking refuge, these visits could become quite unpleasant. Noise, crowding, disease and the typical human filth that accompanies such conditions made for a difficult, even miserable stay. Naturally, during long stays, the condition of homes and especially crops became a concern. So residents would return to their farms during daylight hours, often in the company of their neighbors who came along armed with rifles to stand guard as they worked in the fields. Occasionally, a variation of this approach was employed, with groups of armed men venturing forth and traveling from farm to farm, functioning as an armed work party.121 Moreover, because of the seasonal nature of the raiding activity, an entire generation of Allegheny Plateau settlers grew up “forted up in the summer and staying at home in the winter.”122

  Settlers’ quarters line the stockade walls at the contemporary re-creation of Prickett’s Fort. Photo by the author.

  Refuge forts of the upper Monongahela Valley. Drawn by the author using data from the Prickett’s Fort Memorial Foundation.

  The surge in Indian raids beginning in 1774 resulted in a corresponding increase in the building of refuge forts. Within a few years, there were forty-five refuge forts and blockhouses in the upper Monongahela Valley alone. While some of these were merely two-story log blockhouses, others included sleeping quarters and corner blockhouses, all enclosed within twelve-foot-high stockade walls whose foundations were sunk deep into the earth. Prickett’s Fort, where Phebe and Thomas Cunningham were married, was of the latter, more complex variety.

  Prickett’s Fort was born out of the turmoil surrounding Dunmore’s War, when concern about imminent strikes from Shawnees drove the settlers living near Prickett’s Creek and the Monongahela to organize a militia company. Zackwell Morgan was elected captain, with James Chew serving as his second-in-command, and every fit male adult in the immediate area between the age of eighteen and fifty was required to serve. Sometime in mid-May 1774, the militiamen mustered in for the first time, with a total strength of forty-five men. However, over the course of the next two weeks, new families arrived near Jacob Prickett’s settlement and increased the militia’s ranks to ninety-six men.123

  Almost immediately, the militia company set about erecting a stockade fort. The precise location of the fort has long been the subject of conjecture, but most sources agree that it stood on a hill overlooking the Monongahela, about one thousand feet from the river and some five hundred feet from Prickett’s Creek. Furthermore, Job Prickett, a descendant of Jacob, remembered having seen the ruins of the old fort, and before his death, he pointed out the remains of a chimney on that location as belonging to the fort.124 Unfortunately, little information regarding the fort’s physical description survived the passage of time. The fort that can be visited today in Prickett’s Fort State Park is essentially an accurate but composite representation of the large stockade-style forts of the time.

  Luckily, one reasonably good description of the fort was handed down from generation to generation in the Prickett family. J. Miles Prickett, the great-great-grandson of Jacob Prickett, wrote that Prickett’s Fort was, indeed, a stockade fort with a ten- to twelve-foot-high log wall. The stockade wall was constructed of logs that were sharpened at o
ne end, set side by side in an upright position and then driven deeply into the ground. Heavy wooden gates were built into the wall to provide access. Inside this barrier, there stood a large, two-story double log building with a passageway, or dogtrot, in between. Although he did not mention the existence of corner blockhouses or bastions, he did say that loopholes were cut into the second-story walls of the main building, which allowed the defenders to fire their rifles out and over the stockade.125

  The main gate at the modern re-creation of Prickett’s Fort at Prickett’s Fort State Park, West Virginia. Photo by the author.

  There also is no exact information as to how many families used Prickett’s Fort as a refuge. However, it is known that about fifty families lived within a five-mile radius of the fort. Therefore, if each family included 4 to 5 members, there were probably 200–250 settlers who used the fort during periods of Indian raiding.126

  Following the tumultuous years of the American Revolution, Prickett’s Fort seems to have faded into historical obscurity. Although the war did not end until 1781 and Indian raids continued into the 1790s, the last written historical record that mentions the fort was documented in 1780, the same year that Thomas and Phebe were married there. As a result, there have been numerous rumors and much speculation regarding the fort’s eventual fate over the centuries since 1780, none of which can be confirmed via documentation. One tale says that the fort fell into disrepair and local settlers dismantled it in 1789, while another maintains this did not occur until 1799. Still yet another story says the fort survived until 1825, when it finally burnt down, and one more version of the fort’s history says that Job Prickett lived in one of the fort’s cabins as late as 1861.127

  TERROR AND TRAGEDY

  In the years following Phebe and Thomas’s wedding, new settlers continued making the trek over the Alleghenies to the upper Monongahela Valley. By 1782, the population of Monongalia County included 385 households, totaling 2,169 settlers,128 and in 1784, the county’s population had grown sufficiently that the state designated the southern half as the new entity of Harrison County. By this time, Thomas and Edward Cunningham had left their lands along Ten Mile Creek and moved north to new acreage bordering the left fork of Bingamon Creek, which eventually bore the family name and became known as Cunningham’s Run. They first show up on Harrison County census records in 1785 under Benjamin Robinson’s list of “tithables,” which covered an area from the county line up the west side of the West Fork River to Limestone Creek.129 Here, the two families erected two cabins a few yards apart and then cleared and began farming the land in what was a small, beautiful valley. Nestled between steep hills on all sides, the valley was no more than two miles long and about a mile wide, with gently rolling land along its floor punctuated with dense forest. Here, they also built the first primitive gristmill in Harrison County by constructing a dam in the creek, which drove a piston over a beam with an iron wedge in the tip, which was subsequently worked to strike a rock, grinding corn into a fine powder in the process.130

  Since their marriage in April 1780, Phebe and Thomas had started a large family, and their brood included four children. Henry had been born in 1781, and he was followed by Lydia and Walter in 1782, while their youngest child, Thomas Jr., was born in 1785. Meanwhile, Edward and Sarah’s family had grown to eight children, four boys and four girls, ranging from age three to fourteen. However, the lives of the two families had been far from idyllic, and the reality of Indian warfare had already visited them twice.

  Thomas was the first of the Cunningham family involved in an incident related to an Indian attack, which occurred in 1777, three years before he wed Phebe. On the afternoon of September 13, Thomas and his friend Enoch James were walking down a road that passed by Coon’s Fort, another of the local refuge forts, which was located only about five miles below Prickett’s Fort. As they passed the fort, they came upon one of Mr. Coon’s daughters, sixteen-year-old Maudline, who was lifting some hemp in one of her father’s fields near the fort. Thomas and Enoch stopped and chatted with her for a few minutes, and then said farewell and continued walking down the road. Unknown to any of them, two Indian warriors were lurking in the woods a few yards away. Apparently, they had been observing the activities around the fort for some time, seeking an opportunity to seize an appropriate captive, most likely a woman or child. They had been watching Maudline carefully, waiting for the right moment to leap from the cover of the forest, grab her and get away before anyone knew she was missing.

  When Thomas and James were almost out of sight, they made their move, running out from the shadows of the trees, leaping a fence and racing toward the teenage girl. Unfortunately, she turned, saw them coming at her and immediately raced toward the safety of the fort. Realizing that they would not be able to catch her, one of the warriors quickly raised his rifle and shot her down.

  Hearing the loud report of a shot being fired, Thomas and James whirled about and saw the two Indians, who were now running toward Maudline’s prostrate body, one carrying a rifle as the other brandished his tomahawk and knife, clearly intending to finish off their victim if they could not take her prisoner. James tried to load his rifle and get off a shot, but it was too late. The second warrior proceeded to bludgeon the young woman with his tomahawk and then hurriedly took her scalp with his knife. As the two warriors now ran headlong for the woods, James raised his rifle and fired, but the distance was too great, and he missed his intended target. Thomas and James then ran to where Maudline lay bleeding in the field, but as they knelt next to her, they discovered she was already dead. By now, the alarm was raised in the fort, and an armed party of men quickly left in pursuit. However, it was too late, and the warriors made good their escape.131 Six months later, the lives of the Cunningham family would again be touched by the violence of an Indian raid. This time, it would be Edward and Sarah who would be confronted with the terror and loss it could bring.

  In February 1778, all signs pointed to an earlier than normal resumption of Indian activity in the upper Monongahela Valley, leading several families to take shelter at a refuge fort known as Harbert’s Fort, with Edward and Sarah’s family among them. Located on Jones’ Creek near present-day Lumberport, West Virginia, this fort was not a complex stockade structure like Prickett’s Fort but rather a simple two-story reinforced log blockhouse, with loopholes in its walls for firing. Although large enough to hold a few families, its limited space could prove very claustrophobic if one stayed longer than a few days. As a result, after a couple of weeks inside the blockhouse with no sign of any Indians, the families decided to let their guard down for a few hours. They opened the front door, allowing their children to go out and some much needed fresh air to come in. The children were soon running about the yard, burning off excess energy, and a few of them, including Edward and Sarah’s oldest son, seven-year-old Joe, played in a clay hole with a crippled crow they had found. After a few minutes of this carefree activity, the children looked up to see a raiding party of Shawnee warriors emerge from the woods and then sprint toward the blockhouse and its open door.

  As this 1939 photo of the original Harbert’s Fort blockhouse shows, refuge forts were often small, unsophisticated structures. Courtesy Brian Harbert.

  Most of the children ran for the blockhouse, while Joe headed straight for an old loom house nearby, where he slipped down through a treadle hole and hid under the floor. Meanwhile, the other children burst through the blockhouse door screaming that Indians were coming. In fact, they were in very close pursuit. One of the men inside, John Murphy, went to the door to see if the children were telling the truth or playing a game. As he stepped outside, one of the Shawnee came around the corner of the building, raised his rifle and fired, killing Murphy, whose lifeless body fell back inside the blockhouse.

  The other adults sprang into action, with men trying to grab weapons as the women either hid the children or moved to close the open door. However, they were not fast enough, as the warrior who had shot Murphy
burst through the door, where he was immediately confronted by Thomas Harbert. The two men grappled with one another and fell to the floor as Harbert repeatedly struck his assailant with a tomahawk. A shot then came from outside, wounding Harbert. He continued his struggle, but seconds later, another shot was fired, hitting Harbert in the head and killing him instantly.

  As Harbert’s attacker retreated out the door, another warrior entered. By this time, Edward Cunningham had managed to reach his rifle, but as he raised it, the weapon misfired. The warrior, armed with a tomahawk that had a long spike in the end, leapt at Edward, and the two men fought hand to hand. Both were young and strong, and neither could get an advantage over the other. As they crashed about the room, locked in a deadly wrestling match, Edward was able to wrench the tomahawk from the Shawnee’s hand and land a crippling blow, sinking the spike into the warrior’s back. Despite this wound, the Shawnee would not give up the struggle and continued to fight. At that moment, Sarah, who had been standing nearby, came to her husband’s aid. Grabbing an axe, she hurried forward, took a swing at the warrior and struck a severe but glancing blow on the side of his face. Crying out in severe pain, the Shawnee finally let loose his death grip on Edward, turned away and ran from the room.