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Embracing
the Life of Jesse Hughes and other Scouts of the Great Woods of the
Trans-Allegheny by Lucullus Virgil McWhorter
McWhorter was an early settler of the Hackers
Creek area of WV. Written in 1915, McWhorter is a first hand resource for the
history and lore of the area. His stories include the infamous Pringle Brothers
living in the sycamore tree, various fugitives and hunters, numerous Indian
encounters, and the life of the scout, Jesse Hughes. A rugged wilderness comes to life while reading of the adventures
of the men that called early West Virginia their home.
Here
is Lucullus Virgil McWhorter on historical Ohio Valley trapper Adam O'Bryan:
"When asked how he came to seek the
wilderness and encounter the perils of sufferings of frontier life, he answered
that he liked it and did not mind it a bit and in further explanation said that
he was a poor man and had got behind hand and when that's the case, there is no
staying in the settlements for those varmints, the sheriffs and constables, who
were worse than Indians..."
"That after the King's Proclamation for all
the settlers and surveyors to remove east of the big ridge from off the western
waters, there was no white people on the west side except those who had run
away from justice, and they were as free as the biggest buck a-going, and after
the peace of sixty-three, it was all quiet in the backwoods..."
"He said that they lived quite happy before
the Revolution, for then there was no law, no courts, and no sheriffs, and they
all agreed pretty well, but after a while the people began to come and make
settlements; and then there was a need for law; and then came the lawyers and
next the preachers and from that time they never had any peace any more, that
the lawyers persuaded them to sue when they were not paid, and the preachers
converted one half, and they began to quarrel with the other half because they
would not take care of their own souls, and from that time they never had any
peace for body or soul, and that the sheriffs were worse than the wildcats and
painters and would take the last coverlet from your wife's straw bed or turn
you out in a storm, and I tell you, mister, I would rather take my chances and
live among savages than live among justices and lawyers and sheriffs who, with
all their civility, have no natural feeling in them..."
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