After his father, Adrian, died in Buckingham County, Virginia, in 1777, William Anglin and his children moved across the Allegheny Mountains to Greenbrier County. It was wilderness in those days, and dangerous country, because the British incited the Indians against the American settlers. While some of William's children went from Greenbrier County to points south, Will and others of his children moved up the valleys to Harrison and Randolph Counties to settle on the Tygart River. Even though the Revolution was over by the time they moved there, it was still wilderness, and the British were still inciting the Indians to attack the American settlers. Our Anglin and Cade ancestors lived in the Tygart River Valley when the Indians attacked Mary Kinnan's family. You can click here to read her heart-rending account of the attack and her ensuing captivity and deliverance. Is it any wonder that Will "hissed his dogs" on Bishop Asbury and his companions as they approached his dwelling at midnight? Click here to read what the good bishop had to say about the accomodations.
David Shaw, a great grandson of Will's son Adrian, says Adrian told of coming through the mountains from old Virginia with a small flock of sheep which they had to corral close by to save them from the wolves, and that they had to smother the fire at night, and once he married and became a father, they had to keep the baby from crying, lest the Indians discover them.
Some might wonder why one would live in a wilderness. Old Adam O'Brien, who was over a hundred when he died in 1836, explained it.1
When asked how he came to seek the wilderness and encounter the perils and sufferings of frontier life, he answered that he liked it and did not mind 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, because you could kill Indians, and you dare not kill the sheriffs. That after the king's proclamation for all settlers and surveyors to remove east of the big ridge, from off the western waters, there was no people on the west side except those who had run away from justice and here they were as free as the biggest buck agoing, and after the peace of sixty-three, it was all quiet in the back woods. There was a settlement at Dunkard's bottom and a small one where Clarksburg now is, and some squatters here and there, that had their cabins, their corn and potatoes and their guns with which they kept themselves in bear meat and venison, and while they had no money, they had skins with which they could secure powder and lead and such things that they had to buy. 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 awhile the people began to come and make settlements and then there was 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 and soul, and that the sheriffs were even worse than the wild cats and panthers 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 the savages than live among justices and lawyers and sheriffs, who with all their civility, have no natural feeling in them.
| 1. | West Virginia Historical Magazine, pp. 307-308. |