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- A PORTION OF THE HISTORY OF ONE BRANCH OF THE STAFFORD FAMILY
by John Edward Stafford, born 1883 in Gilbert, West Virginia
(Written by him a short time before he died in 1964, this documentation is based on his memories. Although in some cases it may not be completely accurate, in the main it is believed to be correct.)
When I was a boy, I used to spend much of my time with Uncle John Wesley Stafford at his Hermitage Cabin at the head of Stafford Branch. We would pore over old documents and history books and he would recount the old stories that had been handed down to him. Much of the information that makes t his document possible was learned from him. He was considered as "a man of great learning" in his time.
My great-grandfather was also John Stafford. His mother and father were killed or died shortly after he was born. There were few orphanages in those days. Young John was taken to raise by a wealthy plantation owner and his wife, who were childless, by the name of Cumpton. My great-grandfather, in memory of them, named one of his sons Cumpton Stafford.
When my great-grandfather grew up and wanted to strike out for himself, the Cumptons tried to get him to change his name from Stafford to Cumpton and be adopted by them, so that he could inherit their estate, but he chose to shift for himself.
His son John Stafford, my grandfather, was born in 1810. As a young man, grandfather met Sir Isaac Spratt, who owned a plantation in Tazewell County. About the year 1830, he became Sir Isaac's right hand man and later married one of Sir Isaac's daughters named Levisa, who was my grandmother.
Sir Isaac and my grandfather made several trips looking for a good place to settle, and finally decided that the best place to start a new settlement was the mouth of Gilbert Creek on the Guyandotte River. It was a crossroads place where the animal and Indian trails all converged and so the surrounding country was accessible.
It was in the center of a great hardwood forest and very rich in game and fish, which was important to them in those days, when they were hewing a home out of the wilderness. It was an old Indian camping ground where the Indians gathered in the fall to kill game and catch fish to prepare for the winter ahead.
Sir Isaac had patented some of the river bottom land around the mouth of Gilbert Creek (possibly as early as the 1790's). I surveyed some of the acreage when I was starting out as a young engineer.
About 183? my grandfather took a pack train with a few possessions, my grandmother, Uncle Wesley, and Uncle Isaac, who were about two and four years old at that time, and went to Gilbert to start a settlement. He built a lean-to shelter, killed some game to stock their larder, and gathered firewood to cook and keep them warm. After a few days, he told his wife, my grandmother, that he wanted to explore the river area to see if there was a better place to start their home and that he would be gone overnight. When night came, the scent of fresh meat attracted the wild animals and she had to stay up all night to keep the fire going and throw fire brands at them in order to protect herself and the children.
In the spring they planted a small garden with seeds they had brought with them. Then grandfather picked a place to build their future home, cleared the site, and cut logs for their cabin.
After fall harvest was over, Sir Isaac brought in a load of supplies such as nails to roof the cabin, salt and sugar, and flour to supply them through the coming winter. Food was not much of a problem then. You could step out of the back door and shoot a bear, deer, or wild turkey, or out the front door to shoot ducks and geese on the river, or bait a hook and cast it in the water and go back to the house with all the fish you could carry.
At that time it was nearly a garden of Eden; an unbroken crest for nearly 100 miles in all directions filled with game, wild fruits, nuts, and a river full of fish, all free, just for the taking. It was a mountain country with small valleys along the river and tributary streams. The only roads were Indian and game trails up and down the streams and paths across the mountains.
The word got around that it was a good place to live and a little settlement started up and down the river and along the creeks.
The first settlements in those days were of paternal nature. They were about five to ten miles apart. Some prominent man settled and a group of families who looked up to him settled close by. Up the river from Grandfather's were the Spratts, Justices, and Morgans; across the river up Gilbert Creek were the Ellises, Johnsons, and Clines; up Horsepen Fork, the Ferrells and Smiths, and down the river were the Buchanans, Brownings, Elkins, Trents, and Christians. Naturally, as their families grew up, there was some moving around on account of marriages, etc.
There was only one main source of cash income for that section. After the crops were harvested, the big landowners started to cut timber and haul it to the river where it was rafted and floated down the Ohio River to Catlettsburg and sold. This furnished employment for most of the people so they could buy the necessary things they could not raise.
Most of the families had a few sheep and raised some cotton and flax and with animal hides made most of their clothes. Spinning wheels and hand looms were quite common.
THE PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF JOHN EDWARD STAFFORD
I was born in a log cabin on the bank of the Guyandotte River. The cabin belonged to my uncle John Wesley Stafford. It was built by him and Uncle Floyd Shannon Stafford (Doctor Stafford). They established the first drug store in that part of the country. The drug store did not pay on account of the small population and poor roads, so it was turned into a general merchandise store and was alternately used as a storehouse and sometimes as a home.
This cabin was just across the river from the Stafford grist mill where the bread stuff was ground from the wheat and corn grown in the neighborhood for 8 or 10 miles around. A pool at the foot of the rapids where the mill was situated was one of my favorite places to fish.
My father lived here until he was able to build a home about one half mile from there in a little valley on Staffords Branch, where the rest of the children were born. The first house was a two story log house with a lean-to kitchen o f three rooms on the back. When lumber became available, this house was enlarged from time to time, and eventually was a very large three story house, with nine open fireplaces and openings in its four chimneys for stoves where needed, and a large porch all the way across the front.
The earliest memory I have is when Mother rescued me from the fury of a big turkey gobbler. He had me down and was beating me to death with his wings. This was when I was about four years old. They said the attack occurred because I was wearing a little red coat mother had made for me.
My next recollection is my father's move in 1889 to Mercer County, West Virginia. I was six years old and brother Earl was a babe in arms. We moved in three covered wagons drawn by oxen, and our route was: up the river five miles to Little Huff Creek, up the creek and over the divide to a place called Ieager on the Tug River, then up the Tug to the mouth of Elkhorn Creek and over the Flat Top Mountains to Pocahontas, Virginia. Pocahontas was a coal mining town and about the western end of the Norfolk and Western Rail road at that time. We stayed there two or three weeks with my father's aunt Kesiah Spratt Buchanan. This visit greatly impressed me as it was the first time I ever saw a steam locomotive.
Aunt Kesiah had three sons still at home. An older son Cam Buchanan had married and settled near the Staffords on a farm on Ned's Branch, three miles upriver. The sons at home with their widowed mother, Phil the oldest, Bill, and the youngest Sam, were railroad conductors and engineers and were, in my eyes, great heroes running those monster iron horses, which would only be colts beside today's modern locomotives. The youngest son, Sam, some years later went down with his engine through a flood weakened trestle and was scalded to death by a broken steam pipe.
[--Note inserted by his granddaughter: Did Grandpa mean "Phil the oldest, TOM, and the youngest Sam"? The Cam Buchanan mentioned here is John Campbell Buchanan. --Vanessa, 2002]
While we sojourned at Aunt Kesiah's, father rented a house at a place called New Hope in Mercer County, West Virginia, not far from Princeton, the county seat where Sam Stafford Jr. now lives. There was an empty store building on the property and my father decided to start a store.
Father had left the home place at Gilbert in charge of a nephew Evermont Hatfield, a son of Flora Ann Stafford Hatfield, the wife of Jim (Bullneck) Hatfield.
To continue the story, Dad, who had obtained the empty store building to become a merchant had to stock it with merchandise. Lynchburg, Virginia being the closest city having wholesale houses, father decided to go there. He decided to take me with him, to lighten the load on mother, as she had to take care of Lura, three, and Earl, one year old. We entrained at a small station of the N.&W. named Ada, so this was my first train ride, from Ada, West Virginia to Lynchburg, Virginia.
We stayed in Lynchburg about a week visiting many wholesale houses to make Dad's purchases. While we were there, the Barnum and Bailey Circus came to town so that was where I saw my first wild animals such as lion, tiger, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, camel, zebra, and other strange animals and birds.
Dad's store at New Hope didn't pay since Pocahontas and Princeton, large towns, were too close. He sold his stock of merchandise down as low as he could and moved the rest back to Gilbert. We lived in New Hope about a year.
Soon after we returned to Gilbert, Dad and Uncle Wes bought a steam sawmill and cut their own timber and sawed a large quantity of lumber which was stacked for years where the sawmill sat. Dad used most of his lumber to build a three story building, the ground floor was a store, the second floor was used as a church, and the third floor as a lodge hall. He also used part of the lumber to enlarge the barn and our house.
This is a good place to describe our home as it was in the early '90's. Beyond our front gate across the road was the creek, Staffords Branch. To the right a big mulberry tree two or three feet in diameter grew by the side of an opening to a coal seam. The hills were beyond, covered by dense forest.
Looking east about 150 yards up the creek was the schoolhouse painted white. Looking farther through a V shaped notch you could see the heavily wooded hills which circled around the head of Staffords Branch about one and one half miles away. The sun rose over these hills of a morning to have its first look at the settlement on the Guyan.
At the lower end of the garden facing the main road stood Dad's store house, which I mentioned before. Across the creek stood Dad's blacksmith shop where I often pumped bellows while he built ox yokes and forged chains for his timbering operations. In front of the shop was a large grindstone, turned by a crank and used to sharpen axes for chopping down the trees that were cut into sawlogs and floated down the Guyan River to market. I spent many, many hours turning that grindstone while Dad sharpened the scythe blades to cut the hay and the cradle blades to harvest the oats, wheat, and rye.
Across the valley and the river, Uncle Doctor Stafford's knob rose nearly straight up from the river's edge to an elevation of 1700 or 1800 feet. Down the river a short distance you could get a glimpse of Uncle Doctor's grist mill on the other side of the river. Slightly below you could see Uncle Wes' old log storehouse on the near side of the river.
At Uncle Doctor's mill, sandstone cliffs at the water's edge rose vertically to a height of 100 to 200 feet above the river and ended about 1000 feet down the river in a high round knoll on which Uncle Doctor's house was located. The cliffs could be seen for nearly a mile, from either up or down the stream.
Straight across the river from Uncle Doctor's house was the mouth of Staffords Branch, and on top of the bank above the high water mark stood the original John Stafford home, where seven sons and four daughters were born and raised.
Back of the old Stafford homestead, the hill sloped gently upward and was covered by an orchard of apple trees which were very old when I was a boy. Most of the trees were over a foot in diameter and 30 or 40 feet high.
In front of the house toward the river was the largest sand bar I have ever seen. It was nearly a quarter of a mile long and about 400 feet wide with pure white, clean sand of unknown depth. The lower end of the sand bar and the old orchard ended at the same place and the river, having completed its circuit of the valley, came back to the foot of the river hill. This continued down the river towering up in a series of huge sandstone cliffs for three quarters of a mile to Uncle Ike's place. We called this "The Betty Shoal Narrows." The road down river was blasted out on the face of this river hill, fifty feet above the river and in some places the cliffs overhung the road making a kind of half tunnel.
Dad's big barn was west of the house about a quarter of a mile away, built atop a gently sloping knoll. Standing at the barn and looking southward, up and across the river, you could see the notch in the hills through which Gilbert Creek came down to empty its water into the old Guyan. To the left you could see Uncle Alex Trent's house and store on the piece of land between the river and Gilbert Creek. This was where Isaac and Caty Spratt, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, lived before I was born. To go up either the river or Gilbert Creek, you had to cross the river at the ford exactly opposite this house.
Farther to the left and looking eastward, "Old Muley," a rounded hillside knob, reared up toward the sky. "Old Muley" got its name because it had been cleared of timber to the top. The hillside was used for pasture and occasionally to grow corn. The north slope came down to meet the valley floor near the back door of father's house. This is the area where I milked the cows during the spring, summer, and fall seasons.
This completes the picture of where I was born and raised, as well as that of my father before me, as I remember it, and this is where the town of Gilbert now stands.
About 1890, two young doctors from John Hopkins Medical School arrived and wanted to start a practice. Dad rented them a room and installed shelves for their books and medicines. Their names were Doctors T.D. Burgess and C.W. Kennison. There was not a post office in Gilbert at that time, so they persuaded Dad to use his influence to get one. So in a short time my mother was commissioned as postmaster, and a carrier was employed to ride in with the mail twice a week. Tuesdays and Saturdays were mail days.
The doctors stayed three or four years. One thing I remember well happened this way: One cold and stormy winter day, a rider galloped in from Pigeon Creek and said the mill had exploded and that the floor of the mill was covered with the dead and dying, and they wanted the doctors to go help at once. So the doctors saddled their horses and took off as fast as they could through the ice and snow.
Nearly all the steam sawmills around the country had a grist mill attachment to grind meal and flour for the surrounding farm families. When the doctors returned, they reported on the accident. Forty or fifty farmers had come to the mill that day to have their grain ground into bread stuff. The weather was so cold they were all huddled around inside the mill for warmth while waiting for their meal to be ground. The miller, wanting to grind all the grain in one day, put too much speed on the mill and the millstone exploded from centrifugal force, killing twelve men, and wounding eighteen more. This was the worst accident that had occurred in this area up to that time and it caused much talk.
There was a bad depression in 1893 called "Cleveland's Panic" during Cleveland's term as president. As our community was largely self-supporting, it didn't affect us for some time, but when it did come it was very bad. Lots of the family men came and begged Dad to let them work a few days at a wage of 25 cents for a ten hour day. Of course food was very cheap then. Bacon was three pounds for 25 cents, flour ten pounds for 15 cents, table salt 25 pounds for 10 cents, and coffee 15 cents a pound, just to mention some items.
-- MERGED NOTE ------------
John Edward Stafford, Sr
http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=1acf78fb-bacb-4a12-8ca8-2e68 f0b76978&tid=15356288&pid=9
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1883 - 1964 (80 years)
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