Leonard Stephens Diary, 1855 Trip, Part 3

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Thursday June 7th.

Charlottesville, 1856 Library of Congress

We this morning made an early start & at the distance of ten miles passed Sharlottesville & were also in full view for some time on the eastern side of the above town, Monticello the former residence of Thomas Jefferson. His tomb is also in full view of the road for some distance. We have after traveling 22 miles stoped for dinner with Mr. Dettor who keeps the halfway house between Sharlottesville & Waynesborrow which is at the foot of the western side of the Blue Ridge. After dinner we set out & a rain coming up accompanied with a storm we stoped two miles on the east side of the mountain with Mr. Farrow & stayed untill next morning.

Friday June 8th. We resumed our journey crossing the Blue Ridge at four miles & did not stop for dinner untill we reached Staunton having traveled 21 miles. After dinner we again set out and traveled 18 miles to a Mr. Lange's with whom we tarried for the night. At Staunton Napoleon left his sack over coat. We had left an Umbrella there as [we] went on to Orange just one week before. Between Mr. Lange's & Staunton we crossed the North Mountain six miles over. I was quite unwell having caught cold the evening before.

Saturday 9th of June. At an early hour we again commenced our journey. I was better this morning. The good land lady had made me some pepper tea the evening before which I drank freely & I think it helped me a good deal. We traveled 22 miles & stoped for dinner with Mr. Thomas 10 miles east of the Warm Springs. Our horse at setting out this morning appeared to be stiff in his hind legs but has traveled very well & he eats amazingly hearty. We are now in Bath County. We this day made thirty four miles & put up with Mr. Dangerfield who keeps two miles west of the Warm Springs, having crossed the Warm Springs Mountain & at the foot of the west side is Warm Springs. This is a very greatly improved place, quite a number of good buildings. We examined the water which is certainly [a] great misterry. The water boils up from the bottom of a deep spring in large bubbles & is quite warm enough for dish water. We had on the east side of the mountain passed the Bath Allumn which is also a highly improved place & is said to be much resorted. The place is so called from the fact that the water is strongly impregnated with Allumn.

Hot Springs as rendered by Ed. Byer, 1857 Library of Virginia

We set out on Sunday morning June the 10th & at the distance of five miles passed the Hot Springs so called from the fact that the water is warmer than the Warm Springs waters. It is said to be so warm as to make it uncomfortable to hold ones hand in it. This place is also pretty well improved. We traveled sixteen miles & stoped for dinner with Mr. Masters. After resting two hours we set out & about two miles distance we were caught in a prodigious hard rain; indeed we were of opinion we had never seen a harder fall. We fortunately got into a porch which sheltered us or else we should have been drenched. The rain ceasing we continued on our journey & about two hours since we stoped with a Mr. Dixon who lives at the base of the Alleganey Mountain on the east side.

Monday morning June 11th. We again recommenced our journey & crossed the Mountain, it being eight miles over & at five miles distance on the west side from the foot of the mountain we passed the White Sulpher Springs. This is decidedly by far the handsomest improved place we have seen & it is worth a travel from Cincinnati to see. The water here as it runs over the rocks leaves a white scum from which it takes its name. It is also strongly Sulpherish. All these places as we learn are greatly resorted in the Summer Season. The Rail Road from Staunton to the Ohio River passes this point. We have stoped for dinner at the Green Brier Bridge which is over the Green Brier River, a branch of the Kanawa River. The waters all on this side of the Alleganey Mountains flow westward. We have traveled to day up to diner time nineteen miles. After dinner we resumed our journey & made fourteen miles more to a Mr. Hannah's with whom we tarried all night. We this evening passed Louisburgh, county seat of Green Brier County, Va.

Tuesday June 12th. We again set out at an early hour & traveled nineteen miles to Mr. --- where we stoped for dinner. We found the Landlord a blathering drunkard but the dinner was good & arrived at table by a very genteel young lady. We this day passed the Little & Big Sewell Mountains. A portion of our road being very rough we after travelling 11 miles in the evening stoped with a Mr. Alderson who is also a very blathering old drunken Know Nothing Whig & with whom we found ourselves uncomfortably situated. The family however or the ballance of it appears to be quite decent & well disposed.

June 13th.

Cliffs of New River Gorge    Photo: National Park Service

We again set out & drove 19 miles to the Gaulley Bridge where we stoped for dinner. We have passed this morning the point called the Hawk's Nest. Also many of the New River Cliffs, which are indeed stupendous. They far exceed anything in the way of cliffs I have ever seen. The Gaulley River intersecting the New River, it then takes the name of Kanawa River. After dinner we then traveled eleven miles and stoped for the night with Mr. Renick whom we found to be a very agreeable young Gentleman. He has but recently moved to where he keeps, and as he stated had married the farm, his wife's Father having given him the place. He had however a very good looking lady for his wife.

June 14th. After breakfast we again resumed our journey & after traveling 16 miles stoped for dinner at the Ten Mile House, kept by Mr. Malone, which is just ten miles above Charleston, the County Seat of Kannawha County. This Kannawha County is celebrated for the immense quantities of salt that is manufactured along the river for a considerable distance.

Kanawha Saltworks, 1845

The salt is called Kannawha Salt. At this point we had expected to ship on board of some steamer for Cincinnati, but up to dinnertime we have not been able to find out whether we can do so. There is but one boat up & that only runs to Galiopolis & there seems to be no certainty here a Cincinnati boat will be here shortly. Our dinner being over & not being able to satisfy ourselves that a Cincinnati boat would be up this evening, we decided to go on to Guyandot & accordingly set out & traveled ten miles to a Mr. Wilson's, with whom we stoped for the night. His house is called the Hudson House. There were some drinking fellows there & Wilson himself appeared to be rather of that case, for he invited us to drink, which I declined doing of course, for I have no favor for the liquor & not much for those who use it immoderately. We are now ten miles from Charleston & thirty-eight from Guyandot.

Friday morning June 15th. After breakfasting we again resumed our journey & at a distance of 23 miles stoped for dinner with a Mr. Black. We have passed over some pretty good land & a portion of very poor. A good deal of work has been done along here on the Rail Road line. This is the road that is intended to run from the Ohio River at Guyandotte to Staunton. Left Mr. Black's at two o'clock and traveled fifteen miles to Guyandotte, a town situated on the Ohio River one hundred and sixty miles above Cincinnati. At this point we decided to take passage on the first boat that should pass down.

Accordingly on the next day, Saturday the 16th of June 1885, at 9.0 o'clock we shipped on board the Brazil Steam Boat bound for Cincinnati and Louisville. We found her to be a very pleasant running boat & accommodating crew & about 3 o'clock A.M. on the following morning we arrived and landed at the Cincinnati wharf. Here we lay untill daylight & having harnessed our horse we made our way to Brown's Livery Stable on Sixth Street between Sycamore & Main & after having our horse unharnessed & fed we went to the Galt House on Sixth Street between Main & Walnut for breakfast. While there it rained quite a shower. At 9 o'clock we left our Hotel & and getting our horse & buggy left Cincinnati for our Sweet Homes. We first came to Napoleon's & found all well, where I also ascertained that all were well at my own home. After dinner & at 4 o'clock I left Napoleon's and arrived safe at home & was indeed much gratified to find myself once more at my own home, which although a rather cheerless one, yet it is the only one I can call mine & after all there is no place like one's own dear home, & here I want to record my grateful feelings to my Heavenly Parent for having preserved us through our journeyings and enabled us to reach our respective homes in safety.

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Notes:

The 1860 census found a Joseph Dettor and his wife Margaret in the area. Return.

The 1850 census listed George Farrrow with 13 boarders in the 18th district of Albemarle County. Return.

S. Augustus Mitchell's New Map of Virginia (1849) identifies a Lange's 17 miles southwest of Staunton in the valley of the Calfpasture River. The family had been there since at least 1825. David and William Lange, both farmers, were enumerated in 1850. Return.

Contemporary maps (Crozet's, Mitchell's and Colton's) indicate that the turnpike passed through Dry Branch Gap, the most northerly passage over Great North Mountain (Virginia Route 688), then turned southwest down the valley of the Calfpasture following what is now VA 629 through Deerfield and Green Valley, crossing the Cowpasture and joining the Lexington road (VA 39) near Bath Alum. Return.

Mr Thomas not identified. Somewhere along the Calfpasture River valley, on Virginia Route 39. "Warm Springs had become so popular by 1796, eight inns had been established on the fifty-mile stretch between Staunton and the Springs." Robert D. Mitchell, Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley (Charlottesville, VA: University Press, 1977), 208. Return.

Leroy P. Dangerfield, Sr. and a son of the same name were counted as farmers in the Hot Springs area in 1860. General Stephens' route runs southerly from Warm Springs along present US 220 to Hot Springs. Return.

The pass over Warm Springs Mountain has an elevation of about 3000 feet; the town about 2300. The summit is sometimes wreathed in clouds, as it was when I crossed in 1995. Return.

Bath Alum (approx. elev. 1640), now (in the late 1990s) marked only by a service station and a name on the map. Return.

Virginians had been 'resorting' to the Hot Springs for seventy years, since Thomas Bullitt bought the land. When the Stephens party passed through, Dr. Thomas Goode was the proprietor of the 'modern' Homestead Hotel. Nothing survives of these structures, but in a hallway off the grand, colonnaded lobby of the Homestead hangs a series of colored prints from Ed. Beyer's Album of Virginia, published in 1857, depicting the romantic juxtaposition of wilderness and progress in the mountains of Virginia. (The Library of Virginia has published the set in a facsimile edition.) An informal history of the Homestead and the Springs area is Fay Ingalls, The Valley Road (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing, 1949). Return.

From Hot Springs (elev. 2195) the old turnpike ran west down into the valley of the Jackson River and joined the James River-Kanawha Pike at Callaghan's (elev. 1428), west of Covington. (An approximate modern route would be VA 615-687-641-600). George Masters, a native of England, and his Virginia-born wife, Mary, were noted as proprietors of a hotel in 1860. Return.

Joseph Dickson, then 44, and his wife Martha, 31, kept a hotel in the Covington district of Alleghany County in 1860. They were probably a few miles west of where the road from Hot Springs joined the James River & Kanawha Pike. The latter route, which had been authorized by the Virginia Burgesses in 1785, was later known as the Midland Trail, now traced by US 60. West Virginia, 427. Return.

A new hotel had opened in 1854, but White Sulphur Springs (elev. 2000) had been popular since 1772. By the 1830s well-to-do Southerners flocked to the cottages and gardens around Caldwell's tavern, ostensibly to bathe in the healing waters, but more importantly, as a contemporary observer noted, "to see and be seen, to chat, to laugh, and dance, and each to throw his pebble on the great heap of general enjoyment." West Virginia, 428-431. Return.

Probably in the early stages of construction, the Covington & Ohio RR was an extension of the Virginia Central, which was in service to Covington by 1861. Completion was delayed by the Civil War. Return.

Green Brier Bridge is present day Caldwell, WV. Return.

Mr. Hannah, who has not been identified, kept near modern Rainelle (elev. 2400), a lumber town founded around 1900. West Virginia, 436. Return.

Lewisburg (elev. 2084), originally Lewis Springs, named for Andrew Lewis, the pioneer surveyor. West Virginia, 432. Return.

Leonard omits the name of their host entirely, either from irritation or delicacy. Return.

Little and Big Sewell Mountains (elev. abt 3200) are the last major ridges of the Appalachians. Return.

Col. George Alderson had been an early settler in the Lookout area of Fayette County. The top of Spy Rock (elev. 2300) still affords a view for miles to the east. West Virginia, 437. The Colonel would have been about 65 at the time of the Stephens' visit. Return.

At Gauley Bridge, the New River combines with the Gauley to form the Great Kanawha. Though General Stephens omits the name of his host, it was likely James H. Miller, who was the leading merchant of the town, with his hand in almost everything. See History of Fayette County, 596-597. Return.

The Hawk's Nest, a precipice towering 585 feet (or only 528, depending on the source) above the New River, is still an impressive sight. Named for the fish hawks (ospreys) which roosted there. Return.

The New River is even more remarkable than General Stephens realized. It had existed long before the Appalachians and their complex net of streams. The New's headwaters are in North Carolina; it flows west and north from the Blue Ridge, cutting across the Great Valley and through the Appalachians, and, before the Ice Ages created the Ohio River, it continued, as the Teays, on across the Midwest to the upper Mississippi. See R. A. Davis, "Land Fit for a Queen: the Geology of Cincinnati," The River Book: Cincinnati and the Ohio (Cincinnati: Program for Cincinnati, 1981), 131-137. Bernie Sanders' fine Northern Kentucky Views offers a short discussion -- with maps. Return.

The young Renicks not identified. Near present-day Smithers. Return.

James B. and Caroline Malone were listed in the 1850 census, running what appeared to be a successful tavern. The Ten Mile House would have been near what is now Malden. Return.

Later the Capital of the new state of West Virginia, Charleston was 55 miles up the Great Kanawha from the Ohio. In 1856 it had a population of about 1500. James, 102. Return.

The Kanawha Salines, as the salt works were known, had been in operation since 1797. By 1817 the producers had banded together to control production and prices, forming the first commercial trust in the United States. Output peaked in 1850 at 3 million bushels. When General Stephens passed through they were in decline, unable to meet competition from new fields on the Ohio. West Virginia, 445-446. Return.

Gallipolis, Ohio, the seat of Gallia County, lies four miles below the confluence of the Great Kanawha with the Ohio and 185 miles from Cincinnati. Both were named for the French immigrants who settled here in the 1790s, only to find that the failure of the Scioto Company had left them without clear title to their land. Most left, but by 1856 the population was about 1,000. James, 102; Jenkins, 196-197. Return.

According to James, Guayandotte was a flourishing place of about 1200 population and "the most important point of steamboat embarkation in Western Virginia, except for Wheeling." James, 102. It is now part of Huntington, WV, a city created later in the century, named for the railroad magnate. The earlier town was burned by Union troops in November 1861 for its too obvious Confederate sympathies. West Virginia, 240. Return.

Mr Wilson not identified. Somewhere near St. Albans. Stephen Teays had operated a tavern since the turn of the century at the mouth of the Coal River, which survived until 1861. West Virginia, 498-499. Return.

Mr Black not identified. Somewhere near Milton. Return.

Originally proposed as the Covington & Ohio Railroad, it was not completed until 1871 as part of the Chesapeake & Ohio system. The rail line passes through the New River Gorge, rather than across the Alleghany plateau as does the Midland Trail. The line and its feeders were vital in exploiting the coal and timber resources of the area. A description of the turnpike in this area can be found in George Selden Wallace, Cabell County Annals and Families (Richmond, VA: Garrett & Massie, 1935), 114-115. Return.

The Brazil, a wooden-hulled sternwheeler, 150 feet in length, was built in 1854 at McKeesport, Pennsylvania. It left the Ohio for the upper Mississippi in 1856. It was lost nine years later following a collision on the lower Mississippi with the Magenta. Way, 60. Return.

Brown & Brothers Livery Stable rated an entry in Williams' 1856 City Directory. Return.

Listings for the Galt House appear in city directories from 1839 on. An 1841 ad offered rates of seven dollars a week or twenty a month. Return.

They would have crossed the Ohio River to Covington by steam ferry. James, 112. Work on Roebling's wonderful suspension bridge was not started for another year or so, and the span was not opened until December 1866, its completion delayed by the Panic of 1857 and the distractions of the Civil War. See above, 22 Oct 1865. Return.

Napoleon's family at this time included his wife, Rebecca Patterson (Hughes), 33, and four teen-aged children: Kate, Jack, Statira and, Rachel. General Stephens had been a widower for some years, his wife, the former Catherine Sanford, having died in 1843, but his household included a number of slaves (8 in 1850, 12 in 1860). His daughter, Statira Bonaparte Stephens, and her husband, Reuben Lewis Bristow, lived nearby. Return.

General Stephens' home, Beech Woods, was about a dozen miles from Covington, and a mile east of the Lexington Pike. A photograph of the original residence, said to have been one of the earliest brick structures in the area, graced the cover of Kentucky Ancestors for July, 1972. The building survived into the 1920s. The bricks were recycled into the residence presently on the site. Return.