On this and accompanying pages I hope to present a brief history of our family heritage, concentrating my efforts mainly on the time spent, and the times had, in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia, and more specifically, in the Upper Kanawha Valley. The UKV is that area east of Charleston extending to Gauley Bridge where the Kanawha River is formed by the merger of the New and Gauley rivers. It somehow seems friendlier to have them merge than to merely conflue. Anyway, the UKV includes the Malden and Cabin Creek districts of Kanawha County along with a portion of Fayette County including the town of Montgomery.
The area seemed much bigger when I was much smaller, and I guess it was. The influences of television, the interstates, the globalization of the economy, and the emergence of the internet have all acted to bring the world and even the Kanawha Valley ever closer. And now, when I look at a map or go out for a leisurely drive, I realize the degree of closeness.
Our immediate family got its start in Ward which was located three or four miles up Kelleys Creek from Cedar Grove and was a central part of my heritage. That's where Mom and a cousin, Jennings Goodson, were born in 1918, and where both she and Dad lived when they met and married. It's also where my Crist grandparents and White great grandparents are buried, at the Ward Cemetery. Dad was born across the Kanawha River in Pratt, which sits maybe a mile from the mouth of Paint Creek and where the union activist Mother Jones was placed under house arrest for a time during the labor turmoil of 1912-13. He was born in the summer of 1912 in the middle of this strife, and there is little doubt that our family was touched by it.
Dad's parents, Jonie Hamilton Steele and Lutie Ann Sarver Steele, moved to the Kanawha Valley a few years earlier, I'm not sure just when but Granddad was here at least as early as 1900 when the census shows him living in the Cabin Creek District with his mother Edith Jane Meadows Steele and his stepfather Jones Ashwort (possibly Ashworth). His father George had died in 1897, and he and Edith Jane are among three generations of Steeles buried at the Culloden Cemetery. Granddad was born in Logan County in 1884, and Grandmom in either Putnam or Lincoln county in 1888. They were married in 1907 somewhere in the Malden District.
I might add that Granddad was one of at least 18 children that George Steele fathered over a period of nearly 50 years. Before marrying the much younger Edith Jane Meadows, approximately 35 years his junior, George was married to Sarah "Sally" Ellis until her death in 1876. Each marriage produced at least nine children, and there was still time to take up arms for the Confederacy. Maybe that was a reprieve.
George and at least four of his brothers, maybe all six, served with Confederate forces, and one brother, John, did not return. It's believed that this is the John Steele taken prisoner at Winchester, Virginia in September 1864 and sent to Point Lookout, Maryland. If so, he was exchanged in February 1865 and died of pneumonia at the Receiving & Wayside Hospital in Richmond four days later at age 35. His grandson Lonzo Steele, son of Harry Steele and Nancy Hatfield Steele, became a doctor and along with Dr. Hiram N. Farley and Dr. Lawson formed the Logan Hospital Association, which later became Logan General Hospital. The hospital has recently been getting a lot of press coverage because of its financial troubles.
I found it interesting that there were several tie-ins between the Hatfields and the Steeles, in the form of both marriages and property transfers, but that could be expected. Both families were early settlers of Island Creek in Logan County, George's father Ralph having moved there from Russell or Tazewell county in southwestern Virginia in the 1820s. The Steele Cemetery in Switzer is about three or four miles from the Hatfield Cemetery where "Devil Anse" of Hatfield-McCoy notoriety is buried. It's through this area that I have also traced my Meadows, Ferrell, and Sprouse lineages.
Back up in the Kanawha Valley, the Malden District was important in its day, and at one time Malden was larger than Charleston. It's also where Booker T. Washington spent part of his childhood. When you study the early salt industry of our valley you learn about Malden and the Kanawha Salines, a one-time booming industry powered by the slave trade, and Burning Springs, where natural gas was discovered about two or three miles to the east. Just east of Charleston, Malden is about 15 or so miles west of Cedar Grove and Ward, and the two or three mile stretch between Malden and Burning Springs is the unincorporated town of Rand, previously known as Levi. That is where my two sisters and I grew up and attended Rand Grade School before going on to graduate from DuPont Hight School in the next town.
The old salt works is not really in Malden proper, but in that area known as Dickenson Field between Malden and Rand, and even that doesn't tell the whole story. The salt industry was never limited to Malden as we often think, but was scattered out for several miles on either side of the river. In all there were fifty plus salt furnaces in the area, possibly some right in Rand, but the only salt works still remaining after the late 1800s, and still in operation when I was a child was the one at Dickenson Field. It was still being run, I believe by the Dickensons. John Q. Dickenson went on to become one of the major bankers in Charleston, and Dickenson Field is now in the hands of the Ratrie family, his heirs.
Malden is also important to me personally. My sister Nancy remembers that Uncle Tom Sarver would often walk down to Malden to visit a cemetery when visiting with us. This would have been in the early 1940s, as Uncle Tom died at the home of my Steele grandparents in Ward in January 1944. We believe Uncle Tom was Grandmom Steele's uncle, but I haven't been able to verify this at this time. I know he was related, I'm just not sure exactly how. Dad's sister June Steele Patterson, who's been living in Texas for many years now, remembers Uncle Tom's walks differently. June has said that she remembers him walking to Malden to visit the old salt works, not a cemetery. Not long after I heard these two stories, I was given a genealogical study of the Sarvers that seems to tie in with ours, and it mentions a Sarver presence in Malden or Kanawha Salines, and one or more burials at Burning Springs.
I've picked up from my readings on the subject that the names Malden, Kanawha Salines, and Burning Springs seem to be used interchangeably in discussing the salt industry of the valley, and I started wondering if maybe Nancy and June were both right. Maybe Uncle Tom was walking down to Dickenson Field to visit a cemetery, and maybe finding that cemetery would unlock another piece of our genealogical puzzle. A phone call to Mrs. Ratrie at the old homeplace on the property resulted in an invitation to come to Dickenson Field and take a look.
Dickenson Field has little life left, mostly just the few horses kept there and the handful of people who attend them, and those who still live in the few houses that remain around the big house. Mini-cassette recorder and camera in hand, I set out for the Ratrie place, only to discover when I got there that the old grave stones had been cleared away several years ago so the area could be used for burying horses.
Of Uncle Tom's trips to Malden or Dickenson Field the mystery remains, and this somehow seems fitting. He was known for his independence and sense of privacy, Dad spoke about it often, and I can almost hear him say, "Now Capn', that's jus' none of your business," to the questions he felt were a little too personal. I don't know what he did for a living as he was nearing 80 and was well into retirement when I was born, but his account with the Merchants Bank in Montgomery at the time of his death indicated a degree of financial success. |
What is known about our Sarver lineage is that our great grandparents, John E. Sarver and Cornelia Reynolds Sarver both came from Giles County, Virginia, as did Uncle Tom. John was born there in 1860, Cornelia in 1856, and Uncle Tom in 1861. It's also believed that they probably moved to the Kanawha Valley sometime between 1900 and 1908, as they are shown living in the Grant District of Cabell County in the 1900 census, and Cornelia died in 1908 and is buried at the Holly Grove Cemetery on Paint Creek as I accidentally discovered. She is buried alongside John who died over 30 years later in 1939, one year before I was born. Paint Creek, Pratt, Mucklow or Gallagher, and Holly Grove, all within a stone's throw of each other and each holding a key to a piece of our heritage
As proof that good deeds sometimes come back in spades, I would never have discovered the Sarver graves had it not been for voluntarily scouting out the Holly Grove Cemetery to search for some Cantleys as a favor to one of my dad's few remaining first cousins, Frances Steele Miller. I didn't find what she wanted, and I'm probably lucky to have even found the cemetery, as it's on the next hill over from where a major mountaintop augmentation job was underway. The mining interests like to use the term mountaintop restoration or reclamation, but they're lying. Anyone who's seen their work knows that the mountains have been neither restored nor reclaimed.
This area (we're back over on the Charleston, Malden, Cedar Grove side of the river now) includes part of the 35,000 acres between Burning Springs and Point Pleasant that George Washington surveyed and laid claim to, and where Daniel Boone spent some time including a brief stint as Kanawha County's representative to the Virginia state legislature. Burning Springs is also where I spent countless hours hiking in the woods, and where Darrell Daniels and I discovered a large rock with Daniel Boon or Boone, I don't remember which, chiseled into it. It was too large to move but I can still remember it like it was yesterday. That was about 45 years ago. Darrell, a dear old friend from the first grade forward, and I recently had lunch. He's been a television and radio newscaster in the Charleston area for about 35 years now, and he remembers the discovery just as I do. I wonder if it was authentic.
Several of Dad's brothers and sisters, he had three of each, were born about a mile or two up Paint Creek in the town of Mucklow, later renamed Gallagher. Others were born in Cannelton back over on the north side of the Kanawha about 15 miles east of Ward. Named for the relatively expensive seams of cannel coal used for making coal oil for lamps, Cannelton is located a few miles up the hollow from Smithers on the way to Mt. Olive and Dixie. Mt. Olive is West Virginia's new maximum security prison and Dixie is where you turn to go up Bell Creek and Pond Gap.
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Pond Gap had been pretty well travelled, as many of the early settlers entered the Kanawha Valley on the same route taken by Gen. Andrew Lewis' Army enroute to the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774. That route from Covington, VA followed what reportedly was a buffalo route from Lewisburg to Ansted (Hawk's Nest), through the mountains to Pond Gap, and down Kelly's Creek to the Kanawha River. Another branch went down Campbell's Creek to the Kanawha. These old wagon roads connected these communities in the late 1700s, and continued to for years to come. This was the old James River and Kanawha Turnpike which had to detour away from the river where the rugged terrain made passage along the current U.S. 60 impossible
Granddad Steele worked in the mines at Cannelton and presumably on Paint Creek since that is where they lived for a number of years before moving to Kentucky, around Raceland or Russell. Two or three of his brothers worked for the railroad in eastern Kentucky, and it was a railroad job that took Granddad and his family there. Not long after Dad graduated from Raceland High School in 1932, the family moved back to West Virginia, this time to Ward and employment in the mines where Granddad retired in the late 1940s, and Dad got a taste of it himself.
A couple years in the mines and a few scars picked up as permanent reminders of a slate fall convinced Dad to enroll at New River State College in Montgomery where he spent a couple years in the mid 1930s, and later to begin a 34 year career with DuPont Chemical in Belle. Anything was better than the mines. Some 25 years later I attended the same college, then called West Virginia Institute of Technology, and had the pleasure of having one of dad's old teachers, Prof. John Matheny for a World History class. I also studied, using the term loosely, West Virginia History under Prof. Otis K. Rice, who continues to write even now. Our old college has undergone another name change, this time as a result of its being absorbed by West Virginia University, and it's now known as West Virginia University Institute of Technology.
It was also during this period of time in the mid 1930s that Dad bought a brand new Hupmobile complete with rumble seat, and met Mom. An interesting thing about their marriage was that for some reason they decided to elope and drove over to Kentucky. I guess they were in a hurry, not for that reason, and in Kentucky you could get a license and get married the same day. Well, Mom was busy that day, working I think, so Dad took his sister Lillian over to Ashland in Boyd County just long enough to get the license. Later, on that evening of June 29, 1937, my real parents-to-be drove back to Kentucky, this time back to Russell in Greenup County, and John Wesley Steele and Helena Jane Crist were married.
Charles Herman Crist and the former Grace Garnet White neither had to travel far to get to Ward. Granddad Crist was born in Pond Gap on Bell Creek in 1889, the son of Charles Kemper Mauzy Crist who will sometimes be referred to as CKM or CKMC, and the former Emma Jane Branham, and Grandmom was born at Coal Fork on Campbells Creek. They had four daughters and no sons, all born at Ward, and Mom was the oldest. Donna Crist Walton, my sole surviving aunt from this side of the family, lives on Campbells Creek. Charlie Crist was special: Simply put "a good kind man" that many of his friends knew as "Gub." The injuries sustained in a mine-related accident and the limp that resulted never diminished this man, who died in his sleep at a far too early age. He was 55.
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Great Granddad CKM Crist was born in Nelson County in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and settled in Pond Gap sometime prior to his marriage to Emma Jane in 1877. The Crists were mostly Brethern who had migrated from Pennsylvania down into the Shenandoah Valley in the early 1800s. It is through this area that I trace my Koogler and Miller lineages. It's known that Charles Kemper Mauzy Crist had a brother, George M., and it's believed that he also moved to the Kanawha Valley as there is a George M. Crist of the same age here at that time, listed in the 1880 census as a school teacher. My great grandfather was also a school teacher, a Notary Public, and either he or his wife Emma ran the Post Office in Pond Gap.
Emma was the granddaughter of Andrew Branham and Sabra Estep Branham, who migrated with their young family from Pike County, Ky., with a possible stop-over in Logan County, and settled in Pond Gap in the mid 1830s. The family originally owned, I think, about a thousand acres in Pond Gap, and in 1997 I had the pleasure of meeting and visiting with Mary K. Branham who was still living on the remaining 40 or so acres. Also there at the time was her son Earl and his lovely new bride, and we shared some family research. Unfortunately Mary K. died in late December of that year at age 86, but I'm fortunate to have personally met these new-found cousins, one of the benefits of getting involved with genealogy.
Georgia Crist, daughter of CKMC and sister of Charles Herman Crist, my grandfather, married Don Donnally who later became Postmaster in Pond Gap, and one of their grandsons, either Wainwright or Wavel, still lives on the old Donnally homeplace there. I have met him and visited the grave of our GGG grandmother Sabra Branham who died in 1895, and who is buried out back not far from the house. The story is told that Sabra and Andrew got along so poorly that she even refused to be buried with him. He died in 1879 and is supposedly buried about two houses away, again out back at the foot of the mountain, but I couldn't find the markers. There are several Branham cemeteries in Pond Gap and Charles Kemper Mauzy Crist and Emma are said to be buried there.
Grandmom Crist was born Grace Garnet White in 1901, daughter of Robert Henry White and Martha Jane Oyler White of Coal Fork. Robert H. was our great grandfather, but he's always been known as Grandpa, and that's how I'll continue referring to him.
Grandpa White was known as a warm, wonderful person, and one only had to see him to feel the warmth. Born at or near Fields Creek in 1863, he was the quintessential grandpa. His dad, Creed Fulton White, had moved from Wythe County, Virginia, probably in the 1850s, as he married Susan Armstrong from Monroe County in October 1858 at Fields Creek, across the river from Campbells Creek. |
Creed later moved to Campbells Creek where he opened the first store on the creek. He had previously worked in the mines. I'm not sure when he moved, but presumably sometime after Grandpa White was born or maybe even after 1865 and the conclusion of the war. Like my Great Grandfather George Steele, Creed also served in the Civil War, but on the Union side. He joined up at Pt. Pleasant in the early part of 1865 and spent some time as a patient in Sleugh Hospital in Washington, D.C. before being discharged later that year.
Grandmom Crist remembered him in a copy of some notes in her own handwriting at the bottom of some genealogy sheets dating back to the 1950s or before, and which have been passed along to me. It's odd how we sometimes remember things, but I recognize her handwriting because of a book she gave me back in the mid to late 1940s. It was a New Testament, and inside she wrote, "Tommy, Always keep your little hand in God's big hand. Love, Grandmother Crist." I wish I still had it.
In her words:
"Grandfather liked to go to Atlantic City in later years, took one of the Grandchildren with him. My Brother William went with him on one trip as well. He often went to Charleston. in later years to the old Washington or Kanawha Hotel and spent the day talking to old salesmen who met there quite often. I have seen him pass my Sister's House many times with his cane and little black valise as he called it.
"As I can remember he always had 1 or 2 canary birds hanging in the dining room. How they would sing. He loved them. He was a R_______? Old Gentleman."
And this story kind of reminds me of Grandmom. I couldn't remember the kind of birds, but I do remember that she often had a feathered friend or two in her home above what's now Perdue's IGA at Coal Fork. Kathy tells me they were blue parakeets. Just across the small bridge beside the store is where the Reynolds lived. Virginia Belle (Jenny Belle) still lives there, Wilbur (her husband and Mom's first cousin) having died a couple years ago. Probably no more than 100 yards beyond that is where the old White homeplace once sat, but for some time now has mostly just been a big lot with trailers, and spots rented out by one of the descendants. The property is tied up with about 500 to 1000 of us holding a small interest, but at least the small cemetery on the property seems safe for now. Creed Fulton White and Susan Armstrong White are buried there.
An interesting footnote about Creed and Susan, sent to me and credited to Blanche Ashby White Trotter, another descendant, is that in their later life they apparently had an argument, and from that time until Susan's death they didn't speak to each other, communicating only through their daughter Ella who lived with them.
Robert Henry "Grandpa" White and his wife, Martha Jane Oyler White, daughter of Joseph Harvey Oyler and Lucinda A. Layton Oyler, at some point in time moved to Ward where he went to work in the mines. Interestingly, I discovered that both Grandpa's father and father-in-law served in the Civil War with Union forces, but it was my desire for information about Lucinda that first triggered my interest in genealogy. Lucinda, it's claimed, was a full blooded Indian, Cherokee I think. I find it a little amusing (sorry Kathy), but my kid sister Kathy cites two things in support of our claim of Native American heritage, and she may be right. First, our Great Grandmother Martha Jane Oyler White looked Indian (she would have been one-half Indian is this claim holds true). Second, and cited as Kathy's evidence that Grandmom Crist really believed, Grandmom used to love to watch the wrestler Don Eagle, a star performer in the 1950s who died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1966.
To date, I have found no evidence to support the theory that Lucinda was Native American and that she was adopted or raised by the Layton family, but it's fitting that I end this discussion where my quest began. Her death certificate shows her age as 27 years, and the cause of death as fever. The records show that she was born in Alleghany County, Virginia around 1848-50, that she married Joseph Harvey Oyler in the mid 1860s, and that she died way too young in 1877. With several small children to care for, GG Grandfather Joseph Harvey Oyler, Civil War veteran, wasted little time in remarrying, this time to Betty (Betsy) Ann Blunt as he prepared for the next chapter in his life.
As do I in mine.
"Creed Fulton White, Grandfather, went to Baltimore, Md. to do his buying for his store. My Father Robert White went with him on different occasions. So many things he bought for 10 cents a doz. My Dad Robert told this many a time.
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