Welcome to West Virginia - Please Exercise Caution

[Ninurta]

... one of the first, if not THE first, white men to break brush there. At that time, he was ignoring the king's order
from the Proclamation of 1763 that made it illegal for white folk to enter the Indian lands west of the proclamation line.

 

How dare they?!!
A King's Order and it's just ignored?! We (Limeys) invented tea and umbrellas, you know?


(Secretly, we Loved West Virginia when we visited!)

Well, Adam O'Brien was of that roguish Irish stock. so the King really should have seen that one coming...

Irishmen! Ya just can't do nothin' with 'em!

There was a 4 page writeup about a meeting with him in an 1835 edition of the Southern Literary Messenger where he was quoted as saying something along the lines of how he'd rather take his chances with the wild panthers and Indians than Justices and sheriffs, who "for all their civility have no natural feeling". He was with Mike Fink when Mr. Fink and an Indian killed one another somewhere around Orma WV I think. The graves are still there and still maintained.

At the time of the meeting that was written up (which occurred at a road house named "Gandy's"), he was walking to Clarksburg from his home, a distance of about 125 miles, to "ferret out a land title" and he was, as I recall, about 94 or 96 years old at the time. Just him and his hound, out for a long walk to retrieve a piece pf paper. His oldest child at that time was 67, and his youngest was 1. He had 18 kids by 4 wives, and didn't always bother to divorce one before he married the next. I reckon he was something of a character, and died at 109 years old.

One of his wives  is listed on Col. Bouquet's list of captives retrieved from the Shawnees in 1765. According to the pay ledgers from Dunmore's War in 1774, he enlisted at Romney, VA (WV) and was paid for 132 days service in that war at the rate of 2s 6d per day, which was the pay rate for both sergeants and scouts. The pay rolls do not say which he was.


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