Ohio County, West Virginia Biography of Isaac Williams & Rebecca Tomlinson. ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal represen- ative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. ************************************************************************ ISAAC WILLIAMS & REBECCA TOMLINSON From: MYERS' HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA, Volume 1, Chapter XVIII, pages 303-309. Compiled by S. Myers, 1915. Published by The Wheeling News Lithograph Company. (From the American Pioneer.) Isaac Williams was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, July 16th, 1737. While he was quite a young boy his parents removed to Winchester, Va., then a frontier town. Soon after this event his father died, and his mother married a Mr. Buckley. When he was about eighteen years old the colonial government employed him as a ranger, or spy, to watch the movements of the Indians, for which his early acquaintance with a hunter's life eminently fitted him. In this capacity he served in the army under General Braddock. He also formed one of the party who guarded the first convoy of provisions to Fort Duquesne, after its surrender to General Forbes in 1758. The stores were carried on pack-horses over the rough mountain, trails, exposed to the attack of the Indians, for which the deep ravines and narrow ridges of the mountain ranges afforded every advantage. After the peace made with the Indians in 1765, by Col. Bouquet the country on the waters of the Monongahela began to be settled by the people east of the mountains. Among the early emigrants to this region were the parents of Mr. Williams, whom he conducted across the mountains in 1768, but did not finally locate himself in the west till the following year, when he settled on the waters of Buffalo Creek, near the present town of West Liberty. He accompanied Ebenezer and Jonathan Zane when they explored and located the country about Wheeling in 1769. Previous to this period, however, he made several hunting excursions to the waters of the Ohio. In returning from one of these adventurous expeditions, in company with two other men in the winter of 1767, the following incident befell him: Early in December, as they were crossing the glades of the Alleghany Mountains, they were overtaken by a violent snow storm. This is a stormy, cold region in winter, but on the present occasion the snow fell to the depth of five or six feet and put a stop to their further progress. It was followed by intensely cold weather. While confined in this manner to their camp, with a scanty supply of food and no chance procuring more by hunting, one of his companions took sick and died, partly from disease and partly from having no food but the tough, indigestible skins of their peltry, from which the hair had been singed off at the camp fire and the skin boiled in the kettle. Soon after the death of this man, his remaining companion, from the difficulty of procuring fuel, became so much frozen in the feet that he could render Mr. Williams no further assistance. He contrived, however, to bury the dead man in the snow. The feet of this man were so badly frosted that he lost all his toes and a part of each foot, thus rendering him entirely unable to travel for a period of nearly two months. During this time, their food consisted of the remnant of their skins and their drink of melted snow. The kind heart of Mr. Williams would not allow him to leave his friend in this suffering condition while he went to the nearest settlement for aid, lest he should be attacked by wild beasts, or perish for the want of sustenance. With a patience and fortitude that would have awarded him a civic crown in the best days of the chivalric Romans, he remained with his helpless friend until he was so far restored to health as to enable him to accompany him in his return to his home. So much reduced was his own strength, from starvation and cold, that it was many months before his usual health was restored. In 1769 he became a resident of the western wilds and made his home on the waters of Buffalo Creek. Here he found himself in a wide field for the exercise of his daring passion -- hunting. From his boyhood he had displayed a great relish for a hunter's life and in this employment he for several years explored the recesses of the western wilds and followed the water courses of the great valley to the mouth of the Ohio; and from thence along the shores of the Mississippi. As early as the year 1770 he trapped the beaver on the tributaries of this river, and returned in safety with a rich load of furs. During the prime of his life he was occupied in hunting and in making entries of lands. This was done by girdling a few trees and planting a small patch of corn. This operation entitled the person to four hundred acres of land. Entries of this kind were very aptly called "tomahawk improvements." An enterprising man could make a number of these in a season and sell them to persons who, coming late into the county, had not so good an opportunity to select prime lands as the first adventurers. Mr. Williams sold many of these "rights" for a few dollars, or the value of a rifle gun, which was then thought a fair equivalent, of so little account was the land then considered; and besides, like other hunters of this day, he thought wild lands of little value except as hunting ground. There was, however, another advantage attached to these simple claims: it gave the possessor the right of entering one thousand acres of land adjoining the improvement, on condition of his paying a small sum per acre into the treasury of the State of Virginia. These entries were denominated "preemption rights," and many of the richest lands on the left bank of the Ohio River are now held under these early titles. As Virginia then claimed all the lands on the northwest side of the Ohio, many similar entries were made at this early day on the right bank and also on the rich alluvials of the Muskingum as high up as the falls- one tract, a few miles above Marietta, is still known as "Wiseman's Bottom," after the man who made a "tomahawk entry" at that place. After the cession of the lands or the territory northwest of the Ohio River to the United States, these early claims were forfeited. While occupied in these pursuits, Williams became acquainted with Rebecca Martin, the daughter of Mr. Joseph Tomlinson, of Grave Creek (now Moundsville), then a young widow, and married her in October, 1775. Her former husband, John Martin, had been a trader among the Indians, and was killed on the Big Hockhocking in the year 1770. A man by the name of Hartness, her uncle on her mother's side, was killed with him at the same time by the Shawanese Indians. As a striking proof of the veneration of the Indians for William Penn and the people of his colony, two men from Pennsylvania who were with them were spared. The two killed were from Virginia. The fact is referred to by Lord Dunmore in his speech at the Indian treaty near Chillicothe in the year 1774. Mr. Williams accompanied Dunmore in this campaign, and acted as a ranger until its close. By this marriage, Mr. Williams became united to a woman whose spirit was congenial to his own. She was born the 14th of February, 1754, at Wills' Creek on the Potomac, in Maryland, and had removed with her father's family to Grave Creek in 1771. Since her residence in the western country she had lived with her brothers, Samuel and Joseph Tomlinson, as their housekeeper, near the mouth of Grave Creek, and for weeks together, while they were absent on tours of hunting, she was left entirely alone. She was now in her twenty-first year; full of life and activity, and as fearless of danger as the man who had chosen her for his companion. One proof of her courageous spirit is related by her niece, Mrs. Bukley. In the spring of the year 1774 she made a visit to a sister, who was married to a Mr. Baker, opposite the mouth of Yellow Creek, on the Ohio River. It was soon after the time of the massacre of Logan's relatives at Baker's Station. Having finished her visit, she prepared to return home in a canoe by herself, the traveling being chiefly done by water. The distance from her sister's to Grave Creek was about fifty miles. She left there in the afternoon and paddled her light canoe rapidly along until dark. Knowing that the moon would rise at a certain hour she landed, and, fastening the slender craft to the willows, she leaped on shore, and, lying down in a thick clump of bushes, waited patiently the rising of the moon. As soon as it had cleared the tops of the trees and began to shed its cheerful rays over the dark bosom of the Ohio, she prepared to embark. The water being shallow near the shore, she had to wade a few paces before reaching the canoe, when, just in the act of stepping on board, her naked foot rested on the cold, dead body of an Indian, who had been killed a short time before, and which, in the gloom of the night, she had not discovered in landing. Without flinching or screaming, she stepped lightly into the canoe with the reflection she was thankful he was not alive. Resuming the paddle she reached the mouth of Grave Creek in safety early the next morning. Walter Scott's Rebecca, the Jewess, was not more celebrated for her cures and skill in treating wounds than Rebecca Williams amongst the honest borderers of the Ohio River. About the year 1785, while living a short time at Wheeling on account of Indian depredations, she, with the assistance of Mrs. Zane, dressed the wounds of Thomas Mills, who was wounded in fourteen places by rifle shots. He with three other men were spearing fish by torch light about a mile above the garrison when they were fired upon by a party of Indians secreted on the shore. Mills stood in the bow of the canoe holding a torch, and, as he was a fair mark, received, most of the shots. The others escaped unhurt. One arm and one leg were broken, in addition to the flesh wounds. Had he been in the regular service with plenty of surgeons he probably would have lost one or both limbs by amputation. But this being out of the question here where no surgeons could be procured, these women, with their fomentations and simple applications of slippery elm bark not only cured his wounds, at the time deemed impossible and restored him to health, but saved both his limbs. Their marriage was as unostentatious and as simple as the manners and habits of the party. A traveling preacher happening to come into the settlement, as they sometimes did, though rarely, they were married without any preparation of nice dresses, bride cakes, or bride-maids -- he standing up in a hunting dress, and she in a short gown and petticoat of homespun, the common wear of the country. In the summer of 1774, the year before her marriage, she was one morning busily occupied in kindling a fire preparatory to the breakfast, with her back to the door, on her knees, puffing away at the coals. Hearing some one step cautiously on the floor, she looked around and beheld a tall Indian close to her side. He made a motion of silence to her, at the same time shaking his tomahawk in a threatening manner if she made any alarm. He, however, did not offer her harm; but looking carefully around the cabin he espied her brother Samuel's rifle hanging on the hooks over the fire place. This he seized upon, and fearing the arrival of some of the men, hastened his departure without any further damage. While he was with her in the house she preserved her presence of mind and betrayed no marks of fear; no sooner was he gone, however, than she left the cabin and secreted herself in the corn till her brother came in. Samuel was lame at the time, but happened to be out of the way; so that it is probable his life may have been saved from this circumstance. It was but seldom that the Indians killed unresisting women or children except in the excitement of an attack and when they had met with opposition from the men. In 1777, two years after their marriage, the depredations and massacres of the Indians were so frequent that the settlement of Grave Creek was broken up. It was the frontier station and lower on the Ohio than any other, above the mouth of Big Kanawha. It was in this year that the Indians made their great attack on the fort at Wheeling. Mr. Williams and his wife, with her father's family, Mr. Joseph Tomlinson, moved on the Monongahela River above Redstone, old fort. Here he remained until the spring of 1783, when he returned with his wife and Mr. Tomlinson to their plantations on Grave Creek. In the year 1785 he had to remove again from his farm with the garrison at Wheeling. It was some time in the spring of the succeeding year that Mr. Williams, in company with Hamilton Carr and a Dutchman, had the adventure with the Indians at the mouth of Grave Creek, in which three of the savages were killed and John Wetzel, their prisoner, was rescued. This event is fully recorded elsewhere in this book. It has been recorded that Rebecca Martin, before her marriage to Mr. Williams, acted as housekeeper for her brothers for several years. In consideration for which service, Joseph and Samuel made an entry of four hundred acres of land on the West Virginia shore of the Ohio River, directly opposite the mouth of the Muskingum River, for their sister; girdling the trees, building a cabin, and planting and fencing four acres of corn, on the high second bottom, in the spring of the year 1773. They spent the summer on the spot, occupying their time with hunting during the growth of the crop. In this time they had exhausted their small stock of salt and breadstuff and lived for two or three months altogether on boiled turkeys, which were eaten without salt. So accustomed had Samuel become to eating his meat without salt that it was some time before he could again relish the taste of it. The following winter the two brothers hunted on the Big Kanawha. Some time in March, 1774, they reached the mouth of the river on their return. They were detained here a few days by a remarkably high freshet in the Ohio River, which from certain fixed marks on Wheeling Creek, is supposed to have been fully equal to that of February, 1832. The year 1774 was noted for the many Indian depredations. The renewed and oft repeated inroads of the Indians led Mr. Williams to turn his thoughts toward a more quiet retreat than that at Grave Creek. Fort Harman at the mouth of Muskingum (where Marietta now stands), having been erected in 1786, and garrisoned by United States troops, he came to the conclusion that he would now occupy the land belonging to his wife and located by her brothers as before noted. This tract contained four hundred acres, and embraced a large share of rich alluvians. The piece opened by the Tomlinsons in 1773 had grown up with young saplings, but could be easily reclaimed. Having previously visited the spot and put up log cabins, he finally removed his family and effects thither the 26th day of March, 1787, being the year before the Ohio Company took possession of their purchase at the mouth of the Muskingum. Mr. Williams was a great hunter and trapper, but in later years turned his attention especially to clearing and cultivating his farm. He was a very benevolent man and a highly respected citizen. He died Sept. 25th, 1820. His daughter and only child married a Mr. John Henderson, but died at the age of twenty without issue. Contributed by Linda Cunningham Fluharty.