Legends of the Skyline Drive and the Great Valley of Virginia Part 6

Orkney Springs

Orkney Springs, earlier known as the Yellow Springs, was named for the Earl of Orkney and was surveyed by George Was.h.i.+ngton, according to some accounts. The Springs may be reached by travelling west of Mount Jackson.

"The Orkney Springs are composed of several lively springs and are strongly chalybeate. Everything the water touches or pa.s.ses through, or over, is beautifully lined with a bright yellow fringe or moss. The use of this water is found beneficial for the cure of several complaints. A free use of this water acts as a most powerful cathartic, as does also a small quant.i.ty of the fringe or moss, mixed with common water."

So stated the historian Howe concerning the Springs. Around the waters there grew up a tiny village which accommodates the visitors to the section. An excellent hotel caters to the guests who seek either quiet and rest or zestful games.

Near Orkney Springs there is a beautiful outdoor shrine where the Episcopal Church holds regular and impressive services during the Summer months--Shrinemont.

Stephens City

An act of the General a.s.sembly in 1758 made Stephens City, or Stephensburg as it was then known, the second town in the Valley. The first was Winchester. Lewis Stephens the founder of this town came to Virginia with Joist Hite in 1732.

Later on this was a thriving town manufacturing the Newtown-Stephensburg wagon that was the pride of teamsters who travelled all roads leading south and west. They took merchandise into the wilderness and returned with furs, skins and other products sent back by those settlers who had pushed on farther into the wilds of Virginia. Many a covered wagon which saw the plains of the Middle West had its birth in Stephensburg.

When the Forty-Niners created companies which sent supplies to the gold fields of California they found that few wagons lasted more than six months. At last they began to order those being made in Stephensburg.

These were found to be st.u.r.dier in build and could stand the strain of the rough roads and paths longer than other wagons on the market.

The stores in the town were good ones, and often covered wagons came in drawn by splendid horses. The drivers of these teams put up overnight at the old taverns and many of the citizens gathered after supper to hear the news of what was going on in Alexandria or in Tennessee. The drivers would be called personal shoppers today, for they brought lists of articles to be carried back into the far-off country for the convenience of the homesteaders there. The lists probably included sugar, tea and coffee, cloth by the bolt and household articles. You can imagine the joy with which the covered wagons would be sighted days later!

During Jackson's Valley Campaign the village was known as Newtown and mention is made in this book of fighting in the neighborhood.

Today the main industry centers around lime which is found in large quant.i.ties close by.

Middletown

As an early village this was known as Senseny Town, in honor of the doctor by that name who owned the land. In 1795 it was called Middletown. Long ago it was a manufacturing town and was noted for the fine clocks and watches which were splendid time-keepers for the punctual and thrifty Valley folk. In fact, the demands for them came from far and near. The old wooden wheels were first used, then bra.s.s was introduced and the watch-makers learned to make the eight-day clocks--the last word in time-keepers until the advent of the modern electric clocks. The manufacturers of the watches and clocks soon made instruments for surveyors as well as the much needed compa.s.ses.

The first successful effort to produce a machine to take the place of the flail and thres.h.i.+ng floor for thres.h.i.+ng wheat from the straw had its start in this same town. The machines were a marvel in their day and the villagers talked for months at the time when the machine beat out one hundred bushels of grain in one day!

The Story Teller of the Valley--Samuel Kercheval

PIONEER LIFE

Samuel Kercheval as a boy saw many of the pioneer men and women who had cut their homes out of the wilderness. He never tired hearing of how they had left Germany, and later had come down from Pennsylvania into the Valley. He himself could remember many of the "Newcomers" who were themselves pioneers. He loved the stories of the forts, the Indian raids and the customs of the Germans and Scotch-Irish. He later began to write down many of these stories and after he was older he rode up and down the Valley gathering more and more stories and reading wills and old records. Nothing was of too little value for him to record, even accounts of the freaks of nature, like a six-legged calf, snakes and other animals.

When Kercheval's friends insisted that he write a book about the Valley, he objected until they told him how much the children of the country would enjoy stories of their grandparents. His own children (there had been fourteen of them in all), like all children, loved stories. Now he began to get his notes in shape and about one hundred years after the first settlers came into the Valley, Samuel Kercheval's _History of the Valley of Virginia_ was ready for the publishers.

This was so popular that all the first edition was soon exhausted. How pleased he was with the demands for more of them! However, he died before the second edition came out. He lived at the time of his death in 1845 at "Harmony Hall" near Strasburg. This had at one time been a fort.

During an Indian raid, we are told, sixteen families sought shelter within its old stone walls. They lived together so peaceably that they gave it the name of "Harmony Hall."

It is from Kercheval that we get the first pictures of the Valley. He writes that it was long beautiful prairie, with tall rich gra.s.ses, five and six feet tall, with fringes of st.u.r.dy timbers following its swiftly running streams. He describes the kinds of soils and tells which is rich and which is poor. For instance he says where one finds slate he may rest a.s.sured the soil will not produce very good crops. On the other hand, where one finds limestone the soil will produce fine products, grains and fruits.

Metal was found in some of the hillsides and mountains. An Englishman named Powell found silver ore on the mountain which bears his name. He smeltered the silver and from it made coins. This was breaking the laws, of course, and soon officers were attempting to arrest him. Powell fled to his mountain where he had a small fort hidden, and for years eluded them. After many years men found his little shop where he smeltered the ore and Kercheval himself saw the crude crucible in which the ore was refined and the iron utensils also.

Kercheval tells that many of the farmers found it difficult to plough their lands and to make crops because of the innumerable small and large stones which they found everywhere. At last they decided to get rid of them and built many of the stone walls which one sees up and down the mountain sides, along winding roads and enclosing picturesque homes. He says the soil is so rich that seeds do not need to be planted very deep, as they will germinate if there is only enough soil to cover them.

There were great sugar-maple trees too and he tells of those "sugar hills" in which there are four or five hundred acres of trees. They even look like sugar loaves from a distance and today on Paddy's Mountain you may still see some of them. You may already have guessed that the name Paddy was in honor of the owner Patrick Blake, an Irishman who built in the gap which is named for him.

Kercheval lists carefully all the various healing springs and gives the properties of each. He even gives the names of many persons who were benefitted by drinking from or bathing in them.

Let us pause here and read about these pioneers, how they built their houses, how they dressed, and something of their superst.i.tions, manners and customs.

The first settlers built plain st.u.r.dy houses made mostly from rough hewn logs. Some of these were covered with split clapboards, having weight poles to keep them in place. Many of them had no floors except the earth itself. If made of wood, they used rough logs, split in two and roughly smoothed with a broad ax. However, as they improved the lands and their families grew, some larger houses were built of stone, which the men and boys brought in from the fields.

The married men generally shaved their heads and they wore wigs or linen caps. When the Revolutionary War broke out this custom was stopped for they could no longer buy wigs from Europe and none were made in this country. There was little linen, so they could not get enough for other needs and they could do without caps.

The men's coats were mostly made with broad backs and straight short skirts. These had huge pockets with flaps. The waistcoats had skirts nearly down to the knees and pockets also. Their breeches were so short they hardly reached to their knees, and they were fastened with a tight band. Their stockings were drawn up under the knee-hand and tied with a red or blue garter below the knee so it could be seen. Their shoes were made of coa.r.s.e leather, with straps and they were fastened with buckles of bra.s.s for every day--maybe with silver for Sundays and holidays. The men's hats were either of wool or fur with a round crown three or four inches in height and with a very broad brim. The s.h.i.+rt collar was only a narrow band and over it was worn a white linen stock drawn together at the ends and fastened with a broad metal buckle.

The women wore a short gown and petticoat of plain materials and a calico cap. Their hair was combed back from the forehead and made into a plain knot at the nape of the neck.

The women and girls worked in the fields and wore no shoes except in the winter. They worked from dawn 'til dark, for they milked, churned, made cheese, washed and ironed for the family, cooked, spun and wove, knitted stockings and quilted in their leisure moments. Kercheval tells us how they made apple b.u.t.ter and sourkrout. Of the latter he wrote:

"Sourkrout is made of the best of cabbage. A box about three feet in length and six or seven inches wide, with a sharp blade fixed across the bottom, something on the principle of the jack plane, is used for cutting the cabbage. The head being separated from the stalk and stripped of its outer leaves is placed in this box and run back and forth. The cabbage thus cut up is placed in a barrel, a little salt is sprinkled on from time to time, then pressed down very closely and covered at the open head. In the course of three or four weeks it acquires a sourish taste and to persons accustomed to the use of it is a very agreeable food. It is said the use of it within the last few years on boards of s.h.i.+p has proved it to be the best preventive known for scurvy. The use of it is becoming pretty general among all cla.s.ses in the Valley."

Kercheval even tells us what the pioneers did for medicine. When he was a boy he saw a man brought into the fort on horseback, who had been bitten by a rattlesnake. One of the men dragged the snake, fastened to a forked stick, behind the victim. The body of the snake was cut into small pieces, split and laid on the wounded flesh. This, they claimed, would draw out the poison of the bite. When this was done, the snake was burned to ashes. During this process, others gathered chestnut leaves and boiled them in a pot. Wide pieces of chestnut bark were applied to the man's wound and the chestnut-leaf mixture poured over some of the boiled leaves which had been made into a poultice. This was kept up during the first day and if not improved, the treatment was continued the next.

Others suggested using boiled plantain, cooked in milk, which was given to the patient. Walnut fern was another remedy for snakebite. The braver patient submitted to cupping, sucking the wound or having someone cut out the flesh around the bite.

Gunshot wounds were treated with slippery-elm bark, flax seed poultices or by sc.r.a.ping the wound itself and cauterizing it.

The people suffering from rheumatism were rubbed with oil made from rattlesnakes, bears, geese, wolves or any wild animal. This was put on a flannel rag and bound to the parts affected.

There were all kinds of syrups made from herbs such as spike nard and elecampane for coughs and tuberculosis. The Germans used songs or incantations for the cure of burns, nose-bleed and toothache. For one afflicted with erysipelas the blood of a black cat was given. Hence there were few cats which had not lost parts of their ears or tails.

The sports of the boys in those early days were mostly those which developed their physical bodies. The boys were given a gun almost as soon as they were strong enough to carry one. They learned to make their own bows and to sharpen their own arrows and many of them could shoot as straight as the Indians who still roamed the hills.

Throwing the tomahawk was another favorite sport. This axe-like weapon with its handle will make so many turns in a given distance. With a little practice a boy soon learned to throw his tomahawk and strike a tree as he walked through the forest.

When a boy was twelve, he had his own small rifle and pouch and was made a member of the fort. He was given a certain port hole through which he took careful aim. He was often allowed to go with older men on hunting trips if he had proved himself worthy to be "among men."

Dancing as we know it was unknown, but few ever enjoyed anything more than those boys and girls did dancing their jigs and reels. Their music was simple and singing was something both old and young enjoyed to the fullest. Story-telling was an art then, and year by year, old, old tales grew longer and longer and Jack the hero, always conquered all the giants.

There was witchcraft in the Valley too, and when a crow or calf died or was sick, the owner often thought a witch had shot it with a hair ball or with some kind of curse. When a man lost his cunning in his once good aim, he was sure some one had put a "spell" on him. Some actually believed men were changed into horses and after being bridled, they were ridden all over the countryside. Many men thought this was why their bones ached and they felt too tired to work their farms.

The men who did strange things were spoken of as wizards. Some called them witch-masters, and these claimed they could stop the mischievous work of the witches and cure baffling diseases.