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Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County

Mon, 05/04/2009 - 07:14 — Preservation Officer

Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County, West Virginia

by William T. Price

Marlinton, W. VA.
Price Brothers, Publishers
Copyright, 1901

Table of Contents

Section I. Preliminary....1-23
Section II.Geological, Geographical. Climatological....24-49
Section III. Pioneer Methods and Social Customs....50-84
Section IV. NOTES ON FORMATION OF THE COUNTY....85-104
Section V. Biographic....105-557
Section VI. Appendix....558-622

From the Preface:

This volume seems to be the spontaneous outcome of circumstances, or in a sense has simply grown up "without observation." Most of the contents came the compiler's way without ever suspecting their future appearance in book form, by casually noting down what he saw and heard while moving around among the homes of our people, recording interviews with the older venerated persons, or recalling what was suggested during the thirty or forty youthful years of the almost forgotten past, and were published from time to time in the Pocahontas Times.

Referring to the Biographic Notes, we quote from the Bath News an article by Joseph T. McAllister, himself a historical student of more than ordinary ability: "These sketches are from notes made as occasion offered, and they can not be prized too highly. It is very hard for one man unaided to gather these facts, and it requires no little time to edit them. We sometimes think very lightly of such things, and are too much inclined to let the dead past bury its dead, and live alone in this work-a-day present. But we should remember that along this western Virginia the Scotch-Irish worked out a vast problem and wrought a vast change in the then existing form of government; that they made history and played no small or mean part in life's great stage; that the simple life they led nurtured men to whom we are indebted for countless blessings, and that no incident of their lives is too small or insignificant to be recorded. Only by access to such sketches as those published by Mr Price can the coming historian gather truthfully the materials from which to write....