Up the back porch steps came Pearl and the nigger. Upon ascending her first remarks were “Well, guess I’m just in time for dinner.”
Pearl had quite a knack for arriving at mealtime. She immediately sat down on a rough wooden bench and greeted Mama. “Eunice, it’s sure a hot, sulkee [meaning humid] day.” Before Mama could answer, she inquired, “How’s your health, and is the lumbago still bothering you?”
Mama answered, “As well as can be expected for a woman of my age. Pearl, what are you doing up this way in the middle of the week?” They usually visited on Saturdays.
“Well, didn’t have much to do, so thought we would mosey up this a-way to see about your health” was the reply.
I thought, that is great guns, they have walked a great distance (ten to twelve miles) and it wasn’t lunchtime. Even at seven years I knew visits were for a meal and that my mother would load them down with vegetables from the garden, canned goods, and God only knew what else.
Small talk went on for a short time, and then my mother announced that lunch was ready.
After a full night’s rest and three hearty meals, Pearl and the nigger left soon after breakfast the next morning. When they arrived, each was carrying a canvaslike shopping bag. They left carrying a burlap sack over their shoulders filled until they could hardly be tied closed, the other hand carrying the canvas bags they brought empty, except for the burlap sacks they were now carrying on their shoulders.
Mama said, “They came expecting and went away full.” They were not quite out of sight when I reminded Mama that she was to tell me about “cousin Pearl and the nigger.”
CHAPTER II
“Change, change, change,” Mama started. “See that steam shovel tearing away at that beautiful green bank moving the dirt and rock from side to side? Well, I’m told that is to be the new road through these hills and will be named the Midland Trail.
“See the old road out front? Old records say it once was a buffalo path, then an Indian trail, then it became a stagecoach route and named the James River and Kanawha Turnpike.”
Today it is one of the finest, most modern, improved mountain highways in the United States and is known as the Midland Trail. Today, as of old, it winds from the Tidewater Region of Virginia on the Atlantic Seaboard, among the rolling hills of the Piedmont country, up, over and through the passes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, down across the western valleys of Virginia, on up to the roof of the Alleghenies at the Big Sewell Mountains in westernVirginia, down over the Gauley Mountains to Gauley Bridge, western Virginia, and on westward.
The Midland Trail (US 60) is famous for its beautiful, panoramic mountain scenery, its picturesque valleys, its rough, steep, narrow gorges, and its many historical interests that are an important part of our heritage. From the wars with the Indians to the American Revolution and on through the War between the States are recorded in historical documents, history books, and its history romanced in many a novel.
“On this old trail, the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, just east of the Hawk’s Nest, also known as Marshall’s Pillar, was named for Chief Justice John Marshall, who visited there in 1812. US engineers declared the New River Canyon to be 585 feet deep, surpassing the famed Royal Gorge. At the top of Gauley Mountain, in the town of Ansted stands the Tyree Tavern, a famous and well-known inn in those years, often referred to as the halfway house because on the one-hundred-mile stretch between Lewisburg and Charleston, on the turnpike, it was halfway and stands today,” Mama explained. In the fall of 1946 or 1947 the top floor burned rendering the bottom floor inhabitable. In 1950 the last of the old inn was torn down. The writer visited this old inn on several occasions in the 1930s and late in the 1940s. The description of the inn is from his memories. This old inn had massive stone chimneys adorning each end and dual stairways facing each other, leading from the front lower veranda to the upper portico. People would congregate here to watch the stagecoaches coming over a ridge about two miles to the east or watch their slow final ascent up the Gauley from the west. At the bottom between the two stairways was the front entrance; the door opened into an impressive large vestibule that opened upward the height of the two stories. On the left, after entering was an L-shaped counter with thin round wrought-iron bars extending upward about four feet, joined by a heavier piece of steel that held them together. In the center of this iron railing was a small window where business was transacted.
The hall arena was strewn with many chairs of many descriptions. In each of the four corners were quaint old staircases that joined a balcony extending the perimeter joining the second-story rooms with the portico. The quaint staircases, the hand-fashioned railing around the balcony, appeared to be constructed of highly polished wild cherry wood, but I was told it was a yellow gum finished with shellac.
The most impressive memory I have of the inn is the blazon, carved in wood more than sixscore years before, hanging over the front door. The inscription outlined by a faded border of gold simply stated the following:
History has recorded that these dragoons were Union soldiers that headquartered there during the summer and fall of 1861. My great-grandmother, in her story, told that a young sergeant named Andy Yates carved the heraldic arms with his jackknife and placed it over the door.
Gray Dragoon records registered in the archives of history show an encampment at Hawk’s Nest, Virginia, 1861. The name Andy Yates is not on the roster. There is a Sergeant Jack Yates, company topographer, on the register. Captain David Bloome is listed as company commander. Other names of importance are lieutenants James LaCrosse Len Millbaugh, and Basil Amerly. Captain Walker Brown, company surgeon, and Sergeant Tony Castino, quartermaster, are also listed. The records indicate that these men enlisted in Chicago, Illinois, at the same time as Jack Yates did. Details of a scheduled court-martial for Jack Yates and a trial for Molly Campbell are also recorded in these records.
“East of this old inn, maybe a hundred yards,” Mama said as she went on with her story, “is a lane that leads back to your great-grandpa’s brother Oran’s house, less than a mile back of the inn. He named his place the Pines. The name was bestowed upon the place, not because of the spotty pines on each side of the lane, but because of the two large, tall hemlocks that flanked the road where the gate opened into the yard in front of the house.
“When the Gray Dragoons were encamped there, only your cousin Molly and her two black slaves, Rubin and Rachel, lived there. Rachel, a few years older than Molly, was her black mammy, and Molly called her Nanny. Molly’s mother died when she was fourteen. Oran, her father, an officer in General Lee’s army, had been killed in a skirmish at the very outset of the war.
Her only brother, Levi, left early in the conflict for Harper’s Ferry. There he joined the praying general, Thomas J. Jackson, who had left his military school at Lexington, Virginia, to go there to enlist men of the northwestern counties and to guard the gateway to the Garden of Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley.
“Molly, a high-spirited maiden of Scotch Irish stock, and as your great-grandpa stated many times, ‘Their ancestry went back to Robert the Bruce, the king of Scots himself. She was beautiful, haughty, and proud but at the same time kind and affectionate, but Southern through and through. She loved the beautiful highland country of old Virginia, in which she lived. At the age of eighteen years, Molly became bitter toward the North and obsessed with the cause of the South. Through her enthusiastic diligence to deal the ‘invaders and murderers’ a decisive blow, she tossed caution, thought, judgment, and freedom for herself to the wind. Her foremost thought was a swift end to this conflict.