The White Sulphur springs; the traditions, history, and social life of the Greenbriar White Sulphur Springs

Front matter

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Table Of Contents

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CHAPTER

Foreword

IT may seem strange to those that do not know the relation the White Sulphur Springs have ever borne to the South that one earnestly engaged in professional pursuits and occupied in business life should undertake the writing of its history. However, the White Sulphur is so interwoven with the life of that section, — so intertwined with its history, sentiment, and feeling, — that the undertaking is worthy of any one. Indeed, the Springs offer a very engaging subject, and my only regret is that my time has been so occupied in other matters that I have hitherto been unable to give proper thought and consideration to the history of an institution that has played a part so important in the life of the Old South.

It was at the request of my friend, President Geo. W. Stevens, that I assumed the office of historian of this noted resort.

It is especially fitting that at this time the history of the White Sulphur should be prepared. Conditions are changing, and with them the Springs, upon which vast sums have been ex-

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12 Foreword

pended in order to make them an international resort.

The place is typical of the change of the South. New things have come to us, and possibly better things. New people are in our hills, valleys, and cities, new people are scattered over the fields of the South, and possibly they are better for the work that is before us. The last few years have made the change in the White Sulphur almost as complete as that which the times and the conditions of the present have made in the South. Still, to those of us whose years touch the receding days of the Old South, and who saw the glint of the vanishing sunlight of the romanticism of that day, there is a feeling akin to sadness at the realization of this change. However, everyone who knows believes that the days that are coming will be better than the days that are gone.

Compiling a work of this kind puts one under great obligation to many people, for much labor, is involved in the preparation of a book that deals so largely with tradition and the statement of fact rather than with the written word.

I acknowledge with thanks my indebtedness to the Hon. G. E. W. Wood, of Romont, W. Va., who has preserved the history of the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, its route, and stage houses; to Mrs. I. C. Cabell, for her reminiscences of "The Treadmill" at the White Sulphur; to the

Foreword 13

Hon. John A. Preston, of Lewisburg, W. Va., for his assistance in the preparation of the chapter on the War; to Mr. George Krebs, the expert geologist, of Charleston, W. Va., for information upon the geological conditions of the White Sulphur; to Mr. Decatur Axtell for his very many kindnesses in furnishing material; to Mr. John D. Potts, the able and courteous General Passenger Agent of the Chesapeake & Ohio, for his many courtesies in the preparation of the pictures in the book; to Hon. Henry Gilmer, of Lewisburg, and Hon. C. W. Osenton, of Fayetteville, and W A. Mastin, of White Sulphur, for much information; to Maj. Randolph Stalnaker, of Wheeling, a native and lover of Greenbrier, for many interesting facts; to Gen. Roger A. Pryor for his consent to use the chapters from "The Colonel's Story," written by Mrs. Pryor, which, through the courtesy, too, of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, I am permitted to embody herein.

I am also under obligation to Messrs. Harper & Brothers for their courtesy in permitting the use of Mr. Charles Dudley Warner's chapter on the White Sulphur, which is taken from "Their Pilgrimage," a novel that was copyrighted by Harper & Brothers, 1886, and by Susan Lee Warner, 1914. The leaves from a "Journal of a Lady During a Season at the White Sulphur for

14 Foreword

the Year 1837," were taken from an old book written by Mark Pencil, Esq., and published in 1839, while the chapter on the waters, baths, and curative resources of the White Sulphur Springs was written by Dr. George D. Kahlo, the eminent resident medical director, who is probably the greatest authority in America on the conditions, properties, and effects of mineral waters. Furthermore, I am greatly indebted to my efficient secretary, Miss Stella Hess, for her preparation of copy and for the proof-reading of the pages.

The writer hopes that in some degree the book will merit the approbation of those who, like him, are the children of the people that for more than a century made the White Sulphur their place of rest and recreation.

William A. MacCorkle.

Sunrise,

Charleston, West Virginia.

July 10, IQI5.

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"ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE SULPHUR"

WHEN the wayfarer turns his gaze toward the lordly Alleghanies, which enshrine the White Sulphur, and when the orange-hued Chesapeake & Ohio train touches the Virginia land, his face is lighted by history and his feet are on sacred soil. Drenched by the blood of Colonial warrior, Revolutionary patriot, English soldier, the man in the blue coat and the man in the gray, — here is soil upon which the traveler should tread with unsandaled feet.

"The Way to the White Sulphur," therefore, is a way filled with the recollections of great events. From the time Virginia is first entered at Alexandria, — with its Revolutionary memories, vivid and clear, and those of the nearer and more terrible days of the war of i860, clinging around its quaint houses and old-time streets, — until the banks of the Ohio River, far to the setting sun, are reached, the journey is one of absorbing interest to all those that love their country. And in addition to its historical interest, here is a land of surpassing mountains, sweet pastoral scenes, waving grass, beautiful streams, azure skies; a land studded with marvelous elms, gleaming beeches, sturdy oaks; a land filled with the rhododendron, the ivy, and the magnolia; a land of soul-touching beauty that alone would make the journey worth while.

The historical interest, however, of this region is, above all, absorbing. No sooner are you on Virginia's soil than the memories of the war's terrible days throng upon you, as the once bloodsoaked field of Bull Run comes upon your sight, with Manassas directly by, where the crumbling earthworks seem to be guarded by the mighty spirit of Beauregard. Then, almost before these memories have touched your heart, comes Centerville, the Stone Bridge, Warrenton, Sudley Springs, and Thoroughfare Gap. Here is Rappahannock, Brandy Station, Culpeper, the Rapidan; while, within a stone's throw are the slow waters, the grass, the trailing willows, and the scrub-oak of the Wilderness, where even to-day, in walking through its dark lanes, your foot will start from its half-century bed the corroding musket, or the Minie ball, that has lain there so long at rest from its labor of destruction.

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Ulysses Grant began his campaign on the James at Culpeper; and here and at Orange Court House and at Gordonsville loom the mighty spirits of that Federal commander and of Robert E. Lee. Every foot of the way you are journeying heard the boom of the cannon; over and across the railroad's track marched in deadly conflict the forces of our country, and the spirits of Lee, Sheridan, Grant, Jackson, Pope, Burnside, McClellan, and Jeb Stuart accompany you along the path ; for here was where they mightily strove.

Leaving the main line of the Chesapeake & Ohio road at Orange, in an hour you are at Fredericksburg, where the old fortifications remain intact, and where the dreadful Marye's Hill is still practically as it was in the time of the awful conflict. On this line, too, you are in touch with Chancellorsville, where Stonewall Jackson met his fate; and nearby is Spottsylvania Court House, redolent with the memories of Lee, Burnside, Hooker and Meade. Indeed, every battlefield of the great conflict is easily reached from this line, the very ties and rails of which are laid over a land sodden with the blood of brothers, — a land that echoed in every fastness to the crack of the rifle and the boom of the gun. Again, should you come into this historic land by way of Hampton Roads, over the Sea Division of the Chesapeake & Ohio, your footsteps are mingled with the echoes of the beginnings of our country, for here are Jamestown and Yorktown. You pass through the land of Captain Smith, of Pocahontas and Powhatan, and at Williamsburg the incidents of the uplifting of the curtain on the mighty drama of the Revolution gleam bright in the mind's eye. Here is the land that echoed to the mighty steps of the Father of His Country and to those of the men who were welding together a liberty-bound country, — a country destined to be the delight of the coming generations who believed in the equal rights of mankind.

Here the lovely harbor of Hampton Roads, — the scene of the epoch-making engagement between the Monitor and the Merrimac, from which were begot the dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts of to-day, — stretches before you in all its beauty of cape, city, and bay. From this point on, your way to the quietude of the White Sulphur Springs is over the greatest fields of blood and iron on this continent. As you pass toward Virginia's capital, you see the battlefields of Malvern Hill, White Oak Station, Savage Station, and Seven Pines, with nearby the earthworks, still standing intact and time-defying, that witnessed the attacks and counter-attacks of Lee, Grant, and Jackson, in the tremendous struggle for devoted Richmond.

Here, in this city, the heavy hand of history has written its record, deep and strong, in the enduring rock. From the days of its beginning until now it has been the very heart of a land of f ruitfulness and importance, and has been sought for by men and loved by people who know its beauty and majesty. It is replete with sacred memories of colonial conflict, revolutionary battle, and civil war. Jefferson, Lee, Washington, Marshall, Patrick Henry, Monroe, Madison, and the Fathers were part of its life and being, and all about stand mementos of their work. Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Beauregard, and Joe Johnson trod its streets; the growing serried line of blue, led by the silent gray man, witnessed its final conflict; and through its ways passed Abraham Lincoln, the tall sad man who, had he lived, would have made all things well with the South in the days of the closing of the fratricidal contest.

"The Way to the White Sulphur" makes every historic bit of ground in Virginia easy of access, for through many of the places of deepest and mightiest memories have been laid the steel rails, and the ties that are binding our life. As you speed to the south and the west, the hill of Monticello, crowned by its beautiful temple built by Thomas Jefferson and glorified by the tomb of the Father of the Constitution, is almost within reach of your hand and you pass through the domains of the great University founded by this immortal son of Virginia.

The hurrying line ere long brings you to the

Valley of the Afton, where, under the shade of the Blue Ridge, nestles one of the most beautiful valleys known to mankind. Now you are climbing the Blue Ridge Mountains, rioting in kaleidoscopic color, — at one moment a deep and glowing blue; again a brown; at another a dun, and before a minute is passed a pearl and gray and amethyst. This vast mountain range, wooded to its summit, glowing with its marvel of color, the reason for which no man knows, shuts out with its wall of mysterious hues the world from the granary of the South, the Valley of Virginia, — the fruitful land that supplied Stonewall Jackson's army, and where the women and the children of the South produced the grain to support the life of the armies in gray. Around these mountains hovers the sublime spirit of Stonewall Jackson.

Every road through this Valley is historic. Through Ashby's, Manassas, Thoroughfare, and Thorn's Gaps emerged the gray-clad armies to fall like a thunderbolt upon those seeking to penetrate the fastnesses of the Valley. Back and forth, up and down, across these railroad tracks, ebbed and surged the men in blue and those in gray, — each army bent on possessing this great grain-house of the Confederate government. This was the land scourged by Hunter and Sheridan; and the desolated fields, the roofless houses, and the denuded chimneys pointing to the sky, all long attested that this was the land needed by the North and defended so desperately by the sons of the South. Passing across its marvelous panorama of waving fields, — with its splendor of pastoral life and its wonder of blue mountains, — where the bright grain and the bladed corn and the re-created home have blotted out the scars of war, erelong the great walls of the Alleghanies come in sight, and you are in the midst of a phantasmagoria of pine-clad mountains, jutting foot-hills, tremendous heights, green and smiling valleys, sky-reaching water-falls, clear and purling streams, and under an azure sky you find nestled, in the very heart of these mighty mountains, beneath the shade of ancient oaks and great rich pines and cedars the "Old White," rejuvenated and reglorified by the hand of science and modern energy and wealth, yet sweet with the memories and glorious with the traditions of the past.

Were you to approach it from the west, from the moment you leave the Ohio River the scenery is of surpassing interest. Those who have seen the famous places of the old world attest that nowhere is there a fairer creation than that land under the eyes of the traveler on "The Way to the White" from the region of the setting sun. Here, too, you are on historic territory, for this was the most teeming hunting ground of the Shawnees, Pawnees, and Mingoes, and through the Kanawha region, from the Ohio River to the Gauley Falls, was the land where these people worshiped their unknown gods. It is filled with wonderful mountains, with great burying grounds, with strange crumbling walls that wend their way over the mountains, where the rocks are touched with the rude paintings of other days. The land is filled with the implements of battle and the chase, and the soil is sown with the arrow-head and the tomahawk, and on every side are to be found the pestle and the mortar and the stone mill in which the maize was ground for the daily sustenance of these aboriginal beings.

The names of the streams: — the Kanawha, the Tiskelwah (the river of elk), and the Pocataligo (the river of fat bison), — all bear evidence of the fact that here was the land of fruitfulness and plenty. Through this region the sturdy settlers from Virginia passed, and here they fought the Battle of Point Pleasant, which was the first battle of the Revolution, and which broke the power of the Shawnees, the Pawnees, and the Middle West Indians. Over the ground that you are traveling to-day the Indian warriors passed when on their warpath to destroy the settlements of the white man in Eastern Virginia.

Through these marvelous defiles, by these bright waters, and over these mountains that you are passing so swiftly, the settlers, with pack saddle, wagon, and on foot, went into the region of the West, to supply the great states of Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Ohio with their splendid populations. Here, in this Valley, was the land spied out by Washington when he was a surveyor, the land that afterward was taken up and held by him and his descendants through the passing years, and these mountains are the mountains of West Augusta to which the Father of His Country alluded in the hour of his despair, when he exclaimed that if all were lost, he would take the flag of liberty to this land and there he would defend the principles of freedom forevermore.

In these mountains and valleys, too, were dreadful conflicts during the war of the '6o's. The blue and the gray marched and counter-marched, fought, won victories, and were in turn defeated in this region through which you are so swiftly passing. To-day on the hill-crests arise the fortifications that are almost as perfect as when completed fifty years ago. Throughout the Valley of the Kanawha, if you will but look from your car window, you will see covered with the grass of fifty years past, the rifle-pits and stockades constructed by the blue and the gray when they contended for what they thought to be right. It is a land almost beyond compare in its absorbing interest, both human and political.

Here is the beautiful Kanawha, with its fringed banks, its sweet valley, just beginning to rise at the touch of the foot-hills of the mighty Alleghanies, and through this valley you hasten to the wonderful canon of the New River, where is to be viewed a scene unsurpassed in its beauty and sublimity by any other in our country. This is a narrow gorge, more than one hundred miles in length, where the railroad almost touches the water at times, while at others it rests like a shelf on the mountainside, and anon is overhung by mountains a thousand to two thousand feet in height, with sheer precipices dropping down hundreds of feet. Sometimes abutting crags overhang the train, then it passes on under the shade of mountains clothed to the tops with verdure, where the magnolia, the ivy, the beech, the oak, the linden, and the poplar lift their mighty arms and where the forest of the North mingles with that of the South in a splendor seldom equaled on this continent.

You thunder past the mighty Hawk's Nest and almost under the shade of the great Sewell, and standing over you is the great cliff of the South Side. Thus on for one hundred miles you journey through a mighty cleft in the very bosom of the earth, wrought in the countless ages past by the beautiful river that wends its way over thundering waterfalls and great bowlders, now lashing itself to fury in a narrow channel, and anon spreading its waters upon the pellucid surface of its quiet bed. Then you swiftly pass through the sweetness of the Greenbrier country, — with its crowned mountains, its fertile fields, its fat cattle and prosperous people, its springs, its clear streams, its blue grass, its limestone hills, and its splendid men and women, — to where the open portals of the famous Greenbrier and the historic White welcome you to their health-giving waters, their sunlight, and their repose.

II

THE White Sulphur Springs are located in the midst of the fair valley of Howard's Creek, and only six miles from the crest of the mighty Alleghanies, which form the backbone between the valley of the Mississippi and coastal region of the Atlantic Ocean. They are just on the edge of the Valley of the Greenbrier River, which was given its name in 1761 by Col. John Lewis' tangling his foot in the green briar vines, which grow luxuriantly on the banks of the stream. The waters, passing by Callahan's, — only a few miles east of the White Sulphur, — flow through Jackson's River and the James into the Atlantic Ocean; while, only half a dozen miles away, the waters of Howard's Creek, passing the White Sulphur, join the Ohio through the Greenbrier, the New River, and the Great Kanawha, and are lost in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The country about is a fair land of unsurpassed fertility of soil, with exquisite mountains, covered in the summer with a rare splen-

- dor of deep foliage that holds up to their very tops a wonderful combination of all the shades of the forest. It is a land of fat cattle; and the country about was the hunting-ground of the Middle West Indians, who were gradually pushed from the Valley across the Alleghanies, down the New and Kanawha Rivers, to the Ohio and the West. Game abounded there, the corn grew quickly, the waters were clear and pure, neither the heat nor the cold were extreme, making it an idyllic land, filled with bubbling springs, green grass, and a kindly soil, — a land early spied out by the white man, and vigorously fought for by the Indian. This was the region through which the original trails were made by the buffalo from Virginia through Western Virginia. These herds, in their migrations, which were as sure as the seasons, crossed the Valley; and the Indian followed the buffalo, and the white man followed the Indian. Tradition and history show that the trail through the White Sulphur was one of the most important buffalo trails. This trail is sometimes called the Lewis Trail and sometimes the Old Indian Trail. Coming by way of Jackson's River and up Dunlap's Creek, and crossing over on Dry Creek to White Sulphur and Fort Union (now Lewisburg) , the bison used to pass through Greenbrier and Fayette, closely following the divide of Meadow and New Rivers, to the present town of Ansted, where, to avoid the bluffs of the New River Canon, they turned in a northerly direction and ascended a spur of Gauley Mountain, the divide between Westlake's Branch and Turkey Creek. Crossing the main Gauley Mountain, at a point known as the Indian Spring on the headwaters of Rich Creek, the herd would go down Rich Creek to Gauley River, eight miles above Gauley Branch, thence down Gauley River two miles, and fording it three times to avoid the bluffs to the mouth of Twenty-Mile Creek, would pass up Twenty- Mile Creek to the north of Bell Creek (one-half mile), thence up Bell Creek to the divide of the Kanawha and Gauley waters, and down Hughes or Kelley's Creek to the Kanawha River. Here the buffalo found themselves in the broad, grassy, and rich bottoms of the Kanawha River, and near to the great levels of the Ohio.

In 1774 the British incited the Indians on the Ohio to attack the colonists. It is proved beyond a question that the intention of the British was to keep the colonists busy with their own preservation, so that they would not be able to interfere in the governmental affairs of their country. Gen. Andrew Lewis, a member of the House of Burgesses, from Botetourt County, was chosen to raise an army and resist the attack of the Indians, while Governor Dunmore was to take another division, by way of the Monongahela and Potomac rivers and meet General Lewis at the mouth of the Kanawha River.

General Lewis raised his army from the counties of Augusta, Botetourt, and Fincastle, and made his headquarters at Camp Union (now Lewisburg), nine miles from the White Sulphur, at which point he and his men were to begin their march through the trackless forest to the Ohio River. The buffalo trail was the one traveled by General Lewis and his army, under his command and that of Col. Charles Lewis, his brother. They left Lewisburg on the eleventh of September, 1774, and reached the Ohio River on the thirtieth of the same month. Governor Dunmore did not meet General Lewis at the time he had agreed to do so, having never intended so to do; and on the tenth of October Cornstalk, one of the ablest of the Indian chiefs, attacked General Lewis, and one of the most important and memorable battles in our colonial history was fought. This battle broke the power of the Ohio Indians, and was practically the first battle of the Revolution. Over this road came the emigrants that settled in the Middle West, and this was the trail that Anne Bailey rode.

Will you let me briefly tell the story of Anne Bailey, — so well known to the people of Greenbrier and Kanawha? Here it is:

George Clendenin in 1788 had erected on the Kanawha, at the mouth of the Elk, at what is now Charleston, the block-house known on the frontier as Clendenin's Fort, and he named it in honor of Gov. Henry Lee, of Virginia. It was the last outpost of civilization on the southwestern frontier of Virginia, with the exception of Fort Randolph at Point Pleasant, far out on the banks of the Ohio. These two forts were the Indians' first objective points of attack in their efforts to stem the tide of the white invasion. One hundred miles further inland, in the heart of the Alleghanies, was Fort Savannah, the fort at Lewisburg.

In 1791 Fort Lee was beleaguered by the Indians, a great body of them, far surpassing in number the meager list of its brave defenders. Just as the war-whoop sounded, and the dreadful scream of savage battle pierced the air, a fearful discovery was made by the defenders of the fort. The supply of powder in the magazine was almost exhausted, and it seemed that the destruction of all the men and women of that devoted band was at hand. It was one hundred miles to Lewisburg, the only place from which a supply of powder could be obtained; and the way lay through a forest filled with Indians on the war path, along trackless ways, across deep rivers, and over the mountains through a region where hitherto only the wild animal, the wilder Indian, or the frontier warrior, had made their way.

Colonel Clendenin summoned the garrison to assemble and called for volunteers who would leave their families and undertake the journey of one hundred miles to Fort Lewisburg. There was not a single response even from those men whose lives had been spent in battle and danger. It was almost sure death, and each man knew it.

In the midst of the silence a determined voice was suddenly heard.

"I will go," it said.

And looking around, the eyes of the assembled soldiers fell upon Anne Bailey, a woman of heroic mold, intrepid spirit, and dauntless character.

The best horse in the stockade was brought and saddled, the door was opened and she went forth like a wraith into the trackless forest thick with the Indians besieging the fort. She sped up the Valley of the Kanawha, over the torrent of the Gauley, over the Gauley Mountains, and past the great divide between the Meadow and Gauley rivers, never resting excepting to feed her horse. Day and night were nothing to her on her tremendous errand of heroism and mercy. Without stopping to sleep a moment, she made the journey, and the welcome gates of Fort Lewisburg were opened to her.

A short rest, a bite to eat, and she was furnished with a horse in addition to her own, and both animals were laden with powder. Though the officer in command at Lewisburg offered to send a guard with her, she would not have one. They were unable to send sufficient men to assist her should an attack be made upon her, and her salvation depended upon the quiet in which she might make her journey. Day and night she again pressed through the wilderness, this time with her face turned to the west, one hope animating her life, — the hope of saving the lives of the garrison at Fort Lee.

After the darkness of the night, when hope had died away in the heart of the garrison, a quiet knocking was heard at the gates of Fort Lee, and with sufficient powder to preserve the defenders from destruction by the Indians, Anne Bailey was admitted to the Fort and the outposts of civilization in the West were saved from fire and tomahawk.

Great deeds have been done and recorded by history, but no chronicle surpasses in heroism, daring, and skill the two-hundred-mile ride of Anne Bailey through a trackless wilderness from Lewisburg to Fort Lee.

Past this historic place flowed the great tide of travel from the beginning of the settlement of our country up to the time of the building of the present Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. It was a famous route to the west. The dream of the Virginians was to join the waters of the James River with the Ohio through the Greenbrier River, the New, and the Kanawha, and establish a water connection between the East and the West through the then imperial domain of Virginia. The James River and Kanawha Turnpike followed the Lewis buffalo trail from the White Sulphur to the present town of Ansted, and here it left the Lewis trail and kept on its westward course down New River to the mouth of Gauley, and thence down the Kanawha.

In the old days this route was a national stage line, along which the people came from the East and South by way of Fredericksburg, or Richmond, to the passes of the Blue Ridge, thence across the Valley; or from Harper's Ferry up the Valley to Staunton and thence from Staunton to the White Sulphur and on over the Alleghanies to the west. The old Concord stages were famous in their day, and Henry Clay and the statesmen of the Middle West passed along this road to and from their duties at Washington. Stage houses, noted the country over, were along this line. They were known in story and song, through travel and adventure, to the hundreds of thousands of people who passed over the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany to the White Sulphur Springs and to the West. It is interesting to know the names of these houses and of the proprietors who made famous the great stage stands of the James River and Kanawha Turnpike. The list is as follows: