A Woman of Courage on the West Virginia Frontier (23 page)

Map of the famous Wilderness Road between Virginia to the Kentucky frontier.
Drawn by the author
.

After weeks of arduous travel, Phebe’s caravan arrived in the Holston Valley. After resting a few days, she found transportation and began her trip down the Shenandoah Valley. Again, Phebe never mentioned what means of transport she found, but most likely she accompanied a trader making his way back to the mercantile centers in Staunton or Winchester. Once she made her way from the Holston settlements down the Shenandoah, she had only one more leg of her journey before her, the one over the Alleghenies to the upper Monongahela. Here, it is very likely that Phebe sought the aid of men who had done business with Thomas for years and, through them, found someone heading for the plateau beyond the mountains. Within days, she climbed the Alleghenies and finally reached the upper Monongahela Valley. Without so much as a pause for rest, she made straight for their homestead along Cunningham’s Run, arriving to a joyous reunion with Edward and Sarah at their newly rebuilt home. However, Thomas was not there.
²⁶⁹

This 1872 drawing depicts the rugged terrain along the Wilderness Road as it passed through the Cumberland Gap.
Library of Congress
.

It seems that, not long before Girty arrived in the Wyandot village, another captive had been ransomed and gone home. This captive’s name was Benjamin Springer, and while he was from Kentucky, he had grown up in the Monongahela Valley and Phebe knew him from their days forting up at Prickett’s and Coon’s Forts. He had even once visited the Cunningham farm, so naturally, he and Phebe became close friends during their mutual captivity. When he was released, he tried in vain to ransom Phebe himself. However, having failed to gain her freedom, he promised her that, once he was back in Kentucky, he would send word to Thomas that she was alive and well. True to his word, Benjamin wrote to Thomas and the letter arrived not long after Phebe’s release on the Maumee.
²⁷⁰

Now Thomas knew his wife was alive, and shortly after receiving the letter from Benjamin, Thomas learned of Phebe’s ransom and release. He immediately mounted his horse, packed another with supplies and left the farm to find her and bring her home. Guessing that she might come by way of the Kentucky settlements, he headed up the Shenandoah toward the Wilderness Road. Upon learning that her beloved husband had gone in search of her, Phebe became very anxious. Knowing firsthand how difficult and dangerous the journey could be, she worried that, now that she was home at last, some new tragedy might befall Thomas.

Luckily, however, upon reaching the Holston Valley, Thomas was told that Phebe had come through there not days before him on her way back to the family farm. He turned about and dashed back down the valley, reaching home in only a few days. Phebe was waiting there, and as he took her in his arms at long last, he “enjoyed the satisfaction of being with all that then was dear to him on earth.”
²⁷¹

Epilogue

Following Phebe’s return, she and Thomas decided not to remain on the farm with Edward and Sarah. Given the tragedy that had occurred there, perhaps they thought it best to find a new home where they could begin a second life together. So they found land south of Clarksburg in what is now Lewis County, West Virginia, built a new cabin and got on with their lives as best they could. Between 1789 and 1797, they would have seven more children, and during this time, they would take an increasing interest in religious life.

Thomas had the opportunity to hear Francis Asbury give a sermon in Clarksburg and decided to dedicate his life to working as a lay minister of the Methodist Church. He and Phebe organized Methodist classes at their home and provided valuable assistance to the various Methodist circuit riders who worked along the frontier.
²⁷²

In 1807, they moved again, this time to a farm on the South Fork of the Hughes River, a few miles above Smithville in what is today Ritchie County, West Virginia. Phebe and Thomas again established Methodist classes in their home and organized what would become the genesis of a new Methodist unit, which served as the foundation for a new church: the Hardman Chapel, which was built in the 1860s. In 1810, their oldest son, William, would become a Methodist minister and move to Ohio. Seven years later, Thomas ended his career as a lay minister and was formally ordained as a Methodist minister in Zanesville, Ohio. Working under the leadership of the famous Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright, Thomas spent his last years serving the people of the Hughes River region. He died at age seventy on June 3, 1826.

Plaque placed on the monument at Phebe Tucker Cunningham’s grave by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1978.
Photo by the author
.

With Thomas’s passing, Phebe’s daughter, Rachel, and her family came to live with her on the Hughes River homestead until Rachel’s husband, Isaac Collins, moved the entire family to a new farm on Leading Creek, a few hundred yards upstream from its junction with Seth Fork.
²⁷³
Here, Phebe would live to the age of eighty-four, telling the story of her captivity to her grandchildren and becoming the respected and beloved matriarch of her community. After her death in 1845, she was buried in the Snider-Gainer cemetery in Freed, West Virginia, and she is still considered the most famous resident of that area.

Years later, her bravery would be formally recognized, first in 1914 with a monument erected at her grave and again in 1978 with a plaque placed there by the Daughters of the American Revolution. However, perhaps more importantly, she remains a remarkable example of courage, love and fortitude to her descendants and now, hopefully, to all who hear her story.

Notes

I
NTRODUCTION

1
. The exact date of Thomas and Phebe Cunningham’s marriage is uncertain, but this book will use an April 1780 date. All sources agree that the wedding took place at Prickett’s Fort in April. However, the year of the wedding is reported by some sources as 1775, while Phebe stated it was either 1776 or 1777 in her application for Thomas’s Revolutionary War pension. However, in the oral history she told her granddaughter, she indicated her marriage to Thomas took place in April 1780. This date makes the most sense, as all sources say their first child, Henry, was born in 1781.

2
. Coldham,
Emigrants from England
, 86; Snider, “Genealogical Monogram #6,” 1; Phebe Tucker Cunningham’s story as she told it to her granddaughter, Leah Hardman Beall, in Lough’s
Now and Long Ago
, 609; “Lesson: Traditional Dance,” History Through the Arts, accessed September 30, 2012,
http://www.historythrougharts.org/main/program/leisure/PF_TraditionalDance.pdf
.

3
. “Thomas Cunningham,” Find A Grave;
U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560–1900
.

4
. Bockstruck,
Virginia’s Colonial Soldiers
, 144, 146; National Archives, “Revolutionary War Pension 1800–1900.”

5
. Haymond,
History of Harrison County
, 370.

C
HAPTER
1

6
. Core,
Vegetation of West Virginia
, 1–7.

7
. Volo and Volo,
Daily Life
, 1.

8
. Colonel Henry Bouquet quoted in Fort Ligonier Association et al.,
War for Empire
, 7.

9
. Doddridge,
Notes on the Settlement
, 70–75.

10
. Ibid., 21.

11
. Lewis,
The Fairfax Line
, 39.

12
. Ambler and Summers,
West Virginia
, 22.

13
. Callahan,
History of West Virginia
, 66–79.

14
. Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 99.

15
. Ibid., 100.

16
. Nester,
The Great Frontier War
, 2–3.

17
. Ibid., 2.

18
. Ibid.

19
. Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 80.

20
. Nester,
The Great Frontier War
, 1.

21
. Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 83.

22
. Hening,
The Statutes at Large
, 3:204–8.

23
. Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 84.

24
. Ibid., 85.

25
. Ibid., 85–86.

26
. Greene,
Religion and the State
, 67.

27
. Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 86.

28
. Gipson,
Great War for Empire
, 8–11.

29
. Willson,
A History of England
, 473.

30
. Ibid., 477.

31
. Thernstrom,
History of the American People
, 12.

32
. Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 88–89.

33
. Ibid., 91–92.

34
. Ambler and Summers,
West Virginia
, 36; Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 67–68.

35
. Ambler and Summers,
West Virginia
, 54–55.

36
. Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 73–74.

37
. Rice,
The Allegheny Frontier
, 65.

38
. Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 97–98.

39
. de Crevecoeur,
Letters from an American Farmer
, 67.

40
. Wade, “Along the Wilderness Trail,” 289–90.

41
. Haymond to Haymond, 18 March 1842. William Haymond Jr. Papers, cited in Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 121.

42
. An adz is a heavy hand tool with a steel cutting blade attached at right angles to a wooden handle, used for dressing timber.
World English Dictionary
, s.v. “adz.”

43
. A froe is a cutting tool with handle and blade at right angles, used for stripping young trees, etc.
World English Dictionary
, s.v. “froe.”

44
. Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 117.

45
. Ibid., 118.

46
. Asbury,
Letters of Francis Asbury
.

47
. Doddridge,
Notes on the Settlement
, 94.

48
. Volo and Volo,
Daily Life
, 145.

49
. Ibid.

50
. Alice Morse Earle,
Home Life in Colonial Days
, 33.

51
. Volo and Volo,
Daily Life
, 148.

52
. McWhorter,
Border Settlers of Northwest Virginia
, 377.

53
. Haymond,
History of Harrison County
, 272.

54
. “Reminiscences of Luther Haymond, 1896,” William Haymond Jr. Papers, cited in Boback, “Indian Warfare,” 122–23.

55
. Trigger,
The Huron
, 31.

56
. Smyth,
A Tour in the United States
, 94.

57
. Trigger,
The Huron
, 33.

58
. Volo and Volo,
Daily Life
, 151.

59
. de Crevecoeur,
Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America
, 104.

60
. Ibid., 105.

61
. Haymond,
History of Harrison County
, 272.