Jonas Friend, one of the earliest settlers in both Pendleton and Randolph Counties, was of Swedish descent. His grandfather, Anders Nilsson Frande, was born about 1659 at Upland, Delaware (then Chester) County, Pennsylvania, and died about 1740 near Harper's Ferry. (l ) His father Israel Friend, who was born at Upland by 1693, started to mine iron ore in 1734 on a tract of land on the Potomac River about two miles north of Harper's Ferry in what is now Jefferson County, West Virginia. He may have had a furnace in Virginia for smelting the ore, or taken it across the Potomac to his mill on Antietam Creek in Maryland where there was a furnace later. (2) He is spoken of as a Friend (Quaker) in this period. (3) Benjamin Winslow's "Plan of the Upper Part of Patomack River called Cohongorooto, surveyed in the year 1736" shows the Friends living in that year west of the Potomac four miles south of the mouth of Undietum Creek. (4) If the mill was not Jonas Friend's place of birth it may be taken as certain that he spent his childhood there.
His father-in-law Joseph Skidmore, who had come to western Maryland by 1742 from Murderkill Hundred in Kent County, Delaware, lived no great distance away. He had formally acquired title to a plantation called Monican from Cornelius O'Neale on 11 June 1748 for £50 preparatory to moving to Virginia, but had probably lived there much earlier. Monican is described as being at the head of the Little Antietam. (5)
Jonas Friend went with the Skidmores to what is now Pendleton County perhaps at the time of his father-in-law's second trip south through the gap at Harper's Ferry. (6) He and Sarah Skidmore had married before 9 September 1754 when they returned a deed to Winchester selling 66 1/2 acres to Simeon Rice for £100. This was his share of the 300 acres that he and his two brothers had inherited from their father Israel Friend near Shepherdstown in Jefferson County. (7) In this deed Jonas and Sarah Friend are called "late of Frederick County in the colony of Virginia but now of Augusta County." Their eldest child, a son Joseph, was born probably in 1755 or soon after and named for his grandfather Skidmore. (8)
The middle brother Jacob Friend followed Jonas soon after to what is now Pendleton County, where he married Sarah's sister Elizabeth Skidmore. (9) Charles Friend, who was much younger than his brothers Jonas and Jacob, was still a minor in 1761. (10) He did not sell his share of his father's land until 11 May 1776 while it was still in Berkeley County (Jefferson County was not formed until 1801), and then disappears. (11)
Jonas and his brothers had two sisters, Catherine (of whom nothing more is known), and Mary who married Captain Abel Westfall. He later served in the Eighth Virginia Regiment during the Revolution. The Westfalls went with his brothers to Knox County, Indiana, where he was nominated as a delegate to the first Indiana Territorial Convention in 1802. The balloting survives (he was not elected), and we find that while Abel voted for himself one of his nephews cast his four votes for the opposition (which included William Henry Harrison, the big winner). (12) The Westfalls were back in Ross county, Ohio, in October 1805 when Abel answered a complaint about her father's land in Virginia where they had lived in 1778. (13) Mary Westfall was dead before 3 August 1811 when Abel Westfall (back in Indiana) had a licence in Knox County to marry Polly Rumsour. (14) Abel Westfall himself had died before 30 May 1818 when his brother Cornelius applied in Knox County for a pension for his service in the Revolution in his brother's company.
Jonas Friend was a Corporal in the French and Indian War serving under Captain Abraham Smith, and was also employed as a carpenter in the rebuilding of Fort Seybert after the massacre there, for which he was paid £1 2sh 6d. (15) Jonas Friend was present later on 19 August 1761 when Daniel Smith sold the property at a vendue sale belonging to Jacob Sivers (Seybert) who had perished with most of his family at the fort. (16)
He bought 44 acres, part of a tract of 350 acres on the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac which had been patented to Robert Green on 12 January 1746, from the Green heirs on 29 May 1761. The consideration was a modest £8 l5sh. (17) He was appointed a Constable in place of Peter Veneman on 17 November 1767. (18) The constables had essentially the same duties as the sheriff, but earned small fees for executing writs and performing the other chores of their office. More importantly an appointment often proved to be the first step in the career of an ambitious local politician.
He had moved by 1772 to the Tygart River Valley in what became Randolph County. However the Friends didn't dispose of their land in Pendleton County until 22 May 1776 when they got a very good price (£105) from Charles Powers for what must have been his 44 greatly improved acres on the North Fork. (19)
Sarah Friend's father and a part of her brothers followed soon after to what is now Elkins. Edward Skidmore, Jonas' brother-in-law, and his young wife had come out to Virginia by 1772 bringing with him from Duck Creek Hundred in Newcastle County, Delaware, Benjamin and William Cleaver, Joseph Donoho, and probably Jesse Hamilton. These men settled soon after in the Tygart River Valley. (20) Four of the group from Delaware (William Cleaver, Edward Skidmore, Donoho, and Hamilton) entered into a partnership with Jonas Friend to purchase a certificate for 1000 acres from James Walker, a veteran of the French and Indian War, who had a warrant for 3000 acres. Jonas Friend, his teen-age son Joseph, Edward Skidmore, and the other three partners promptly located an attractive site at the mouth of Leading Creek and had their 1000 acres surveyed. They built Friend's Fort soon after which became the chief adornment of the tract. The five partners perfected their title on 1 November 1782 in Monongalia County.
David Armstrong has traced the early land titles in the modern city of Elkins and has published his findings. (21) From his work we learn that the partners became the first residents there below Porter Avenue. Hamilton settled on that portion of the survey that included the present day railroad yards, Harrison Avenue, both hospital buildings, Wilson, Central and Main Streets, the junior high school, and the Armory. Hamilton's cabin may have been on the site of the Youth Health Service mansion across from the Third Ward Apartments. Donoho's settlement was next below Hamilton's in the present day Oak Grove Addition. Edward Skidmore lived below them, and Jonas Friend had Harrison Avenue approximately west of the State Police Barracks, as well as Goff Street, the Third Ward School and the Mall, and part of Crystal Springs.
The fort itself was at Crystal Springs near the Ivan Coberly house. (22) It was undoubtedly modeled after Fort Seybert which Jonas Friend had helped rebuild. The foundation of the fort could still be traced as late as 1915, but the area has since been graded and improved. This leveling effectively destroyed what was once there in the way of postholes or other evidences. The fort is supposed to be have been directly over the present Tastee Freez store at Crystal Springs, still the highest point in the area
Jonas Friend appeared at the store belonging to Felix Gilbert in Rockingham County on Saturday, 4 February 1775. Gilbert, who made periodic trips to London to stock his emporium, preceeded Wal-Mart in the area by about 200 years. Friend made only two purchases, 48 1/8 gallons of rum (for which he paid £10 9sh 9 1/2d) and eight kegs (at 2sh 6d each) to store the rum for traveling. Nearly 50 gallons of rum would keep a solitary drinker supplied for several months, and it is more likely that he was an affable host back at the fort. Rum was imported (then as now) from the West Indies to Virginia and was more highly prized than the local whiskey. In addition to the expense it would have been a considerable job to cart this much cargo over the poor roads back to Leading Creek, although they were probably frozen at this date.
On 16 September 1775 Jonas Friend was appointed a Gentleman Justice for Augusta County and he and Colonel Benjamin Wilson (appointed on the same day) became the first two representatives of the Virginia county system of law and government west of the Alleghenies. Their commissions came up for review at intervals and both were invariably confirmed by the governor until they were finally retired on 19 December 1781 from the Augusta Commission as they now lived outside that county. (23) He had filed a claim in the new Monongalia County for supplies furnished the Revolutionary army but apparently did little other business before the court sitting at Morgantown. (24)
On 15 October 1776 the inhabitants of the Tygart Valley, Edward Skidmore and Jonas Friend among them, signed a petition to the House of Delegates asking that three companies of rangers be stationed in the valley to protect them. According to their petition they numbered about 150 families spread over 50 miles of the valley and about 80 miles from any relief in case of an emergency.
One incident at Friend's Fort will suffice to show that their anxiety was not exaggerated in view of the perils of the time. On an evening in April 1781 Alexander West, a neighbor, was visiting at the fort. He and Jonas were sitting outside when West saw what he thought was an Indian in the shadows. He started for his gun but Jonas Friend stopped him saying the figure in the dark was probably one of his "yaller boys." Both West and Friend had fierce dogs, and not altogether certain of the identity of the figure, the dogs were set loose. However they flew at one another and the intruder vanished into the forest. West wanted to alarm the settlers that night, but Friend talked him out of it. The day following an Indian raiding party descended on the community and killed three of five men returning from the settlement which is now Clarksburg. From there they moved to Leading Creek where they destroyed most of a colony of six families taking three prisoners. This was the most disastrous Indian visitation on record in the Tygart River Valley. There was now little doubt that West had seen a scout from the raiding party and Jonas Friend condemned himself bitterly for not letting West act on his impulse to alarm the settlers. (25)
He and Benjamin Wilson, William White, and William Cleaver appraised the estate of Joseph Skidmore, Senior, on 19 June 1778. (26) His father-in-law had died at what is now South Elkins and was probably the first burial in what became a small family cemetery near the former Odd Fellow's Home. (27)
Edward Skidmore, the Cleavers, and several other families left the Tygart Valley for what is now Nelson County, Kentucky, in 1779, according to the pension application of William Cleaver filed in 1832 from Grayson County, Kentucky. On 24 June 1782 Edward Skidmore was drafted from Nelson County as a Sergeant in the company of Captain James Davis to assist in the construction of Fort Nelson (possibly modelled in part on Friend's Fort back in Virginia) at what is now the city of Louisville. He was stationed there until July 13th when he was paid and discharged. Edward Skidmore's will is dated a few months later on 17 October 1782. He was then "in a weak and low state of body." He left all of his worldly affairs to his wife Deborah. (28) Excepted only was my "rifle gun, powder horn and pouch" which were to be kept for his young son Benjamin. Edward Skidmore seems to have died soon a few days later, although his will was not recorded in Jefferson County (which then included Nelson) until 6 August 1783. Previous to the recording of the will his widow had traveled to Louisville to enter 400 acres of land that Edward Skidmore had a warrant for on the south side of Beech Fork beginning at the east corner of James Nalls' survey.
Nothing further has been learned of the widow Deborah Skidmore. Neither she nor his sons ever appear to have sold the Beech Fork tract, and they also abandoned their interest in Edward Skidmore's land back at Elkins.
At a court held at Clarksburg on 22 September 1784 Jonas Friend was appointed a Surveyor of a public highway from his own house to Eberman Creek. He was to work the tithables on Leading Creek, both sides of the Tygart Valley River, up Eberman's Creek, and across the river to Hezekiah Rosecrances, and to keep it in lawful repair. (29)
He manumitted a slave, perhaps one of his "yaller" boys noticed earlier, in 1791: "Randolph County, Virginia
December 30, 1791
I do hereby certify that I have set the bearer hereof, Negro Tom, at full liberty from servitude to act and do for himself as a free man, as witness my hand the day and date above written.
Jonah Friend" (30)
On 26 March 1792 the Randolph County Court ordered that Jonas Friend be exempted from laboring on the highway, and that Cornelius Westfall be appointed as surveyor of highway in his place. (31) At some point the justices probably relieved him from paying his tax as a tithable (since he disappears from the early tax lists several years before his death), but this does not seem to be on record.
Jonas and Sarah Friend divided the 1000 acre tract on 25 May 1795 and sold 300 acres to their son Andrew Friend for £1000. The remaining 700 acres of the tract was deeded by Jonas Friend on 22 August 1796 for $1.00 to the remaining four partners "my part being laid off and a deed of Bargain and sale made unto my son Andrew for three hundred acres." (32) Years later on 28 September 1801 Cornelius Westfall brought a suit in Randolph County against William Cleaver, Jonas Friend, Benjamin Skidmore (heir at law of Edward Skidmore, deceased), Joseph Donohue, and Jesse Hamilton to try to force the defendants "to make a good and legal deed for the said lands in the bill mentioned at their proper costs and charges." (33)
Jonas Friend perhaps also had the unhappy distinction of suffering from Randolph County's first recorded case of senile dementia. His declining years are reported by Hu Maxwell:
"Jonas Friend lived to be very old, and in his last years his mind was very weak, and his memory existed nearly altogether in the past. He fancied that he was still a soldier fighting the British in defense of his country; and with his knapsack on his back and his gun on his shoulder he would go from house to house, halting occasionally, as if on picket duty, when he would raise his gun and go through the act of firing, exclaiming in exultation that there was one Red Coat less." (34)
He is said to have died on 15 November 1807 at Friend's Fort, and his wife Sarah Friend followed him in death in the year following. (35)
On 18 August 1784 the newly constituted Harrison County court ordered Jacob Westfall to make a list of all the white people living in his former militia district which included the Wilmoth's Settlement on Leading Creek. Jonas Friend was head of a household that included six white persons, one dwelling, and two other buildings. He was the only tithable in the household, so it may be taken as certain that his son Joseph Friend was in the west fighting Indians. (36) In addition to the parents the other four white souls in the household must have been his son Andrew and his three daughters Sarah, Nancy, and Mary.
The birth of Captain Joseph Friend has already been noticed. He married Elizabeth Davisson of Clarksburg on 16 November 1786. She produced his only daughter Mary, and died soon after. On 26 May 1800 William Wilson, Senior, made oath "that in or about December 1, 1798, Joseph Friend by deed executed in the presence of two credable witnesses did grant the custody and tuition of his daughter Polly until she arrived at the age of 18 years to the said William Wilson which deed is now lost or mislaid." (37) She married William Arters (Arthur) on 1 February 1802 at what must have been the tender age of about 15 and became his widow in 1838. She died in Webster County in 1865.
Bill Rice of Elkins has found an interesting entry in the records at Clarksburg relating to one of the earliest tracts acquired by Joseph Friend. In 1784, immediately after Harrison County was formed, it was put on record that "Joseph Friend, assignee of Joseph Hastings who is assignee of Charles Grigsby enters 200 acres on the west side of the Tygart Valley River to include the Mingo Cabin." The exact location of this tract has not been traced, but it shows the type of housing used by the native American in central West Virginia before the coming of the white man. Although their presence in the area was sporadic and never very dense, Joseph Friend's entry is also important since it documents the ethnic subfamily of the natives who once occupied the area. (38)
Joseph Friend will be best remembered as an Indian fighter. He served throughout the American Revolution, and raised a company of volunteers attached to the regiment commanded by Colonel Zackquill Morgan which went to the support of General George Rogers Clarke. Captain Joseph Friend signed vouchers to Benjamin Cutright and others in May 1781 for beef to be used by the Monongalia County volunteers on the march west to join Clarke. (39)
In 1791 he was with General St. Clair at his defeat at the hands of the Miami Indians, and was present again on a happier occasion (so far as the white settlers were concerned) at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Here in August 1794, along the Maumee River near Toledo, Ohio, an army commanded by General Anthony Wayne (in a battle lasting only 40 minutes) dealt 2000 Indian warriors a crushing defeat from which they never recovered. Joseph Friend was on this occasion appointed by General Wayne as the Captain of the Spy Company. It was his last battle, for while he "often faced the foe, and stood amidst the danger of Many hard fought battles, yet he never received a Scar or a wound from a ball, a sword, or a tommyhawk... but had the Misfortune while acting as Captain of the Spies under the command of Gen. Wayne to break the rim of his belly."
He owned 216 acres including the salt well where the town of Webster Springs now stands, and had moved there with his son-in-law in 1819. He and James Dyer were for a time partners in a salt making business. (40) However, the pain from his hernia increased in his old age, and by 1822 he was unable to earn his own livelihood and had "nearly burnt the lamp of time allotted to man." He signed a deed on 3 December 1826 in Nicholas County (which included what became Webster), and is said to have died there the year after. (41)
His sisters, the daughters of Jonas Friend, should be mentioned briefly. Sarah was born in 1759, and married Major William Wilson (1754-1851) on 19 August 1779. She died on 22 October 1832 and they are buried in the Casner Cemetery on the John Yoho farm one mile north of Mt. Ephraim in Seneca Township, Noble County, Ohio. (42) Nancy married John Currence (1753-1845) and died on 26 September 1851 aged 92 years, 3 months, and 21 days. They are buried in the Currence-Walmsley Cemetery about four miles south of Huttonsville. Mary, clearly the youngest daughter, married Robert Clark on 19 February 1794 in Randolph County. They disappear from the neighborhood and may have gone west.
Captain Andrew Friend, the younger son, married Eleanor, a daughter of Peter McCall, in Randolph County on 1 February 1802. He was appointed a Captain in the room of Boston Hoskins, resigned, on 27 May 1807, and a Gentleman Justice for Randolph County in 1814 by the governor. (43) He was sitting on the bench on 26 March 1816 when it was "ordered that the Sheriff pay unto Andrew Friend One Dollar & 30 Cts. which was Collected from him for a tax on a Mill which he did Not possess. (44)
There was no probate on the estate of Andrew Friend who died a few months later, before 21 April 1817 when a survey was done for his four heirs Joseph, Sarah, Levina, and Jonas Friend. They were now possessed of 100 acres in what is now Braxton County "including the place they live on... on Ben's Run." (45) If Eleanor survived her husband she is not found as the head of a family in 1820, and no second marriage has been found for her. On 24 October 1850 Levisa Friend of Kanawha County, and Jonas Friend together with Jonas and Thomas Canter of Mason County, Virginia, joined together to sell this 100 acres to Samuel S. Williams. (46)
Of the four children of Andrew Friend named in 1817 only Jonas and his sister Sarah have been traced further. Jonas, the first born, was living in 1850 a farmer aged 47 with his wife Tempy and a large family of children in Mason County. They apparently moved to adjoining Jackson County, West Virginia, but in 1880 he and Temperance were in Milton Township, Jackson County, Ohio. In 1880 Jonas Friend's occupation is reported as "digs ore"-a hard life for an elderly man. (47) Neither he or Temperance (nor any of their children) are found buried in Milton Township. His sister Sarah apparently married the James Canter who was head of a family in 1840 in Mason County, and it was her two eldest sons and heirs, orphans, who conveyed their interest in the tract on Kanawha Run in 1850. Jonas and Thomas Canter were both enumerated in 1880 in Union District, Jackson County, West Virginia
The other daughter, Levisa Friend, who is said to have been living in 1850 in Kanawha County, in not found enumerated anywhere in Virginia (as a spinster) in the census taken in that year. She is given as a grantor in the deed of 24 October 1850, but (most curiously) neither she nor her brother Jonas signed it. (48) No marriage has been found for her, and the bond for the marriage of her brother Jonas and his wife Temperance has also not yet surfaced in West Virginia or Ohio.
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