SETTLEMENT OF NICHOLAS NUTT

Looking east from the Catholic Conference Center three miles above Huttonsville, WV, the view across the Tygart Valley River and along the hills of Becky's Creek might best be described as magnificent. So it should come as no surprise that Nicholas Mutt, one of the earliest settlers in the region, chose the site as his home. The appeal of the location has proven to be beneficial to historians since conflicting claims led to court battles during the late 1700s which helped document the early history of the settlement.

On 3 September 1784, in the Court of Augusta County, Virginia, John Poage, Senior filed suit against William Elliott challenging his claim to the land in the Tygart Valley where Nicholas Nutt for-merly settled. The case is in Augusta County Judgement File #441. In it Poage explains to the Court that Nutt was the first settler and lived on the land about two years before being driven away by the Indians. Nutt then sold his right to the land to Jacob Marlin, Senior. Marlin then sold it to his son-in-law, Welter Drennon. Poage points out that since Indians were still committing hostilities on the frontiers, Drennon was unable to take possession of the land before John Hamilton settled on it. About 1770 Drennon sent one of his sons to Hamiltons to inform him that Welter Drennon owned the property. Hamilton did not agree. Being old and infirm and unable to take possession of the land Drennon sold his right in it to Poage in 1772. Poage was to pay one pound sterling for each ten acres and he believed that the entire claim was for 1,000 acres. Also in 1772 John Hamilton sold the Nicholas Nutt improvement to William Elliott who purchased a military warrant for it from John McClanahan end took possession of it. Poage refers to a decision made in 1780 by the Land Commissioners while they were meeting in the Tygart Valley which gave him the rights to the 184 acres claimed by Elliott and another 216 acres of unappropriated land adjacent to it. Since the Commission ruled in his favor Poage rented the tract to a tennant. But Poage complains that due to confusion in the Land Office, Elliott obtained a patent for the tract on 1 November 1782. Elliott then had his brother collect the rent that was due and take possession of the land. In a related case, William Elliott, responding to the Land Commission ruling against him, on 19 August 1780 sued John Hamilton for breach of warranty relating to Hamilton's 1772 sale to Elliott of the Nicholas Nutt improvement (See Lyman Chalkley's Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia, Volume I, Page 380). The outcome of this case is unknown. Some additional information about this dispute is found on page 39 of the Fall 1977 issue of the "Augusta Historical Bulletin" where an abstract of the 1780 Land Commission case is published. It states that Poage claimed to have bought the right to the land from Jacob Marlin, Senior while Hamilton contended that he bought the right from Jacob Marlin, Junior. After examining un-named witnesses the Court determined that Nutt assigned his interest to Jacob Marlin, Sr. who transferred it to Walter Drennon who sold it to Poage.

Incidental to these law suits it was established that a man named Nicholas Nutt, several years before 1772, had settled at a place later known as Nicholas Nutt's Settlement or Improvement. The exact location can be determined by platting the 184 acre tract that was the central focus of the litigation. The 184 acres are part of a 1,O00 acre survey done by Thomas Lewis on 1 March 1774 and recorded in Augusta County Survey Book 2, Page 229. Lewis did the survey, as well as two more 1,O00 acre surveys further down the Tygart Valley River, for John McClanahan who purchased a warrant for 3,000 acres on 17 December 1773 from James Walker who was entitled to the land for his service as an officer in the French and Indian War. Each 1,O00 acre tract was divided up into several smaller tracts determined by natural boundaries such as streams, rivers or along the foot of a mountain. Documents in the Augusta County Court Mouse for the administration of the estate of John McClanahan who died in 1774, show that on l5 October 1774 each land owner was assessed one pound sterling for each ten acres of land they received, the same amount John Poage, Senior told the Court he expected to pay for the Nicholas Nutt Settlement. The legal division of the property was not done until 7 June 1786. The deeds are recorded in Harrison County Deed Book 1, pages 7, 9, 15, I8, 20 & 22. The 184 acre tract claimed by William Elliott on which the Land Commission determined that Nicholas Nutt had settled is on the east side of the Tygart Valley River about three miles south of the Town of Huttonsville and centered near the mouth of Pounding Mill Run. It was bounded on the north and across the river by the 310 acre tract of Isabella Stewart, on the west and across the river by the 155 acre tract of John Hamilton, on the south by the 210 acre tract of Richard Elliott and on the northeast by a 277 acre tract surveyed for David Harden.

One of the noteworthy features of the sits of the Nutt Settlement is the ridge which separates the waters of Becky's Creek from the Tygart Valley River. For reasons no one seems to remember the resi-dents call it "Indian Grave". There is an old cemetery on the ridge in which John Currence (1757-1849) and his wife Nancy Friend (1759-1851) are buried. But even though the ridge might have offered the early settler with an ideal place to protect themselves from the Indians, with a vantage point more than 100 feet above the relatively wide valleys on both the east and west, this author has been unable to determine if any fortifications were ever located there. Other things of historical importance on or near the Nutt Settlement are the long mill race running along the west side of the river on the Isabella Stewart tract and the very old graveyard known locally as the White Cemetery located on the Hadden tract in which are buried some of the descendants of Capt. John White who, according to Maxwell on page 513 of his History of Randolph County, was killed in 1779 in the area either by Indians or deserters.

One indication of the importance of the Nutt settlement is that it had became a place of reference. While it has not been determined what improvements Nicholas Nutt might have made, the site of his settlement was still referred to as an improvement in 1784. And in Chalkley II-49 is an abstract of a 200,000 acre grant issued to George Washington, later to be President of the United States, by petition dated 15 December 1769 on the New River and on the Monongahela River at a place "commonly called" Nicholas Nutts. Another indication that the Nutt Settlement served as a place of reference is found in two surveys recorded in the Augusta County Survey books. One in Book 2 Page 264 is a 400 acre survey for William Elliott done by John Trimble and Thomas Lewis on 16 November 1775. It adjoins his 1774 survey on the east and includes nearly one half a mile of a stream called "Mile Run". When platted Mile Run turns out to be that stream today known as Becky's Creek which empties into the Tygart Valley River about one mile below the site of the Nutt Settlement. Another survey in Book 3 Page 69 and dated 20 November 1780 is a 266 acre survey for Peter Shaver on "Three Mile Run". Platting this survey reveals that Three Mile Run is today known as Riffle Run which empties into the Tygart Valley River about two miles below the mouth of Becky's Creek and about three miles below the Nutt Settlement. This author believes that during early stages of settlement, streams along important roads were numbered to serve as mile posts based on the number of miles the stream is from a known point of reference. Jim Comstock's West Virginia Heritage Encyclopedia has indexed several examples of nearly every number from one to twenty as names for streams still in use today.

An important document that places a man named Nicholas Nutt on the Monongahela River very early is found in the Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia on page 694 of the volume for miscellaneous papers. It shows that on 2 November 1752 the Council approved a 30,000 acre grant on the Monongahela, north of the Greenbrier and south of the Youghiogheny on what is called the "Goose River". This is significant since it suggests that the Tygart Valley River may have been called the Goose River in 1752. And the name fits since names such as Goose Creek in Ritcbie County were so named since flocks of wild geese were seen at those locations by early settlers (See Comstock Page 1940). Geese are migratory birds that graze on grass which suggests that there may have been significant amounts of grassland in the Tygart Valley in 1752. The 1752 grant was awarded to Reverend George Samuel Klug, a Luthern minister from the area that is today in Madison County, Virginia, along with 17 others, evidently members of his congregation. They include Michael Thomas, Nicholas Nutt, Jacob Burner, Henry Baughman, Abraham Myers, Stephen Sewell, Abraham Brown, Adam Wayland, Adam Broyle, Adam and John Barler, Matthew and Nicholas Smith, Henry Ailer, Michael Russell, John Ralchbach and Paul Lederer. At least nine of these names appear in the early records of western Virginia. One of the more noteworthy of these is Stephen Sewell who gave his name to a Mountain and Creek in West Virginia and was associated with Jacob Marlin, Senior as was Nicholas Nutt (Comstock pages 4294 and 4295). Abraham Myers was the name of the first settler at Webster Springs according to page 388 of Supplemental Volume lO-11 of Comstock's Encyclopedia and Page 178 of Monongalia County Entry Book I.

But penetrating deep into the frontier proved costly for some of these pioneers. Preston's Register shows that Henry Baughman was killed by Indians on the Greenbrier River in September of 1755 and one year later Stephen Sewell and Nicholas Nutt were killed by Indians on the Jackson's River, evidently where they had taken refuge. On 17 November 1756 the Augusta County Court appointed a merchant to administer the estate of Nicholas Nutt and the inventory was just a few tools, probably a single man, whose name and settlement in the Tygart Valley would live for a few more years and then be forgotten.