The study of history through the excavation of discarded items, exploring people's attics, flying drones, and stuff….
This is likely a frontier-made musket, using a combination of gunsmith made and recycled parts, probably for use in the French and Indian War. It is made with iron mountings and is a hefty .75 caliber. This is the kind of plain, inexpensive, unromantic, and unembellished, work horse of a long gun which was probably the most common on the frontier – where most people were poor, but enterprising.
Included among her recipes are medical and pharmaceutical recipes, for things like arsenic, nitrous gas, and phosphate of potash. I believe these books originally belonged to her father, Gov. John Floyd, who is buried on the property. He was a doctor and served as a surgeon on the Revolutionary War. Some of the beautiful handwriting appears to be much, much older. These were probably carried with him during his service, and was later given to his daughter. Or perhaps she just kept them when he died on the property during a visit in 1837.
Arbuckle’s Fort was a Revolutionary-era frontier fort located in Greenbrier County, one of many forts that helped settlers to colonize Western Virginia. The fort stood on the property of John Keeney on a rise of land near the confluence of Mill Creek and Muddy Creek. It was built in the spring of 1774, under order of Capt. Matthew Arbuckle.
This old “wall gun” has been owned by the Greenbrier County Historical Society’s North House Museum since 1989. It was originally sold to them by Edwin A. Pattison, as having been used by Dick Pointer during the attack on Donnally’s Fort – the second largest Indian/Settler battle which ever occurred within West Virginia’s present-day boundaries. Of course it was Virginia at the time.
This primitive under hammer boot-style pistol was found hanging on a hand forged iron hook under the floor of a log cabin on part of the original Donnally’s Fort property in Rader’s Valley, Greenbrier County, West Virginia.
This is a Dutch Fowler made by Penterman of Utrecht, Holland, circa 1720, for Anthony Van Schaick, a wealthy merchant, Indian trader and Captain in the New York militia throughout the French and Indian War period. His name is engraved on the barrel. It looks like what is known as a “Hudson Valley Fowler,” however, since it was actually made in Holland, rather than the colony of New York, it isn’t technically a Hudson Valley Fowler. Hudson Valley Fowlers were built in that region, mimicking fowlers from Holland, such as this early example.
This is the exact location of the Lewis Spring, within the city limits of Lewisburg, WV. This spring was discovered by white frontiersmen around 1750, when John Lewis and his son (General) Andrew Lewis found it during their exploration of the area.
If you’ve read “The Frontiersman” by Allan Eckert, you remember the part where young Simon Kenton, who was fleeing what he thought would be a murder charge in Faquier County after getting in a fight, became Simon “Butler.” Simon had the sense to find out the name of the owner of each new location he arrived at, and introducing himself as having the same last name.
We love putting before and after shots together of real locations found in historic photographs. Here are a few we did over the past year around the Greenbrier Valley.
Donnally’s Fort, in Greenbrier County, was the site of the 2nd largest Revolutionary War era battle between Native Americans and white settlers in West Virginia, second only to the epic Battle of Point Pleasant. This battle was epic in its own way. Check out the connection we made with this event…..