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.
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…..
Estill Blockhouse. Built 1773. Indian Creek, Monroe County, West Virginia. This is the real thing. One of the coolest structures in all of West Virginia. A stone blockhouse fortified home from the Virginia frontier still standing, in its original location. With a history of Indian attack, and with a legendary frontier family.
Standing high and proud on the edge of a bluff, overlooking a ravine in which flows Byrnside Branch of Indian Creek on its way to join New River, is the Byrnside-Beirne- Johnson House. The Byrnside-Beirne-Johnson House is also called Willowbrook….