West Virginia, Hardy County History

West Virginia: Hardy County History

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Hardy County History

Court House:	204 Washington Street, Room 111 County Courthouse Moorefield, WV 26836-1155 Phone: (304)538-2929 Fax:	NA
County Seat:	Moorefield	Census Bureau Quick Facts
Organized:	1786	Capital Impact Data
Square Miles:	583	County Officials - NACo
Location:	39.005336N, -78.863351 W	Fedstats/Mapstats
		Political Graveyard
		WVGenWeb

Named:	For Samuel Hardy, a distinguished Virginian

Neighbors:	North: Mineral County Northeast: Hampshire County; Frederick County, Va. Northwest: Grant County South: Rockingham County, Va. Southeast: Shenandoah County, Va. Southwest: Pendleton County

Early History of Hardy County, West Virginia

Hardy County was authorized by the Virginia General Assembly on December 10, 1785 and organized in February 1786 from parts of Hampshire County. It was named in honor of Samuel Hardy (1758-1785). He was born in Isle, Wight County Virginia in 1758 and graduated from William and Mary College in 1781. He was an attorney and served in the Virginia General Assembly in 1777 and in 1781, represented Virginia in the Continental Congress in 1783 and 1785, served briefly as lieutenant governor of Virginia and was a signer of the Deed of Cession that transferred the Northwest territory to the American government. He died in New York in October 1785.

In 1790, Hardy County had the third largest population (7,336) of the nine counties that were then in existence and fell within the current boundaries of West Virginia. Berkeley County had the largest population (19,713), Randolph County had the smallest population (951) and there were a total of 55,873 people living within the present state's boundaries.

The county seat, Moorefield, was charted by the Virginia General Assembly in 1777 on the farm of Conrad Moore. The town was named in his honor.

The county was the site of many Indian battles during the 1700s. In the spring of 1756, for example, several Indians (accounts vary from two to fourteen), from a larger party of 60 to 70 warriors, led by Shawnee Chief Killbuck, attacked John Brake's farmhouse on the south fork of the South Branch of the Potomac River, about 15 miles north of Moorefield. They took Mr. Brake's pregnant wife and a Mrs. Neff, who were alone in the farmhouse at the time of the attack, prisoner. As they moved on, the Indians killed Mrs. Brake because she could not keep up the pace. They then traveled to the vicinity of Town Fort, about one and a half miles south of Moorefield and, pretending to have fallen asleep, allowed Mrs. Neff to escape to the fort.

Eighteen men, most of them from Town Fort and a few from Buttermilk Fort, located five miles to the north, chased the Indians through the county. The Indians purposively led the men toward their main encampment, hoping to trap the men in a deep ravine called the Trough. The men continued to follow the Indians, but noticing how easy their trail was to follow suspected a trap. As they came to the Trough they dismounted from their horses and attempted to surprise the Indians by leaving their horses on a ridge as they made their way down to the ravine and the river below under cover. Unfortunately, a stray dog that had followed them from the fort startled a rabbit and gave pursuit. His yelping alerted the Indians in the ravine of their presence. The Indians circled around the men, leaving them trapped between the Indians and the river.

After two hours of rifle fire and hand-to-hand combat, nearly half of the men and a like number of Indians were dead. At the same time, and in hearing distance of the rifle shot, a company of regulars, led by Captain Thomas Wagner, a British officer, was stationed at Fort Pleasant (one account has his name as Captain Thomas Waggoner from Fairfax County, Virginia). There are two conflicting reports of Captain Wagner's conduct. One claims that when the fort's inhabitants seized their rifles to join the fighting, Wagner ordered the fort's gates to be closed and, in a cowardly manner, ordered everyone to stay within the fort. The other report is that Wagoner gave the order to remain in the fort, but did so because the waters in the ravine had risen so high that it was impossible to reach the battle.

Recognizing that they were hopelessly outnumbered, and that reinforcements were not coming, the remaining men dove into the river in a frantic attempt to escape, leaving behind the wounded, who, in the words of Dr. Charles A. Turley of Fort Pleasant, loaded their rifles and placed "...themselves behind some cover on the river bank, dealt certain death to the first adversary who made his appearance, and then calmly yielded to the tomahawk." A teenager named James Parsons was one of the men who escaped. He later recalled that the Indians chased him right up the the gates of the fort and that he remembered hearing tomahawks whistling by his head as he reached the safety of the fort. Years later, Chief Killbuck complimented his opponents at the Battle of the Trough who, he felt, fought with unusual valor and ferocity.

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