Following Mary Draper Ingles

     You'd think that since John and I live right on the Ohio River that we wouldn't want to follow other rivers in our free time, but we love the water, and so over the 4th of July weekend instead of enduring the sweltering heat of either the city north of us (Parkersburg) or the city south of us (Point Pleasant) for sternwheel regattas, live bands, food vendors, hundreds of people, and firework displays, we decided to take off on an adventure of our own sans any of that!

     To begin our journey we did make a quick little stop down at the river in Point Pleasant where the Kanawha runs into the Ohio because 1) we wanted to check out the sternwheelers that were docked there, and 2) because that's where we decided we'd start our drive, retracing part of the journey that Mary Draper Ingles made back in 1755 after she was captured by the Shawnee Indians who invaded her home in Drapers Meadows, in Virginia Territory when she was only 23 years old. If you haven't read her story, you really should! There are several renditions of it, but my favorite is James Alexander Thom's novel Follow the River based on the true account of her ordeal. (You can pick up a copy of this in most bookstores that feature books on West Virginia, including the Tamarak if you're stopping by there, or from our Travelin" West Virginia on-line store.) Anyway, her story began in 1732 when she was born to Irish immigrant parents in Philadelphia, PA. Like many other immigrant families, they migrated west to the mountains where they settled in Drapers Meadows (or what is now Blacksburg, VA). There, 18 year old Mary met and married 21 year old William Ingles (their marriage is the first recorded English marriage to take place west of the Allegheny Mountains), and quickly bore two sons, Tommy and George.  It was during this time that the French and British were fighting, Indians were taking sides, and settlers were getting caught in the crossfires. The region of the Allegheny was hunting grounds for several Indian tribes, but it was a group of Shawnee warriors, raiding and setting fire to villages, viciously scalping and killing most men, women, and children, and kidnapping a few white women and children to take back as wives and slaves, who came storming through Drapers Meadows one day when William and another man were out in the fields farming, without any guns and too far away to be of any assistance. While they did escape notice, all of their neighbors were brutally killed, and their houses burned to the ground. William's own wife and children, however, along with one other woman, were carried off by the Shawnee. Mary was 23 years old, Tommy was 4, and George was 3. They were taken down the New River to the Ohio River south to a Shawnee village located where the Scioto and Ohio Rivers meet, into territory that no English white man or woman had ever gone. In order to make the trip she had had to keep up with her captors and hold her own or she would have been killed. While other prisoners who arrived at the Shawnee camp were made to run the gauntlet to prove their strength and worth, she had so impressed all of her captors that she was not forced to do this. However, it was at this camp that her two sons were taken from her and sold. Unfortunately, the youngest, George, did not survive longer than a few months. Mary was hired to sew, but was eventually sold to French trappers and taken further west into Kentucky to help mine salt at Big Bone Lick. Even though this was extremely hard work, she was given freedom to roam around on her own, as it was taken for granted that escape from this area would be virtually impossible. Regardless, Mary had made up her mind that unless she escaped, William would never find her or their sons, and so determined that their only chance of survival would be if she ran for it, talked an older big boned German woman who had aslo been sold to this French trapping party to go with her. Together they took 2 knives and two blankets, and as discreetly as possible, walked away on November 7th. (James Alexander Thom's account, based on historic records and interviews with descendants, says that Mary gave birth to a baby girl in route to the Shawnee village, but left it with a woman who was "married" to one of the French trappers, who had become enamored with the baby and was better able to nurse and care for her, which makes this whole story even more heart wrenching!)

     Now to set the scene: Mary and the unknown "Dutch" woman had to cross 145 creeks and rivers as they traveled 250 miles up the Ohio River to where it meets the mouth of the Kanawha River. From there they had to make the 95 mile trek up river, crossing another 46 smaller streams and rivers to reach the Falls of the Kanawha, where they would then have yet another 85 to 90 more miles to follow the New River before Mary reached home. Her story becomes part of West Virginia frontier history once she crossed the Big Sandy River on the Ohio, where she would have entered what is now Wayne County, West Virginia. Remember, by November the weather would have become frigid; they had to live on berries and roots and a few fish that they were able to spearhead; their clothes had already virtually become tattered rags and their shoes were worn through; towards the end, Mary's travel partner became so insane with hunger that she sought to kill and eat Mary, and Mary had to work to escape her and the only knife they had left, when she found an Indian boat at the mouth of one of the smaller rivers and made it across the shore, continuing her journey alone on the opposite side of the river. Neither woman knew how to swim, and so had to journey up each stream until they could find a safe place to cross and then make it back down stream to the river they were following, thus making the entire journey of almost a thousand miles in 42 1/2 days. Mary had made it by sheer will and determination to see her beloved husband once more, and so it was to that end that she had kept her wits, noting the different landmarks along the way so that she could return the same way she had been taken if the chance ever presented itself. She had also made knots in a rope belt that she wore around her waist so that she could keep track of each day that passed. Hers is maybe the most heroic story of any frontier person, man or woman, that I've ever heard of or read about. And I'm so proud that she was in fact a woman! Finally arriving sometime in early December, at age 23, a man who recognized her voice as being his neighbor, took her in and nursed her back to health before taking her the last final miles. She returned home with a head full of white hair she had goten as a result of all the trauma, and a toothless mouth caused by the stress and severe starvation and poor diet, but she and William did reunite, and they had more children. Unfortunately it took another 15 years before they could ransom back Tommy who, with "professinal" help, was eventually able to reassemilate back into European culture. Mary out lived her husband by 33 years, dying at age 83.

    I wanted to follow this woman's tracks. Though I could never in a million years retrace her steps,  I wanted to glimpse the terrain she had walked. Ever since I read Follow the River I have never looked at the Ohio, the Kanawha, or the New Rivers in the same way. Not once have I looked on these rivers and not thought of Mary Draper Ingles and her ordeal. Not once have I not wondered, what if that had been me? At what point would I have given up? I was so obsessed by the story that I told John he just had to read Thom's novel, which he did. I knew that he loved frontier history and the river, and that a story about a woman would not deter him one bit. And just like I had hoped, he fell in love with it too. So here we were together, trying to follow as best we could the route Mary Draper Ingles would have taken along the banks of two of the three rivers. We had already traveled the Ohio and the Kanawha and most of the New River in WV, but decided to start at the mouth of the Kanawha again anyway. There are several places where the roads do not follow the New River, but when they do it's easy to imagine the extraordinary strength and will it took these two women to survive. Remembering that it would have been freezing cold; that they sometimes were following the Indian trails, while at other times they were purposely staying off them; that they were climbing cliffs and walking along the rivers' edges, sometimes fighting the strong currents and rapids that run that time of year; that they were almost barefooted, each wrapped in a blanket that was sometimes wet, and then sleeping on the bare ground wrapped in those same blankets; that they were starving, and scared beyond belief of wild animals and Indians alike. In the place where the Greenbrier River breaks from the New River I think of how incredibly easy it would have been for Mary to have gotten mixed up at that point and then headed in the wrong direction. I think about how two dams on the New River in WV now keep the waters under flood control, as well as the one in Radford, VA where Mary eventually settled with William, but how back then there would have been no such daming up of the rushing waters that might have flooded the rivers' banks. Today it is so beautiful and peaceful along these rivers. John and I both were particularly enamored with Sandstone Falls which lie below Hinton, WV. We spent several hours there before we could bring ourselves to get moving along for the remainder of our trip. We spent the night right across the WV state line in Bluefield, VA before making the rest of our trek the following day, driving over Big Walker Mountain to Wytheville, VA and I81 to Drapers Meadows, Blacksburg, and then finally Radford, VA where Mary lived out the remainder of her long life and then died. From there we headed back into WV where we took several county backroads over the mountains through woods and meadows along gushing streams and railroad tracks before getting back onto Route 60 East heading back to Charleston and then home to Ravenswood, where as soon as I can, I plan to reread Follow the River.




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The Governor's Cup Regatta, Charleston

     Ask people what they think of when they hear West Virginia mentioned, and whether it's their beloved home or whether they've just passed through on their way to someplace else (and especially if they've never been here at all), it's highly unlikely that anybody would think of crew shells racing on the Kanawha River. In fact, even the biggest sports officianados might not know that Charleston is host to the annual Governor's Cup Regatta, a nationally prominent crew racing invitational that brings teams from all over to compete in various race distances and team combinations. This year's event took place on Saturday, April 24th behind  the campus of the University of Charleston (UC), and was co-sponsored by UC and Huddleston Bolen, LLP, a law firm with offices in Huntington and Charleston, WV, and Ashland and Louisville, KY.

     I really wanted to make the trek to Charleston this year because, thanks to Facebook, I have recently gotten back in touch with some of my old school friends from Parkersburg High, including one of my very best friends who was on the PHS crew team, and who, after graduation, along with several other of the guys who rowed in 1976, went to Morris Harvey (it was still named that back then) to row on their team. And me? I was a crew groupie! For two seasons my girlfriend, Cindy, and I followed them around as they traveled from state to state to compete. In the early part of the seasons, as we stood on the rivers' banks, we'd about freeze to death as we strained our eyes watching the shells come into view, hoping that our guys were in the lead, and in the later part of the seasons we'd about melt from the heat of the sun. But it was all worth it to watch those guys row! Talk about SMOOTH. And they were tight with each other! So much so, that this year they decided to all get together on the UC campus for the Governor's Cup Regatta and alumni reunion. And what a reunion it was! The weather had called for rain, but fortunately it sprinkled only a little bit before noon, and then the temps climbed high into the upper 70s with the sun out in full force the rest of the day! But even with the good weather I'm not sure that any of us caught even one race result for all the talking and hugging and picture taking that went on all afternoon! And from what I heard afterwards, the UC crew reunion went on well into the night!  John and I left around 4:00 to go hang out with his brother, Mike, and his family who live just up the road in Kanawha City. We pretty much collapsed when we got there, and settling into some soft cushiony chairs felt good after sitting on hard ground for most of the day. Plus, we were more than ready to quench our thirst when Mike offered us cold bottles of lemonade and icy Cokes before the two guys went back outside to cook hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. After we ate, John and I stuck around until almost 10:00 while he and Mike kept me in stitches reminiscing about people from their past and stuff they did when they were young; so it was a great day all around!

     As we crossed the bridge back over the Kanawha River to get to the interstate, we could see the lights shining all the way down Kanawha Boulevard on the one side, with the capital building standing prominently on the river's north bank; and we could see the lights shining all the way down MacCorkle Avenue on the other side, with the University of Charleston standing prominently on the river's south bank. High above the water, we could  feel the heart of the Kanawha River as it flowed through West Virginia's seat of government, still beating vibrantly with life! As we drove back in the cool night air north on I77 to Ravenswood we knew without a doubt that this place would always be a welcoming beacon to light our way home.
     (And now a little bit of info for anybody who's interested and may not know: the University of Charleston is a private residential university with close to 1400 students who come from 37 states and 22 countries. From the campus one can be awed by its amazing panoramic view of the West Virginia hills, the Kanawha River, and the state capital building and governor's mansion. It shares its lawn with 1000s of guests for such annual events as Symphony Sunday, Wine and All That Jazz, and Blues, Brews, and BBQ. The college was originally founded by the Southern Methodists in 1888 as Barboursville Seminary in Barboursville, WV,  became a college in 1889, and was renamed Morris Harvey College in 1901 in honor of a prominent donor. During the Depression, the college moved to Charleston, but it wasn't until 1947 that construction of the present facility, which is located on the south bank of the Kanawha River, got underway. In 1942 the college disaffiliated itself from the Methodist Church, and in 1978 the Board of Trustees changed the college's name to the University of Charleston.)