Transcript for:
WV Chapter 3

as we continue along with the English in the French having their conflict in the Ohio Valley we left off in the last video talking quite a bit about the differences between the English and French in the Ohio Valley and let me get our outline here available for us same thing I still have it on my phone it's just easier to view it but remember we have the various differences on how people are viewing how their lives are between the two nations and their ideas of colonialism all right so this idea of other people's Wars that's one thing people are going to have over here as time develops especially as you get further into the 1700s the colonists that are over here the English and then also the French butter over here mainly again being traders fur traders they're going to feel as more more time passes particularly the English that they're dealing with problems that are happening overseas now that's why I put other people's Wars you'll even notice in the book they'll mention the end of King George's War hey a lot of the different wars over in Europe we're gonna be called things like the war of Austrian secession the war of Spanish secession the war of Jenkins ear okay they're called different things than what we're gonna see over here in the Americas they're gonna be George's war Queen Anne's war even when we get to the biggy the French and Indian War that's what we call it over here in the Americas over in Europe they're gonna call it the Seven Years War or my personal favorite the mid-century showdown so there are different names for it but that kind of gives you that idea why it's other people's Wars for the colonists over here and that'll be big later on because there'll be a lot of angst between particularly the English colonists who of course will end up taking over the Ohio Valley and the North American region here that becomes the United States but there will be a lot of angst with the colonists towards the mother nation towards the ink because of problems with this idea of other people's wars that the colonists don't feel it's their problem they need to deal with during in and after the war the main war itself after that French and Indian War particularly okay so some things about the English and the French movement as they're both trying to get more and more into the Ohio Valley particularly and take the land for their own countries one thing we'll see are the Virginia lien companies are becoming more and more prominent for the English so remember we had those land speculators we mentioned earlier well these are also going to be land speculators but they're gonna be organized into businesses into companies and same idea they're bringing more and more settlers in it's much more organized though as you get further into the 1700s and your book lists some of the big ones they have The Greenbrier company the loyal company the one that really includes most of the western portion the very far western portion which is the area we would live in it's going to be the Ohio company and that will eventually go keep expanding out they're trying to go obviously Ohio Company as far as they can they hope to get to the Ohio River but they're going to claim much of what's now West Virginia there's Virginia land companies now the French they ignore us just like we ignore if we're dumb about the English with more the French in their claims early on if you think of the 1700s from the early settlements and what becomes West Virginia we're gonna see some of the movements where you have actual settlements not just one or two folks living in a certain area from the Pocahontas County areas there and marl inton you know kind of down towards the bottom of what's the stake now all the way to Morgantown over to the cheap river and then even in the Greenbrier Valley so kind of little triangle effect there we're gonna see from bottom of what becomes West Virginia up to North Central West Virginia and of course the settlers are cautious they worry about Native Americans I mean there are Indian attacks if you will you hear about that a lot but there are also settler attacks on the Native Americans because people are fighting over land and as mentioned earlier about the settlers encroaching on Native America land and Native Americans trying to keep that land open as it is one of the more famous stories I think it's mentioned in your book is that Thomas Dekker is killed in the Morgantown area by a Delaware in Mingo Indians in that region Decker's Creek is named after that family if you're familiar with the Morgantown area and one of the famous forts I guess you would say that's still in the area it's actually still around it's a big house now it's in the green lawn area of Morgantown and it's very tiny Viraj basically but it's now someone's very small tiny house I guess you call it now and the fort's at this time they're not huge or anything unless they're really built up by some type of military outpost but even then they're not big by our standards they're very tiny usually at this point time mid 1700s again unless they're a big governmental military fort they're going to be something that the local settlement throws together that if there is an attack by Native Americans with fear of some type of attack everyone's going to run to this small shelter and so they can be in a defensive area together and try to fight off and you have a checker so in green Mont this one particular little fort that still stands the the story goes and you'll hear the story in various places along the frontier I think they tell the even the same story not far from Morgantown if you drive out route set them outside of Morgantown near blacksville there's a historic marker on the road and it's the story of this one woman her name's Ann Bailey here from that area you probably know the name it's escaping me right now that's basically the same story but as the story goes it's good folklore if nothing else the story goes up there's this woman right who is in one of these makeshift forts whether being green monitor out route seven or wherever and she has a bunch of children with her either they're hers or she has the settlements children for some reason she's the only adult though in the fort either the men around the other women are doing something for some reason though she's the only adult in the forty and the Native Americans attack and she doesn't know what to do she can't hold off all these you know attackers by herself and these children so the famous story is that she has the older children stand by the door and they lift the bar because sheep I heard the old song you know bar of a door it's kind of old folk song because they would have a large bar basically it locked the door and then you would open it right and then you could actually physically open the door down and let people in so the idea was the doors barred right it's locked and what she would have like the older children he could lift the heavy bar do is she would tell them you need to lift the bar they would stand you know on one side on the right hand side let's say and she would be waiting here let's stay on the left hand side and when the door opened they would let one the attackers in and they would quickly put the bar back down and while she's waiting over here she would have an axe ready and you can imagine how the story goes so once she takes care of the one attack her she stands back away from the door it's barred and she tells the children to lift the bar again instead of the floor again the door opens they let one attack her in she's waiting hurry up shut the door put the bar back down and she then takes care of that next attacker and so she manages to hold off the attackers until the men from the settlement come back and they finish off the attackers there for saving the fort in the settlement she manages to do this so you hear this it's kind of a again like a folklore tale from different places out on the frontier not just even in Virginia you hear in other places as well probably it's some basis to the story but you'll hear it claim in different areas so these different stories kind of settlement attacks and settlement defense and some of them are hyperbole pranks some of them are exaggerated some of them though are fairly ritual and some of them you know do have some frequence it's often where the folklore tales come from one of the more famous ones again if you live around Fairmont you've heard the story of David Morgan there's even a sign for that too if you go out read this fill the V if you go there on the river and you don't make the big turn to go towards Morgantown the hill you go straight here's a gas company or something there now if you go a little bit out there there's a Sun and talks about we had this vivid dream that the area was gonna be attacked and so he kind of gives the warning and people run to the fort and as he's telling people he actually sees like he saw his dream Native Americans kind of moving around kind of off in the forest like moving towards the settlement and famously he kind of stalks them so yeah there are some stories or you know of interest that kind of go with that so those are some of the things that are going on there with the English so they look at the French we did talk about already how they are settling in different ways right they're doing that fur trading Empire they're moving along they're on the same type of village settlement as you see with the English one of the things we're going to discuss also were the explorers and people claiming the area one of them of course the most famous is sailor on the blaine bill and of course those lead plates if you think of the forts in the military with the french as time moves on as we get towards that middle of 1700s they are going to be putting up more and more military forts beyond that fur trading forts where people would just come and trade their their furs and different helps and things like that and they're putting more and more military in mainly because the English and the French are fighting overseas so now they can start taking it more and more into North America and that's what they'll do with that seven years war eventually and even though I should start a little earlier even the war is before this the ones that are leading up to it you're gonna see there's more and more English and French fighting over here in North America kind of taking it away from Europe and having the fighting over here more in the colonies so as this occurs this is when we see more of the strength with the allies of the Native Americans because the French are moving not just in this portion of the Ohio Valley but even over towards the Great Lakes and up towards Michigan they're really extending their military forts and bringing more and more soldiers in but again they're not settling in the same way that the English are so they're not taking up a lot of land they're kind of trying to work with the Native Americans leave some the idea that we're against the English we don't like them encroaching upon your land and clearing out your forests and taking over so we're seeing more and more reliance over time of the French and the Native Americans one of our big key figures that we're going to see that starts to come across it was George Washington he always gets a lot of play this is when he starts really building himself up in the national mind I guess you might say as a iconic figure right so previous to this Washington as a teenager we would say today I was a young man at that point of time he had been living with his older brother his parents had died when he was younger and his younger brother his older brother had inherited a lot of money from the family into on his younger brother and the younger brother just as most people did at that time if he were the younger sibling you are gonna get a hole on money especially since his brother had children so becoming a whole lot of money so he needs to make a career so when he first comes to our area into western Virginia he's a surveyor you've probably heard that story quite a bit right it's how he's making his money he's going out surveying the land so he's seen this area before so the next thing he's done doing his career as a young man little bit over is he's going to get involved in the military which is fairly common especially for families they have some money but if you're one of the members of the family male members that's not gonna inherit a huge amount of money he joined the military you gotta make a name for yourself perhaps you can make some money you might marry well that's very hopeful Mary Wells and make some money get some land so that seems a good pathway for Washington okay so we're at the time limit let me stop and continue on in this next section here