Posted on: Jackson County, WV Bios Reply Here: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/WV/JacksonBios/174 Surname: KEENAN, BORD, PARSONS, HYRE, CARNEY, HARPOLD, GRANT ------------------------- This sketch taken from "Pioneers of Jackson County", by John House, it appears in the section "Upper Mill Creek". Keenan Farm A short distance above this, the creek divides the bottom into two more or less equal portions, and somewhere in this bottom the first cabin on Trace Fork was built, save a hut in which the hunter, Joe Parsons, lived. So far as we can ascertain, the first occupant of this cabin was Jacob Hyre, who came from Hacker's Creek to Mill Creek, in 1815, and lived here two or three years before moving farther up the creek. The land may have belonged to Carney, as claimed by some, and possibly there had been a squatter or tenant occupant before Hyre came, thought I do not think it probable. The road or trail in the early days followed the creeks usually, and there used to be a large beech tree, which died a few years ago, and has fallen down, on which was carved J. H. 1815, which was cut by Jacob Hyre the year he came out here, when he was only a little past twenty one years of age. Who next lived on this farm is not given, all being blank until some time in the early thirties, when it passed into the hands of Thomas Bord, who had married a daughter of John Harpold, who lived at the ford above Ripley. Bord was a son of Patrick Bord, the pioneer of Reedy, being four years old at the time of the emigration from Greene County, Pennsylvania, to the wilds os western Virginia. He lived on this farm several years, and was one of the most ingenious blacksmiths, gunsmiths and mechanics ever in Jackson County. It is said he experimented a long time with the problem of perpetual motion, and there used to be a story extant that he once constructed a flying machine, with which he rose from the top of a neighboring hill and soared majestically over Ripley, unfortunately breaking his machine. >From a habit of always expressing assent to a proposition by a phrase, "That's a fact, sure", he was known every where as "Fact Tom" or "Fact-sure Tom Bord", which served to distinguish from two others of the same name. He was born in November 1811, and died in the summer of 1869. The farm belonged for a time to a man by the name of Grant, from Lynn Camp, in Wirt County. Next, about the middle of the war, it was bought by an Irishman named Keenan, since which time it has been known as the Keenan Farm. Keenan came from the green isle of Erin to Kanawha County, in 1861. He moved to Calhoun County, but only stayed there one year, owing to his neighbors who, because of his ourspoken and radical union sentiments, made it too hot for him there. Driven away from home, he found an asylum in the wide and pleasant valley of Mill Creek. There is a graveyard on this farm, in which are buried some negroes who were slaves of Charles Carney. One hot, dusty, summer's day, while passing, I stopped for a drink at an old well out in the field from the road a bit. The proprietor who was working near said he knew nothing of the history of that well, probably it was the site of the old house in which Bord lived. The Keenan house is a double log cabin, still standing, on the opposite side of the creek.