Posted on: Jackson County, WV Bios Reply Here: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/WV/JacksonBios/179 Surname: DAWKINS, HARRISON, CARDER, HARTLEY, SWEEZY, MCCALL, CHEUVRONT, ABLES, BARNETT, FLINN, BOGGESS, HOFF, JENKINS, MCCOY, DELANEY, INGRAM, SYOC, RARDON, CUSTER, HUTCHINSON ------------------------- This sketch taken from "Pioneers of Jackson County", by John House, it appears in the section "Middle Sandy Valley". Dawkins Family Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and three times governor of Virginia, father of W. H. Harrison, ninth president of the United States, patented a large tract of land comprising nearly all the valley of the Right Fork, or "reaching from Sandyville to Liverpool". The line between the farms of Floyd Carder and John Hartley is called the "Old Harrison Line", and may have been the outside line of this survey. The title of much of this land was forfeited to the state, and resold for taxes, one time or another. Several hundred acres of this land above Sweezy's had been bought by George McCall, and was sold by him to Thomas Dawkins, who lived on the flats of Tygart's Creek, near the Mineral Wells, in Wood County, about 1840. In 1840, the Dawkins boys came out to the place and made an extensive "deadening", preparatory to clearing the land, but for some reason, the family did not move out. Six or seven years later, Jim Dawkins came out and built a cabin at the mouth of Bear Tree Run, but within two years, he had succumbed to the Sandy fever, and his cabin was vacant. Thomas Dawkins was from Culpepper County, Virginia, but had been in Wood County since about 1825. In 1830, Thomas Jefferson Dawkins married and moved on the land. In 1852, he built a house on the lower side of the road, where the creek which came to the hill just above makes a sharp bend back through the fields, leaving room for a house, barn, garden, etc., on the promontory cut off by the pike, then just newly built. Above the barn is a steep bank down to the creek, by the side of which stands, or did stand a few years ago, a pine tree. It was here the teams were fed, and we had lunch, when moving from Pond Creek to Reedy, in February, 1872. We had come from Buttermilk, where we stopped the night before, at Isaac Cheuvronts, that morning, and got to the Three Forks of Reedy ten miles farther on our way, just after dark. At that time, there was no house there, just a barn, and perhaps a corn crib. Jeff Dawkins lived back on the hill, just out of sight from the road. The intervening hillside was cleared, and in bluegress, but thickly studded with beech trees of the primeval forest. William G. Ables, probably a grandson of Martin Ables of Sycamore, had a lease on the Dawkins land before Jeff Dawkins came out. He afterward lived with his son, Jake Ables, on Strait Fork. Jim Dawkins and John Dawkins, who once lived on the Charley Carney farm on Mill Creek, were cousins to Jeff. It was about 1850 that John M. Barnett (perhaps a descendant of the John Barnett who lived at the mouth of Lee Creek, in the Flinn blockhouse) came out. Barnett had married on of the Dawkins girls, and made the first improvement where Perry Boggess now lives, two and a half miles above Sandyville. After his death, his widow married Moses Hoff. Jeff Dawkiins lives just above the old house site mentioned above , at the mouth of Lunn Camp Run. The next run on the left is at Meadowdale. Some say the first improvement here was by the negro, Felix Jenkins. Jacob Ingram was living here about 1845, and Jenkins at the Baker farm next Sandyville. About 1850, Ingraham went to the Middle Fork of Reedy, and later to Ohio. Jenkins was not a pure negro, but he and his wife were classed as colored people. He had several sons and daughters. They moved from Right Sandy to the head of Straight Fork. Felix Jenkins at one time owned two hundred acres on Bush Run, comprising the Delaney, McCoy, and a part of the Boggess tracts. He hired John Carder to build him a house, in the bottom, at the forks of the run, which stood several years, but I think he never moved to it. About a hundred yards up the rim, above Ingram, was the residence of Abel V. Syoc (as the name is written in the deed book at Ripley). He was a soldier in the war of 1812, came from Grave Creek to Crooked Fork, and from there to Meadowdale, about 1850, perhaps. He was twice married, his last wife being a daughter of David Rardon. Big Lick Run comes on the right of Sandy, and a short distance above. It has been a wild rough country in the pioneer days. The hills are high, steep and rocky. There are imposing cliffs and walls fo sandstone lining the sides of a gorge, below the Grant farm, with rocks framed in the walls as large as a house. This strata of rocks seems to run solid through the hill, and crops out on the right fork of Coon Run in a solid wall of rock on each side of the stream, twelve to sixteen feet in thickness, through which the valley has been worn in the course of centuries. Near the mouth of Trap Run, the left bank of the stream is a wall of stone. The run is named from a spring in the bottom, on the right side of, and near the stream a little distance from its mouth. This once famous deer lick is only about a hundred yards below the site of John Custer's cabin, and near the upper line of K. C. Hutchinson's land, and the water comes out from under the foot of a towering mountain.