Posted on: Jackson County, WV Bios Reply Here: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/WV/JacksonBios/193 Surname: HYRE, KEENAN, SHATTO, BORD, WRIGHT, ROUSH, PARSONS, BEATH, CASTO, AULTZ, HARPOLD, RADER, HEBLER, MCNULTY, WOLFE ------------------------- This sketch taken from "Pioneers of Jackson County", by John House, it appears in the section "Upper Mill Creek". Hyre Family Next above the Keenan farm is that owned by Jacob Hyre. He owned the bottomlands along the creek for a mile or more. His cabin was on the south side of Mill Creek, above where Philip Shato now lives. He built there about 1817, and continued to reside at that spot until an old man. He died in 1855, and is buried near the mouth of Joe's Run, in the Ben Bord graveyard. The first place above the Keenan farm was settled by Jonathan Hyre, son of Jacob, who married Elizabeth Wright, and built on the lower part of his father's farm, while the bottoms were still in woods. When clearing the heavy beech bottom below the Shatto house, he found the bones of the buffalo shot by his father years before. It was perhaps about 1820, or earlier, that Jacob Hyre discovered a large buffalo drinking at the Lick Spring, below where Mr. Roush now lives. He shot it, wounding it severely, and following it, the dogs brought it to bay in the lower bottom, where he killed it, and taking its "robe", left the carcass. Up next the upper end of the Hyre place, the creek makes a bend to the right. A brook comes in and, though only about a yard wide and not over a mile long, spreads out in a fan shape, draining the one side of the half of Ripley hill, the circumference of its drainage basin being over three miles. At the foothills, at the spreading of the fan, on the right side of the road, is the residence of David Hyre. A large stone house with wooden "L", and all surrounded by fruit trees and grapevines, for the present owner makes a specialty of fruit growing, it is one of the most pleasantly situated dwellings in the country. The house was mostly built by Jonathan Hyre, while living, and completed by his son. Just across the road, and a little lower down, stood the cabin in which lived George Parsons, a son of Charles Parsons, Sr. He appears to have sown and perhaps harvested a goodly crop of wild oats, but settled down before his death, joined the church and, it is even said, preached. Jacob Hyre was born in what is now Lewis County, on Hacker's Creek, January 1st, 1784. He married Mary Beath, and moved to Mill Creek in 1815. He died in 1855, and his wife, who was nearly five years his elder, in 1859. She was an energetic sort of a woman, and when her husband became discouraged trying to make a living and declared they would be sure to starve, she replied, "they were not going to starve either". She hadn't come to Mill Creek to starve, so, shouldering her axe or mattox, she would go to the field and work bravely by the side of her husband all day, and at night would spin the wool or flax for the manufacture of clothing for themselves and children, often sitting up till the middle of the night, with no light to work by but what was afforded by split pine knots in the middle, or a rag wick in a cup of grease in the summer. Grandmother Hyre had a nice little pet bear about the size of a cat, which was very interesting and playful. One day she had churned a large churn full of cream in one of the old fashioned wooden churns of the day, and having completed the churning, left the lid off while she took a pail and went to the spring for a bucket of water, with which to rinse down the churn before gathering her butter. While stooping down to dip the water, she heard a mighty splash at the house, followed by a terrible splattering. Hastening back, she found the bear had climbed up the churn to investigate, and, losing his balance, had tumbled in, head over ears, and was now bobbing up and down in her butter. Jacob Hyre had six children. Jonathan Hyre married Elizabeth Wright, daughter of Benjamin Wright. She died in 1901, at nearly seventy nine. (I rathre think it was Dorcas Wright, daughter of Levi Casto's wife.) Jacob Hyre married an Aultz, who lived on Poca, and she dying, next married Dorcas Casto (Erilla D.) , daughter of Levi Casto. He died in 1854, aged thirty five years, she a year earlier, when but nineteen, Mary Hyre married David Harpold. Rebecca Hyre married Michael C. Rader. Two sisters married in Upshur County, the one a Hebler, the other a McNulty. Jonathan Hyre died in 1880, aged sixty eight. He and his wife are buried at the Mount Olive burying ground. In the early days, the settlers made their own powder, of dogwood, charcoal, salt peter, and other home ingredients the wilderness afforded. This answered a very good purpose for use in their old-fashioned flint lock deer guns, but they had to buy a finer article for use in priming. In the Mill Creek Valley this was usually procured at Point Pleasant (or "The Point", as it was called), or from Charleston when they went after salt. It is related that when Jonathan Hyre was a little boy, he saw, when out at play one day, "an animal with a big head", as he told his father on running to the house. Investigation disclosed a panther in a neighboring tree. Sending the boy up to his brother-in-law, Wolfe, who lived a mile up the creek, for priming powder, of which he chanced to be out, he, seeing the animal evinced an intention of attacking him, knocked it out of the tree with a rock, and then dispatched it with a club, before the child, who had run all the way, arrived with the powder and help.