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Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 03:49:47 -0800 (PST)
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Subject: {not a subscriber} Castle's Woods
I'm reading THE GREAT WAGON ROAD FROM PHILADELPHIA TO THE SOUTH, by Parke
Rouse, Jr, Dietz Press, 1995. Chapter 13 is entitled "The Saga of Castle's
Woods." No mention is made of any family of the pioneer, Jacob Castle,
for whom the Woods is named, but I thought this excerpt was of interest
anyway:
The Wilderness Road [leaving the Great Wagon Road at the bottom of
the Shenandoah Valley for Kentucky and points west] was well named, for
those who traveled its lonesome miles saw little evidence of civilization.
The southwestern extremity of the Valley of Virginia, through which it ran,
was a rugged land of cliff and forest, dotted only occasionally with a log
hut.
One of the first settlers of this wilderness was Jacob Castle, who
moved westward from Augusta County, Virginia, about 1746, and bought a
small tract from the Indians on the Clinch River, paying for it with a
butcher knife and rusty musket. He gave the area the name Castle's Woods.
Insignificant as it was, it gained a minor repute as the westernmost
settlement along the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. It later became the town
of Saltville.
Jacob Castle was a roving hunter, living for months in the woods
with no companionship save that of the Cherokees and Shawnees. From them
he traded deerskins, which he bartered or sold to wagoners trading along
the Great Road.
Leaving his cabin in the fall, Castle would disappea;r for months
into the pine forests. Dressed in deerskin hunting shirt with buckskin
moccasins and leggings, he might have been mistaken for an Indian but for
the beaver cap he wore, its tail hanging down to the nape of his neck. In
a sling over one shoulder he carried hatchet, knife, shot pouch, and such
provisions as neal, salt, jerked beef, and pemmican. Over the other he
slung his rifle, which was always with him.
This weapon was the familiar long-barreled rifle made by Germanic
gunsmiths in eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and along the road. Known by
its early makers as the Jaeger or hunter's rifle, it became known in these
times as the Pennsylvania rifle. Kentuckians were soon to call it their
own.
In 1769 -- about twenty years after Jacob Castle settled in western
Virginia -- other pioneers cleared patches at Castle's Woods and moved in
as squatters.....