I ask for tolerance for posting the following for it is a long narrative. It is about Laban Gwinn and family, and how they removed to Indiana from Virginia and returned after the war to their homestead:
"John Gwinn and his wife are buried in the Wickline cemetery near Meadow Bridge next to their daughter, Achsah, who was killed when she was eight years old in a freak accident when a tree limb fell on her. John’s tombstone, which was not erected until the 1930’s, gives the date of his death as 1870, but this is incorrect. An old bill now in the possession of Nelson Gwinn is headed: "February 1871 John Gwinn moved to Lavin (sic) Gwinn on Newriver." The bill is for materials and labor for building a cabin, and totals $141.95, with $7.95 deducted (perhaps a down payment), leaving a balance of $134.00. The chimney of this cabin was still standing when I was a child in the 1930’s, and I remember its being pointed out to me as the chimney of "Pappy John’s" cabin.
Also, among the "Gwinn papers" in Nelson s possession is a note-book kept by Laban Gwinn, in which he had written, "John Gwinn was born Feb. 3 1790 died July 27, 1873 Sunday morning 6 o’clock." I suppose John Gwinn came to be near his son in his old age (he would have been 82 then) and died there, but was taken to Meadow Bridge for burial.
In January of 1861, for one thousand dollars, John Gwinn had sold the Round Bottom property he had acquired from the Sanners to his son, Laban. This deed was signed on January 20 in 1861 in "the county of Fayette and State of Virginia," but was not recorded until October 23, 1866, in the state of West Virginia. During this time, of course, a war had been fought and the new state formed. Had it been recorded when it was made, it might have been lost; Union forces burned the courthouse at Fayetteville, and the records were removed by a southern sympathizer and hidden in Montgomery County, Virginia, until the war was over.
Laban and his wife must have been already living on the property. Nelson Gwinn has a document signed by George S. Birditt and Giles Birditt (Burdette) giving permission for Laban Gwinn to marry their sister, Jane. This is dated the fourth day of November, 1854. By 1861, Laban had built a house and barn on the Round Bottom property and was farming there. But the life there was to be disrupted by the Civil War, which brought hardship, heartache, and division to so many families in the border state of West Virginia.
This heartache is evident in a letter written to Laban Gwinn while he was a refugee in Indiana by his brother-in-law, Samuel. The letter was written in 1863, in Iowa, where Samuel, perhaps, had settled on the "congress land" his grandfather had directed to be purchased for the use of his grandsons. He wrote:
I have received no letters from my own parents since this rebellion broke out, or since this war began. I was, am yet, and always will be Union; live or die, sink or swim, survive or perish and I supposed that you must have all gone South for I continued to write to you for some time after and I received no letters. It’s a long night of anxiety; two years and more—and no letter from Papa, or Mother, or brother, or sister, or cousin, or friend, or the home of our birth. And particularly when times are such as they are.
Laban, too, was a Union man, and his loyalty was to cost dearly. (Other letters written to Laban Gwinn while he was in Indiana were published in West Virginia History, Volume XLIII, no. 3, Spring 1982, "The Civil War Letters of Laban Gwinn: A Union Refugee," by William E. Cox.)
In September of 1861 there was active fighting in the New River Valley. General Floyd had artillery positioned on Cotton Hill to keep the Union forces from using the ferry at Gauley Bridge. On October 29, General Rosecrans stationed Brigadier General H. W. Benham opposite the mouth of Loup Creek with 3000 men, but New River "went on a rampage," and they were unable to get across the river to destroy Floyd’s artillery. However, there was a skirmish at McCoy’s Mill, site of present-day Glen Jean, and Floyd’s cavalry commander was killed. Floyd fell back to Piney Creek in Raleigh County and McCoy’s Mill was then in the hands of Union troops. In December of that year, Laban Gwinn took the oath of allegiance before a Union officer, and was given a pass back to his home on New River.
W. D. Thurmond, of Oak Hill, joined the Confederate Army on August 26, 1862, and organized a company of partisan rangers who were sworn into the army as part of Lt. Cal. David S. Hounshell’s Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, on September 19, 1862, at Fayetteville. Although they were not formally organized until September, these guerrilla fighters were active in the New River Valley during the previous summer. Some time in August, Laban Gwinn was warned ( family tradition says by a neighbor boy whom he had befriended, and who swam the river to warn him) that the Confederates were coming to arrest him. While Laban guarded the boat landing with a rifle, Mary Jane packed food, clothing, and three small children (Sarah, John, and eighteen-month-old Loomis) into a covered wagon. The family started up the mountain toward Camp McCoy’s Mill, and as they looked back, saw their house and barn burning.
Two military passes, now in the possession of Nelson Gwinn, reveal what happened next:
Camp McCoy’s Mill
August 24, 1862
Capt. Levering
Dear Sir:
The bearer Laban Gwynn, a good union man with his family intends to go to Indiana, he is in reduced Circumstances, the bushwhackers robbed him, you would oblige me by giving him a pass for one of the government boats to reach Ohio.
Very respectfully,
M. Stumpf Capt.
Com. Post
Camp McCoy’s Mill
Fayette County West Va
Aug. 30.62
Guards & Pickets
Pass Laban Gwinn and family through the lines to Indiana.
They are Union Refugees.
by order George Boehm
Capt. Co. 3 7th Regt.O.V.
Cmndg Post
Laban’s sister, Francena, had married John Fulwider and moved to Indiana in 1843. This must be the reason Laban chose to go there as a refugee.
We get a few hints about the life of the Gwinn family in exile in Indiana from the letters they received from friends and relatives while they were there. They must have prospered. An 1864 letter from Mary Jane’s brother, George Birdet [Burdette], himself an exile to Jackson County, says, "You are a doing so well. I reckon you will stay whear you are as long as you live." They may have considered staying in Indiana, or migrating farther West. In 1864 brother—in—law Samuel wrote from Iowa:
You wrote you wanted to know something about land and the prices of land and the chance for a situation and so on. Well sir land lately has risen in value but then you know that is the case with everything elce. But sir land is plenty yet and cheape, that is prarie land, and can be bought as low as two dollars per acre and that as good as you ever saw. But timber is dreadful scarce this part of the country and it is all that is to hinder any boddy from settling right here. If you come prepared to buy a small farm or at any rate if you had fifteen hundred dollars to invest in land you might do splendidly well with it out here at this time. But if you intend or expect to rent for a few years until you can get at your property in Virginia you had best remain where you are. You are nearer to market than you would be out here in Iowa and would stand a better chance to sell your produce. If you are determined, that is if you have given up the idea of going back to Virginia, you had best come out west where land is cheape so that you may stand some chance to get some land of your own.
They had made friends in Indiana, too. Even after they returned to Round Bottom, Margaret Clingenfield wrote in a neighborly, newsy letter, "Jane, don’t give Laban any peace until he sells and comes back again." (Perhaps they returned to West Virginia with the idea of selling their land and then returning to the West.)
The letters of the spring of 1865, however, revealed that peace was returning to the New River Valley, though much bitterness remained between relatives and neighbors who had fought on opposite sides. Whatever their reasons were, sometime in the late summer or fall of 1865 Laban and his family came back to Round Bottom. Family tradition says that they "camped out" in a sort of cave, or under an overhang of rock, for two years while they rebuilt the house and barn the Confederates had burned.
The courage and stamina of Mary Jane Gwinn in all these hardships is almost unbelievable. Leaving the first home she and her husband had toiled to build in the wilderness; traveling all the way to Indiana with three small children; then leaving relatives and new friends there and coming back to a homestead in ruins; rebuilding the home and bearing more children under what must have been extremely primitive conditions must have required extraordinary strength of character.
Among the trials the family faced was the loss of a daughter, Emily, at age three. Another daughter, Cynthia, is said to have "pined away" and died at the age of twenty-four. Both are buried in the family cemetery at Round Bottom."
Thank you for your patience.
John