Wytheville, Virginia 16.10.93: Log Cabins and Shot Towers

Back today from our trip to the Blue Ridge and Virginia. After our overnight stay on the Blue Ridge Parkway, we went to Wythe Co. to look up Brooks and Whitlock roots.

Wytheville itself was a surprise—a pretty little mountain town, surprisingly . . . well, sophisticated seeming.

At the courthouse, I copied the will of Thomas Brooks, what few estate papers there were, and deed records for Brookses and Whitlocks. Then we had lunch at a place called Umberger’s, famous for hot dogs. There seem to be a lot of Germans in and around Wytheville, though the corner of the county where the Brooks and Whitlocks apparently lived, the southeast, seems to have more English and Scottish names, even today.

From lunch we went to the library, where I found something saying the land Thomas Whitlock sold in 1805 to the Harbert/Herbert family, on both sides of Little Reed Island Creek, became the site of a forge called High Rock Forge, and eventually became the Patterson post office.

From deeds, it seems to me Thomas and Hannah Whitlock sold their Wythe Co. land in 1804 and moved to Kentucky. My recollection is that Thomas Brooks had to have been in Kentucky by 1797 in order to claim land, but I believe his daughter Jane was born in Wythe Co. in 1798, and he appears on the tax list up to 1804. I think he must have settled the Kentucky land in 1797, and the family moved with him ca. 1798, though he kept Wythe Co. land up to 1804.

From Wytheville we drove out to Poplar Camp, to the old Shot Tower, one of only three such places still standing in the U.S. It was a gorgeous fall day, clear and windy, and from the tower (i.e., the base of it, since it’s not open for inspection) one can see quite a ways. In a little dell at its feet is an old farm still operating, with a log cabin and lots of old farm buildings. Behind the tower runs New River—a pretty, rocky, shallow river.

Then to Patterson, a poor aggregation of buildings with people who seem hard-bitten living around it. We stopped and talked to an elderly woman gathering black walnuts with a young man. She had a brown and white gingham apron, gray hair up in plaits, a fierce, hawkish-looking face with stern brown eyes. We asked where Little Reed Creek is, and they said they’d never heard of it—there’s a Reed Creek, they said. I believe Little Reed Creek doesn’t flow into New River nowadays, though it did in the late 18th century. When we thanked the old lady, she bowed very gravely and majestically.