River Towns: Point Pleasant, West Virginia

Point Pleasant, West Virginia is one of my favorite West Virginia towns. It's not far from where I live, and its location, slow pace, and friendly people make it a great place to visit. There is plenty to see and do in Point Pleasant: the mural painted floodwall and bordering walking path, the haunted Lowe Hotel, the Mason Jar Antique Mall, the Mothman Museum and the River Museum, Fort Randolph, Tu-Endi-Wei State Park, lovely old homes, and of course the Ohio River. The town has a long history: Indian wars, floods, and a tragic bridge collapse intertwine with folklore and legends to create a unique and fascinating story.

The area was first claimed in 1749 by the French explorer Pierre Joseph Celeron de Blainville, who set a plaque on the riverbank declaring all the territory in the region for the King of France:

"In the year 1749, in the reign of King Louis XV, we, Celeron, commander of a detachment sent by Commander de La Galissonière, Commander General of New France, for the restoration of peace in various untamed villages in the region, have buried this plaque at the confluence of the Ohio and Tchadakoin [Rivers] (Kanawha River) this 29th day of July near the fine river bank, to commemorate the retaking into possession of the afore-mentioned river bank and all the surrounding lands on both river shores back to the river sources, as secured by previous kings of France, and maintained by force of arms and by treaties, specifically the Treaties of Rijswick, of Utrecht and of Aix la Chapelle."

A grand and sweeping statement, is it not? But the French lost their claim when the British defeated the French in the French and Indian War.  In 1770 George Washington explored the Ohio Valley for the British, and noted the abundance of game and the wide, fertile bottomland in his reports. He later received over 10,000 acres in the region for his war-time service.

One section of the mural wall

Fort Randolph was established at Point Pleasant as a safeguard against Indian attacks, which were numerous in the area. Ongoing and escalating hostilities between settlers and Indians led to Lord Dunmore's War in 1774 which was a successful effort to drive the Shawnee and Mingo back across the Ohio River. The deciding battle in this conflict occurred at Point Pleasant. (Both my family history and that of my husband say we had ancestors in the fighting.) The Indians were soundly defeated; afterward, one of the most powerful Shawnee leaders, Cornstalk, became an advocate for peace between whites and Indians. On a peace-keeping mission to Fort Randolph in 1777 Cornstalk was taken hostage by the commander of the fort. Cornstalk, his son and two other Indians were later murdered by soldiers seeking revenge for the death of a militiaman at the hands of the Shawnee. Cornstalk was buried at the Fort. His body has been moved at least three times, and is now in its hopefully permanent home at Tu-Endi-Wei State Park. The murder of Cornstalk and the other Indians enraged the Shawnee who began a series of murderous attacks against settlers along the river that last over 20 years.

Local legend claims that before his death, Cornstalk laid this curse on the area:

“I was the border man’s friend. Many times I have saved him and his people from harm. I never warred with you, but only to protect our wigwams and lands. I refused to join your paleface enemies with the red coats. I came to the fort as your friend and you murdered me. You have murdered by my side, my young son. For this, may the curse of the Great Spirit rest upon this land. May it be blighted by nature. May it even be blighted by its hopes. May the strength of its peoples be paralyzed by the stain of our blood.”

Historians question the veracity of this story, doubting that Cornstalk ever said these words, and I have to say it does seem unlikely. However it is true that Point Pleasant has seen its share of disasters over the years, from raging Ohio River floods, to fires, the terrible collapse of the Silver Bridge in 1967,

and the strange sightings of a creature dubbed "Mothman". Click the link to read more about paranormal activity in the area, and click here to read my other blog posts  on this topic.

Stories of hauntings abound in this town; many people report seeing and hearing strange things at the historic Lowe Hotel, and the places where Mothman was sighted attract many visitors. Others believe that the spirit of Cornstalk also haunts the area because of the repeated disturbance of his remains.

Another intriguing story says that Samuel B. Clemens, grandfather of Samuel L. Clemens (better known as Mark Twain)  was a settler in Point Pleasant, and was killed in 1805 when a log fell from a cabin he was helping to build. I have not been able to verify this, and have found another claim that repeats the story of the falling log but says the elder Clemens was killed in Madison, Boone County, WV.

on the banks of the Ohio at Point Pleasant, WV

With its location at the junction of two powerful rivers and its faascinating history, it would seem that Point Pleasant would be a thriving city, but development never took off here, and it remains today a picturesque small town hugging the banks of the mighty Ohio.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

River Towns: Point Pleasant, Ohio

The West Virginia town of Point Pleasant has its famous personage in the form of an extra-terrestrial: Mothman, a legend made even more famous by the Richard Gere movie, The Mothman Prophesies, in 2002. But did you know there is another Point Pleasant downriver on the Ohio?

The Ohio community of Point Pleasant was established in 1813, one of many river towns that sprang up after the invention of steamboats made travel into the frontier easier and a little safer. In 1817, a small cabin was built in the community that would become home to Point Pleasant's most famous resident.

Jesse Grant moved to the growing community in 1820 and found work at a local tannery. A year later he married Hannah Simpson Grant and the two set up housekeeping. They bought the cabin, which was located near the riverbank, for $2. The following year, on April 27, 1822, the couple welcomed their first son. To name the child, a drawing was held at a family gathering a few weeks later, and the name Ulysses was chosen. However, Jesse Grant wanted to honor his father-in-law Hiram Simpson, so the child was named Hiram Ulysses Grant.

One year later the family moved to Georgetown, Ohio. Jesse had saved enough money to establish his own tannery and the family moved into a small, comfortable brick house.When a younger man, Jesse became friends with John Brown, the famous abolitionist, who was staying with the same family where Jesse was apprenticing. This, and his own father's anti-slavery views, formed the basis of Jesse Grant's lifelong opposition to slavery, which he passed on to his oldest son. When he was old enough, Hiram Ulysses attended a school run by another well-known abolitionist who lived nearby, John Rankin.

Some scenes from the homeplace:

Grant only lived in Point Pleasant for one year, and likely had no memory of the place, but the homeplace was preserved, luckily. It was moved away from its original location at the mouth of Big Indian Creek to avoid flooding, and was restored and furnished with period furnishings. It is now open for tours, along with the Grant Memorial Chapel and other buildings on the site.

There is, of course, a ghost that is reported to inhabit the cabin, although it seems to be a fairly benign spirit in that it only turns the spinning wheel from time to time. Certain to disconcert visitors, but harmless, I'd say.

In researching for this post, I found the life of U.S. Grant's father almost more interesting than that of his famous son. He was the epitome of the self-made man, owning properties in several states by the time of his death. You can read more about Jesse Root Grant here.

As you may know, the name Ulysses S. Grant was an error on his application to West Point, which was submitted by Ohio Congressman Thomas Hamer. Grant just adopted the name, and the rest is history.

To read more about West Virginia's Point Pleasant and Mothman, check out my past blogs on these topics.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

River Towns: Utopia, Ohio

I never thought I would experience Utopia, and to be honest, I have only had a little taste. But I was there.

Utopia is the name of a small community in Clermont county in southern Ohio, on the banks of the Ohio River. Established in 1844 by followers of a French philosopher named Charles Fourier, it was an intentional community, an early commune, if you will. Fourier was a believer in "utopian socialism", a movement in those days whose followers believed that socialism could develop without class struggle or strife. He was one of the foremost thinkers of his time and is credited with coining the term "feminism".

from wikipedia

The intentional communities established by his followers were scattered across the country, with one being started by the author Nathaniel Hawthorne in Massachusetts. Bronson Alcott, father of author Louisa May Alcott, was a believer in utopian socialism and started a commune of his own.

The Fourier communes were called phalanxes, and each had a large central hall called the "phalansteres". In these buildings, which were usually four floors, the richer members got the fourth floors and the poorer you were the lower the floor assigned to you. One of Fourier's more bizarre beliefs was that the seas would one day turn from salt water to lemonade! He was ahead of his time in other areas of thought however, a proponent of women's rights and a believer in the freedom of people to marry or love whom they pleased, be it of the opposite or same sex. For a fee of $25, one could gain entrance to this community along with a small wooden house.

Fourier passed away in 1837, seven years before the establishment of the Utopia phalanx in southeastern Ohio. The settlers built a large, thirty-room building and several other buildings out of brick, but their experiment lasted only two years. Problems with cash flow, interpersonal differences, and probably the frontier terrain that confronted them proved too much and the phalanx was abandoned.

from the History Ring

Then the property was bought by John Otis Wattles, a radical abolitionist and, some say, a spiritualist who established communities around Ohio and other states. There is a good bit of information about Wattles and his abolitionist activities, and his moves to several communities which eventually led him to settle in Kansas, but there is only the Utopia history that mentions spiritualism. Perhaps, some say, it was a cover for an underground railroad operation. The underground railroad was very active in this part of Ohio which was just across from slave-holding Kentucky, so the explanation seems logical. It seems that at this time the community was known as Excelsior.

Whatever his spiritual leanings, he and his followers decided to move the large 30-room brick building built by the Utopians to the very banks of the Ohio. Locals warned them of the danger of floods; this was before the locks and dams system and the Ohio had devastating floods regularly. These new settlers paid no heed to warnings but went ahead with their building, moving it brick by brick. It had not been completed but a short time before the river did indeed flood on December 13, 1847. According to local lore, there were over 150 people in the building at the time of the flood. Community members had gone to the building, some by boat, to seek shelter from the waters, but almost all of them lost their lives. Only six survived. Was Wattles there at the time of the flood? I do not know. If he was, he was one of the survivors as he died in Kansas in 1859

The property was then acquired by Josiah Warren; he established yet another intentional community that continued to operate more or less successfully although by 1875 only a few of the settler's remained in the place they had renamed Smith's Landing. The name of Utopia was later restored by the Ohio Historical Society, and a sign with a brief history of the settlement was erected in 2003.

One of the few businesses left in Utopia

It is a fascinating and convoluted history, and I hope I got most of the details correct; there are conflicting accounts of the settlements, but all agree on one thing: Utopia has its share of ghosts. People have said they see people walking up out of the water at night, perhaps the spirits of those who drowned, or perhaps slaves who died trying to cross the river. Under the site of the large hall is an underground chapel that was only recently discovered, and some have reported seeing a large black man there. There are other reports of sightings, and given the strange history of this place, it's not surprising.

Today there is little to see in Utopia. A few scattered houses and the sign are about all there is. Well, those and the spirits that apparently roam the area at night, when the fog and the mists rise from the Ohio

You can read more about Utopia here and here.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

River Towns: Ripley, Ohio

One of my goals is to travel the entire length of the Ohio River. The river, its history and folklore have caught my attention since I retired, and I am always happy when we travel the roads the border it. I have been to its birthplace in Pittsburgh, and I've been along all of its West Virginia border and its Ohio/Kentucky border as far as Portsmouth, Ohio. But I had yet to see the rest of the river, and since we needed to drive to Cincinnati to catch our flight to Florida, I figured why not take the slow way and add a little more to our "seen it" map? Ohio is our neighboring state, and yet I've not seen a great deal of it, so this was an opportunity to explore.

One of the places I wanted most to see was Ripley, Ohio. Our closest-to-home town is Ripley, WV so it seemed only fitting to visit its Ohio namesake. I knew that this Ohio Ripley was once a big tobacco town too. Back in the 1980's we grew tobacco and the history of the plant in this region interests me still.

We found Ripley to be a beautiful but struggling river town. There were many signs of its past bustling economy, but today most of the town is shuttered, like many places that time and interstates have passed by.

The town is fiercely proud of it heritage as an important station on the underground railroad, and the story of "Eliza" in Uncle Tom's Cabin is based on the true story of a slave who escaped to freedom at Ripley.

Founded in 1812 by Colonel James Poage on a grant in the Virginia Military District (land reserved in southern to be used as payment to US soldiers for their service), the original name was Staunton, Colonel Poage's Virginia home. The name was changed in a few years to Ripley to honor a general of the War of 1812.

The Belle if Cincinnati passed by as we ate at a riverside cafe.

The coming of the steamboat (the very first steamboat, the New Orleans, passed this site in 1811, just a year before the town was established) brought a method of transporting goods and agricultural products easily and surely aided in the town's growth.

I remember my sons having "Pride in Tobacco ball caps
when we grew tobacco.

After the Civil War, tobacco became a major crop in the area and Ripley became home to tobacco auctions--a tradition which sadly seems to have died out. I remember when we took our tobacco to auction in Huntington, WV, what an exciting event it was! But tobacco's prominence as a crop is dying out in this region, and although I am completely opposed to smoking for its health hazards, I still feel a twinge of sadness at the loss of an old tradition.

One of Ripley's past residents who is likely familiar to many people was Rosa Washington Riles, who was born in Red Oak (just north of Ripley) and is buried there. She was one of the "Aunt Jemima" personages recruited by Quaker Oats and toured the country playing that role. The Red Oak Presbyterian Church, in whose cemetery she is buried, was an important place on the Underground Railroad.

"Out of Staters Welcome" sign made us feel, well...welcome!

We stopped in town for a quick lunch. The main business area is beautiful, its history evident in the style of the buildings.

There were many empty buildings, however, and the evidence clearly pointed to a town struggling to maintain.

A few sights around town: 

Ripley bricks

We did not have time to visit the tobacco museum, or Rosa's grave, or to see the homes of the town's famous abolitionists, so we are already planning another visit. There are other towns in the area we need to go back to see as well. Road trip coming up!



Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.