Print | Back to e-WV The West Virginia Encyclopedia

Excerpt: "This country will require much work"


"We journeyed on through devious lonely wilds, where no food might be found, except what grew in the woods, or was carried with us.  We met with two women who were going to see their friends, and to attend the quarterly meeting at Clarksburg.  Near midnight we stopped at William Anglin's, who hissed his dogs at us; but the women were determined to get to quarterly meeting, so we went in.  Our supper was tea... I lay on the floor on a few deer skins with the fleas.  That night our poor horses got no corn; and the next morning they had to swim across Monongahela... O, how glad should I be of a plain, clean plank to lie on, as preferable to most of the beds; and where the beds are in a bad state, the floors are worse.  The gnats are almost as troublesome here, as the mosquitoes in the lowlands of the sea-board.  This country will require much work to make it tolerable."


Source: Francis Asbury's Journal (1788).