Popenoe/Popnoe/Poppino

       & Allied Families

Home    

Peter II Popeno: New Jersey/Virginia

At the beginning of the 18^th Century, colonial settlement was limited to the Atlantic seaboard, east of the Alleghenies and the Blue Ridge. The only white men to visit the area over the mountains were traders, who supplied ammunition, rum and other articles of civilization to the Indians in exchange for furs and ginseng. The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, about which more later, began to be settled in the 1730s, mostly by people moving down along the Philadelphia Wagon Road from the Delaware River Valley.

In 1752, the French began to build a series of forts to protect their claim to the area west of the Alleghenies. The Virginia governor responded in 1753 by sending twenty-one-year-old George Washington to warn the French that they were encroaching on Virginia territory.  He was treated with courtesy but unable to persuade them to retire. The next year the English began to build a fort at the forks of the Ohio (where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet to form the Ohio).  Before it was far along, the French arrived with 1,000 troops, evicted the English, and proceeded to build their own fort, which they called Fort Duquesne.  A new English force was dispatched with Lt. Col. Washington as second in command.  In May 1754, they built a small fort, called Fort Necessity. Washington's force was attacked and beaten by the French.  This was the beginning of the French and Indian War.

The French were now determined to hold Fort Duquesne and the garrison was strengthened.  Not to be outdone, the English sent over Major General Edward Braddock to lead a major effort to oust them.  Washington was his aide-de-camp. During 1755 they built a road following the route that later became the National Pike (and is now Route 40).  As they neared Pittsburgh, Braddock's troops were ambushed by the French and their Indian allies, and massacred. Braddock died and Washington led the retreat of the dispirited survivors.  This defeat again left the frontier unprotected and settlers and traders fled east of the mountains.

In 1758 the English tried again, this time with a very large force of over 7,000 men under Brigadier General John Forbes, with Washington commanding the second division under him.  A fort had already been built at Bedford, Pennsylvania, about forty miles north of Fort Cumberland where Braddock's road began.  Should the army build a shorter, new road west from Fort Bedford, or use the existing road to the south?  Virginia vied with Philadelphia, aware that after the war the road would have great commercial value.  Philadelphia won, and Forbes' road (now Route 30) was cut through.  On November 25, 1758, Forbes' massive army finally arrived at Fort Duquesne, only to find that the French had the good sense not to fight such a force, and had burned their fort and departed.  Forbes renamed the area Pittsbourgh, after the English Prime Minister, and ordered the construction of Fort Pitt to defend the frontier.

In 1763 the French and Indian War (known in Europe as the Seven Years War) was formally settled by the Treaty of Paris.  This gave the English clear claim to the Ohio valley.  To maintain the policy of keeping settlers out and reserving the land for the Indians, King George issued the Proclamation of 1763, which required the settlers to stay east of a line running along the Allegheny divide from Canada south, except for a few people around Fort Pitt. The line didn’t hold. Forbes road (for Pennsylvanians) and Braddock's road (for Virginians) were the two principal arteries in the American colonies puncturing the line. They met at the Monongahela River, close both to Fort Pitt in the north and what later became Monongalia County in the south.  So this area began to see a push of settlers across the mountains encroaching on Indian territory.  In 1768 the Iroquois, hoping to gain temporary relief from colonial pressures against their own lands in the north, agreed to sell to His Majesty's Government (i.e., the colonies) not only the area around and below Fort Pitt, but also the Cherokee and Shawnee hunting lands below the Ohio in the lower valleys of the Cumberland and the Tennessee (i.e., the later states of Kentucky and Tennessee). The Proclamation Line was officially changed by the Treaty of Fort Stanwyx to run just north of Fort Pitt to the Ohio River, down the River to just below the Kanawha River, and then southeasterly back to the original line. Western Virginia was officially open for business.

There are virtually no records of settlers prior to 1766, since settlement was illegal. But toward the end of the decade many settlers arrived. The "roads" were mere paths through the woods, frequently running along the tops of hills where the visibility was better to ward off attack. One writer wrote of caravans of pack horses that " were freighted with salt, sugar kettles, bar iron, nail rods, dry goods, glass, kegs of rum, powder, lead, etc. A good horse carried from two hundred to three hundred pounds, besides provisions and feed.… A bear skin to each horse was an indispensable accompaniment, for a bed to the drivers, and to protect the cargo from rain.... Emigrants would have their little all swung across one, two, or more horses, according to their abundance, surmounted by their wives and children...."[1]

Joseph Doddridge who came to the Monongahela area as a very small boy described first hand some of the hardships of the new settlers: "Some of the early settlers took the precaution to come over the mountains in the spring, leaving their families behind to raise a crop of corn, and then return to bring them out in the fall.... Others, especially those whose families were small, brought them with them in the spring. My father took the latter course.... The Indian meal which he brought over the mountains was expended six weeks too soon, so for that length of time we had to live without bread. I remember how narrowly the children watched the growth of the potato tops, pumpkin and squash vines.... How delicious was the taste of young potatoes when we got them."[2]

Peter Popeno had served as constable in Mannington Township in 1754 and was in New Jersey in March 1766 when he participated in the sale of family land.[3]  He is reported to have settled along the Monongahela River near what is now Morgantown, WV, in 1772.[4]   He appears to have arrived with a son, John, who is recorded as having served in the Kentucky militia in 1780 and 1783.[5] There is no further record of John; I believe he died during his militia service.  This implies an earlier marriage of which there is no record.  If so, Peter’s first wife died before 1766 when he participated in the sale of the family land.

Peter’s land in Virginia was obtained by one of the leading settlers, Col. Charles Martin, for his apparently unmarried sister, Elizabeth Martin who had arrived in 1770 with her three-year old son, Harry.  Peter arrived in 1772 and he and Elizabeth were married in that year.  In 1775 the first of their three Popeno children was born.

Elizabeth Martin’s brother, Col. Charles Martin,[6] was one of the leading figures in the area and the builder of  Fort Martin. Beginning in 1770 and continuing into the revolutionary period, a number of forts had been built in the area; some were little more that fortified residences; others consisted of many houses surrounded by a palisade wall with blockhouses on the corners.  A good fort was pretty impregnable to an enemy without cannons unless they could starve it out or burn it down.  The fort was more than a place of refuge.  It was the social hub of the area surrounding it, serving roughly the same function as a feudal castle in the Middle Ages.  It was often at the fort that the young couples danced and courted, where marriages were performed and funerals were held, where land claims were settled and justice meted out.  Youths talked about "going forting" which often meant getting drunk and chasing girls.  The fort was also the economic hub of the region.  Here the trader set up shop, and supplies, ammunition and clothing were dispensed at what was a combination general store and community center.  Families generally went to the forts in the summer when the Indians were most active, driving their cattle, chickens and turkeys, and carrying their clothes and household supplies.  A few cabins were available but many people lived in the open or in little huts made of logs and bark.

Elizabeth Martin had another brother, named Harry, who may also have been in the Monongahela area but later was in Ohio County, Virginia and then moved to Kentucky.

Elizabeth Martin’s sister Ann was married to the top man in the county, Col. John Evans.  Evan’s immigrant ancestor was a Welsh Quaker, who settled in Chester County, PA.  The family moved to Fairfax County, Virginia, where John was born in 1737.  His father was associated with many of the leading men in the community.  John got a good education at an academy in Alexandria, then studied law with a Mr. Hamilton—either James who was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses or his brother John who was Deputy King’s Attorney, the highest paid office in Fairfax County.  About 1757 when he was still very young, John Evans married Ann Martin, described as a beautiful and intelligent lady.  In the early 1760s Evans visited the area along the Monongahela and claimed some land by the traditional method of cutting his initials in trees with his tomahawk.  In 1765 he started from his home in Loudon County with his wife, two children, and a family of Negroes, but left them all at Fort Cumberland until 1769 because of the unsettled conditions on the frontier.  He also brought out a teacher for his children, who was later to teach the Popeno children.  John Evans was probably the most distinguished man in Monongalia County, in both military and civil affairs.  He was actively involved in Dunmore’s War, the Revolution, and the border wars that followed, was long the County Lieutenant (the highest military and civil officer of the county), was clerk of the County Court from 1776 to 1807, was delegate to the Virginia Federal Convention of June 1788 which ratified the Constitution, and served three terms in the Virginia House of Delegates.[7]

From the Treaty of Fort Stanwyx until 1774 the frontier was fairly peaceful. When the peace was broken it tended to be by whites killing Indians for no good reason. Hostilities escalated, the various Indian tribes gathered together to defend their lands, and Virginia governor Lord Dunmore, in July 1774, proposed an expedition in two commands to invade the Indian towns in Ohio.  This is now known as Dunmore's War. He directed Col. Anthony Lewis to raise a militia force of 1,000 men from the southern counties, who were to proceed to Point Pleasant on the Ohio River where they would be joined by a northern contingent, advancing by way of Fort Pitt, led by Lord Dunmore himself. By October, the southern forces were at Point Pleasant where a major battle took place between some 800 men on each side, with the frontiersmen generally the winners.  But Dunmore's men never got that far.  They were camped up the river at a location called Camp Charlotte.  It was widely believed that Dunmore had arranged this deliberately to weaken the militia as relations between the Americans and Great Britain deteriorated.  Peter Popeno was a sergeant in one of the companies that accompanied Dunmore at Camp Charlotte.  Thus he apparently never actually saw battle in Dunmore's War.  It was more than a year before Peter and the others were paid for this service.

In 1775 the Treaty of Pittsburgh was signed under which the local Indians agreed to take no part in the approaching war with Great Britain. Soon, however, the British, operating out of Detroit, were promising Indians that if they supported the Tory cause, the colonials would be kept out of Indian lands when the war was over.  Throughout the revolution many Indian tribes--particularly those closest to Detroit--joined the English in making war on the frontier.  The national government was too weak to send its armies to fight them. It was up to the frontier settlers, with their militias, to defend themselves.

In December 1776, Virginia Governor Patrick Henry sent a letter advising every possible preparation in anticipation of probable Indian attacks in the spring.  On January 28 and 29, 1777, a "council of war" was held by county lieutenants and officers of the three Virginia counties in the area. Major John Evans and Captain Charles Martin were on the select council (steering committee).

English agents working with their Indian allies made 1777 so horrible for the frontier people that it was remembered as the "Bloody Year of the Three Sevens." The Indians, with an unusually large and powerful force, struck simultaneously against many of the settlements. During that summer and fall, the Popeno family was holed up in Fort Martin and it was there that James Popeno was born.

The family consisted of four children:

Harry Martin, son of Elizabeth and an unknown father, born 23 Jan 1767.[8]

Ann (Nancy) Popeno, born 17 July 1775.[9]

James Popeno, born in Fort Martin, 20 August 1777.[10]

Peter III Popeno, born probably around 1778.[11]

We’ll follow these children later, but first let’s detail what we have learned about Peter II.

One man who knew him said that Peter Popeno was a man of modest stature, dark complexion and a dimple in his chin, and was a house carpenter and joiner.[12]  He also seems to have been a bit lazy. When asked why he didn’t have a better floor in his house, he said because it was on Harry Martin’s land, not his.[13]

As previously discussed, In 1774 Peter was called up for service in the local militia where he served as a sergeant in Dunmore's War.[14]  The next record shows him serving in the militia at Prickett’s Fort during April 15 - June 12, 1777.[15]  (Prickett’s Fort, south of Morgantown, has been recreated and a visit there will give you a good idea of life in Peter’s time.)  In 1778 he went away for a couple of years, but was back in Morgantown in 1781 when the Virginia Commissioners to adjust titles to unpatented land in the western country arrived.  Col. Martin offered him half the land he’d claimed for Harry and accordingly Peter and Elizabeth filed claims side by side.[16]  Shortly after, Peter sold his claim to John Evans’ son-in-law.[17]  By 1783 Peter had gone to Kentucky where he served in the militia with his son John on service in Ohio August 22 - November 12.[18]  He had left his family in Morgantown and never went back, so far as the records show. My guess is that he and Elizabeth were not getting along for it is hard to explain otherwise his two long absences.

At some point, perhaps 1785, he went up to Vincennes, Indiana, (discussed in the next section) probably in one of the campaigns against the Indians led by General George Rogers Clark.  He seems to have spent a year or more there claiming and improving land (which means building some kind of structure and planting a crop of corn).[19]  According to family tradition, he was killed by Indians around Boonsborough in 1790.[20]  However, Indian depredations in that part of Kentucky had ceased by 1790 so it is more likely that he was killed by Indians in Indiana, or perhaps on General Harmer’s expedition to Ohio in that year.

After Peter left Morgantown, Elizabeth and the family probably moved across the river to live on John Evans’ land. There is a spring there, called Popeno Spring, coursing into a stream called Popeno Run--and shown today on Geological Survey maps as Popenoe Run. The Popeno children were brought up and educated along with those of John Evans, and Evans thus became a surrogate father for the Popenos, as Samuel Seely had been for their grandfather. Since Evans was a well-educated lawyer as well as community leader, the Popeno kids must have gotten a much better upbringing than they would have from their father.  Young Albert Gallatin (later Senator, Secretary of the Treasury and diplomat) spent some time in Morgantown after arriving from his native Switzerland.  He was naturalized by Evans and may have been a friend of the family.[21]   Years later both Nancy and James were to name children after Gallatin.