ol. David Shepherd, (the father
of Col. Moses Shepherd,) John Wetzel (the father of Lewis) and the
McCulloughs--men whose names are identified with the early history
of that country--repaired again to the wilderness, and took up their
permanent abode in it.

Soon after this, other settlements were made at different points, both
above and below Wheeling; and the country on Buffalo, Short, and Grave
creeks,[8] and on the Ohio river, became the abode of civilized man.
Among those who were first to occupy above Wheeling, were George
Lefler, John Doddridge, Benjamin Biggs, Daniel Greathouse, Joshua
Baker and Andrew Swearingen.[9]

[96] The settlement thus made constituting a kind of advance _guard_,
through which an Indian enemy would have to penetrate, before they
could reach the interior, others were less reluctant to occupy the
country between them and the Alleghany mountains. Accordingly various
establishments were soon made in it by adventurers from different
parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia; and those places in
which settlements had been previously effected, received considerable
accessions to their population.

In 1772, that comparatively beautiful region of country, lying on the
east fork of the Monongahela river, between the Alleghany mountains,
on its south eastern, and the Laurel Hill, or as it is there called
the Rich mountain, on its north western side, and which had received
the denomination of Tygart's valley, again attracted the attention of
emigrants.--In the course of that year, the greater part of this
valley was located, by persons said to have been enticed thither by
the description given of it, by some hunters from Greenbrier who had
previously explored it. Game, though a principal, was not however
their sole object. They possessed themselves at once of nearly all the
level land lying between those mountains--a plain of 25 or 30 miles in
length and varying from three fourths to two miles in width, and of
fine soil. Among those who were first to occupy that section of
country, we find the names of Hadden, Connelly, Whiteman, Warwick,
Nelson, Stalnaker, Riffle and Westfall: the latter of these found and
interred the bones of Files' family, which had lain, bleaching in the
sun, after their murder by the Indians, in 1754.

Cheat river too, on which no attempt at settlement had been made, but
by the unfortunate Eckarly's, became an object of attention, The Horse
Shoe bottom was located by Ca