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Permission to post granted by Sandra Moats Burke
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Hi Bennie,

Sure, that would be great. I heard from Henry. I guess he thinks the slaves crossing into Washington County almost entirely came from plantations along the river. I have reasons to think otherwise. I even suspect the reason why eastern Virginia spent tax money in the 1830's and 1840's to build the Northwestern Turnpike (U.S. Rt. 50) and the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike (both of which terminate in Parkersburg, Wood County) was the domestic slave trade.

It was the early decades of the 1800's when the soil of eastern Virginia was depleted. The biggest money-maker for the plantation owners was slave trading. Granville Davisson Hall, author of The Rending of Virginia, wrote of his mother's recollection of a coffle of slaves numbering in the hundreds which passed her parent's home in present day Harrison County, WV. The coffle was during the childhood of Mrs. Hall, about 1825-1830, shortly before the Northwestern Turnpike was built. The coffle was westbound on the old state road which terminated in Williamstown, Wood County, directly across from Marietta, Ohio. That is why I suspect the slaves at the slave cemetery at Williamstown were mostly from the slaves who died in transit, on their way to literally being sold down the river.

David Houchin, reference librarian in the history collection at the Harrison County Public Library in Clarksburg, WV, says slave owners in eastern Virginia used to advertise in the Clarksburg paper seeking capture of their fugitive slaves. Surely these slave owners had reason to think the slaves were westbound?

I agree that many slaves went north into Pennsylvania rather than crossing into Ohio. If the UGRR operated in West Virginia like it did elsewhere, then there were UGRR routes in several directions.

Sandra Moats Burke