The Battle of Duncan=s Lane - November 6, 1864

 

Comments by Dewey Sharp

 

The Duncan Lane fight additions, as told to me by William Gilmore before I even saw a copy written by Andrew Price. 

 

Mr. Gilmore owned what was known as Duncan Lane.  Henry Duncan lived in the log house which is now used as a barn, and owned by William Gilmore, the grandson of Mr. Gilmore. This building is where Bernard Sharp, with the Union Army, died after being shot through the hips.  I own where William Beverage lived, where the Confederate forces were stationed when they were given the order to fire.  They were hidden behind the rocks on my farm, which I named the Rebel Rock Farm.

 

The Big Rock, where the Union soldiers were eating honey, was dozed out to build a road where Ernie Miller built a house.  It is now below the main road.

 

Mr. Gilmore related a story that when the forces were firing at each other, at apparently the same time, the two thought that a bullet entered a Union soldier=s gun at the same time he fired and blew up his gun, and that the soldier never stopped running until he reached James McClure=s near what is now Woodrow.

 

This, as you can see, was a mean war, and I think Mr. Price did a fine thing in getting this history.

 

This run was known as Beverage Run, which is [now] dry most of the time.

 

Mr. Gilmore said that he could remember catching trout out of it.

 

Most of the older citizens such as I, probably will enjoy or maybe I should say be alarmed, to know that such an event could happen in our county and community.

 

 

 

The story as printed in the Blue Book under Plain Tales of Mountain Trails:

By Andrew Price with additions by Dewey Sharp.

 

Hearken unto the battle of Duncan=s Lane.  The story of this battle has never been printed before.  It is ignored by all histories of the war.  Until late years it was not a subject of frank and open discussion by the people of this county.  Time cures all things.  There are still living a number of men who participated in that fight, and I have talked with men on both sides recently and after so long a time this historic event, which had been so nebulous, came out clear and distinct and I will endeavor to state the case.

 

At the West Union schoolhouse at the foot of the mountain, on the road that leads to the Williams River country, in 1864, lived Henry Duncan, in a double log house on the headwaters of Stony Creek.  The house was opposite the mouth of a draw or hollow leading off at right angles toward the south, and up that hollow lived William Beverage about a quarter of a mile distant.  A pass-way was used up that hollow to reach the Griffin place, and the homes of people living on Days Mountain, and on over to the headwaters of Dry Run, a branch of Swago Creek.  Part of the passway between the Duncan place and the Beverage place was fenced on both sides in 1864 as a lane.  It was this lane that gave the name to the battle.

 

The State [West Virginia] was formed in 1863, and in the early part of 1864 a regiment of state guards was formed at Buckhannon, and of this regiment Pocahontas County furnished one company, captained at times by Capt. Sam Young, a minister, and later by Capt. I.W. Allen.  Captain Young preached at the sulphur spring on Stony Creek (Ellis Sharp=s) on May 3, 1854, and made an appointment to preach there again forty years after.  A great concourse of people gathered there in 1894 to keep the appointment, but the captain was dead.  Eleven survivors appeared at the meeting. 

 

This regiment had its headquarters in 1864 at Beverly.  These state guards were gallant soldiers and were exposed to all the perils and privations of the civil War.  It is not too much to say that they performed service attended by unusual dangers and hazards, and it is a matter of general regret that they were not recognized and rewarded by the Federal government after the war, for however home guards in uninvaded states were placed, those in West Virginia were real soldiers.

 

In 1864, the Union depended upon the result of the presidential election as a peace party had set out to defeat the election of Lincoln, and if this had succeeded the erring sisters would have been allowed to go in peace, and the United States would have disintegrated.

 

The dauntless Averell and his mounted infantry, like a thorn in the flesh and a rankling fire to the Confederates, had conquered and subdued West Virginia for the Union.  He was ignominiously discharged in September, 1864.  The county of Pocahontas, in the fall of 1864, was controlled by the Confederacy.  It was determined, however, by the West Virginia authorities to hold an election for president in this county, and arrangements were made to open the polls at Edray.  And the Pocahontas County State guards company was detailed to bring that election off.  They marched on foot from Beverly to Edray, a distance of fifty-four miles, coming in by the way of Elk River, and arriving a day or two before election.  It was recognized that it was a dangerous expedition, sending one company into Pocahontas County.

 

The company camped near the headwaters of Elk on the way in, and one of the soldiers, Washington Neff, obtained leave of absence to visit his wife, who was stopping at William Gibson=s.  Here he was captured by a squad belonging to Captain J. C. Gay=s company of Confederate scouts, and was taken as a prisoner to the headquarters of that company, at the farm of Samuel Gay just above the mouth of Stony Creek.  That night in attempting to escape, Neff was shot and killed.  The prisoner had laid out Private Bennett with a stone and had been shot as he fled near the ford in Stony Creek.

 

This word had reached the company at Edray.  Capt. Sam Young was in command.  Capt. I. W. Allen was there, too.  Nearly every member of the company was a Pocahontas man.  Already apprehensive of the danger of being in the heart of a Confederate county, the death of Neff must have impressed them with the dangers of their position.  The polls were opened under the oaks standing in front of the William Sharp house, near the big spring.  The soldiers all voted irrespective of age and a number of citizens of the vicinity, and the vote was solid for Abraham Lincoln for president.

 

Aaron Moore was chosen as the messenger to take the vote into the northwestern part of the State, where the existence of the government of West Virginia was recognized, and the company of soldiers prepared to act as his guard.  William Hannah was one of the commissioners of election but he had the uniform of a soldier.  It was decided not to attempt to return by the pike to Beverly, the road now called Seneca Trail.  The return was to be made by crossing the river at Marlin=s Bottom, by Huntersville, and the Hill country, by Dunmore and Greenbank to the Staunton and Parkersburg pike at Travelers Repose and across Cheat Mountain.  The company marched four miles south to Marlinton and when they came in sight of the bridge they saw a Confederate soldier at the end of the bridge on horseback.  This soldier saw the Union soldiers at the same time and whirled his horse and galloped back through the bridge.  This was construed to mean that he was a picket and that he had gone to notify southern cavalry of the advance of the northern soldiers.  Upon a council of war it was decided to take to the mountain and make a detour in the direction of Williams River in such a way that cavalry could not follow them.  They realized that they were a small company of men in a country that was hostile to them, and that they might be killed by an ambushed force at any minute.

 

It turned out afterwards that the soldier at the bridge was not a sentinel, but was a deserter who was making his getaway to Buckhannon, where they saw him a short time after.

 

The little army turned up Price Run and from there climbed Bucks Mountain through the grass lands until they reached the fringe of trees near the top, and there they took some cold food from their haversacks and lay down to sleep without any fire whatever.                    

 

They were stirring before daylight and marched to the head of Dry Run and called at the house of Peter Beverage, a Union man, and there got something to eat, and then proceeded by way of the Griffin place to William Beverage=s place.  William Beverage was a brother of Peter Beverage, but was a Confederate in sympathy, and a non-combatant. 

 

Here there were bees and the little army feeling safe from possible pursuit, commandeered a bee gum or hive full of honey.  It was the first week of November and the hive was very heavy with honey.  The soldiers made the farmer give them buckets and they proceeded to fill the buckets with honey, preparing for a mid-day feed.

 

In the meantime, the Confederates had been laying plans to capture the Union soldiers sent here in such a small force to beard the lion in his den.  Capt. J.C. Gay holding a commission as captain under the Confederacy, with authority to guard the border, was the ranking officer in this emergency.  He augmented his force by summoning to his headquarters at his home, at the mouth of Stony Creek, all the Southern soldiers who were at home on furloughs, and his command was made up of about half scouts and half soldiers on furlough.

 

Godfrey Geiger says that he and his brother, Adam Geiger, were called from their home at Stony Bottom, and that they reached headquarters at the Gay farm about dark on the day of the election.

 

The company was made up there and moved before daylight the next morning, and took the trail of the Union soldiers on Bucks Mountain, and found where they had bivouacked on the edge of the woods. They then went to William Kinnison=s on the mountain to get some bread, but before any could be prepared they heard the northern soldiers= platoon firing at Peter Beverage=s nearby, and they did not wait for anything to eat.

 

They hung on the trail slowly which led through the woods for the most part, until they came to the open grass land around William Beverage=s, and there they saw the Union soldiers in the act of taking the honey from a bee hive.  The distance was about three hundred yards.        

 

The order to fire being given, a volley was let off, the result of which was a general scattering of the blue coats for shelter.  Some went to the hillsides on either side of the hollow. Some went down Duncan=s Lane and sheltered in and behind Duncan=s house, and some to the knoll commanding the mouth of the hollow where West Union School house stands, and in this way gave battle and returned the fire.

 

Aaron Moore with the election returns ran up the hillside and Godfrey Geiger says that he would most certainly have been killed if it had not been that he was in citizen clothes, the rule being to shoot no one not in a uniform.

 

At or about the first fire, Bernard Sharp, of the Union Army, son of William Sharp, of Elk, and a brother of Silas, Harmon, and Hugh, fell mortally wounded.  He was shot through both hips.  Godfrey Geiger says that he was carrying an army gun called a muskatoon, which took a paper cartridge.  That he went to fight with three cartridges and that he would have been out of the battle but for the fact that he got a supply of cartridges from the battlefield after the first volley, the Union ammunition just suiting his gun.  Godfrey Geiger says that his was a long range gun, and that he saw Captain Young in the passage way between the two parts of the Duncan house and that he shot at him.   That Captain told him afterwards that the ball cut away his clothes across his chest.  The bullet was recovered after the war from the log where it had lodged.

 

The two little armies having taken shelter continued to fire at each other for something like an hour and a half, and neither side making a charge, the Union soldiers gradually withdrew and made their way by little squads to the original rendezvous in Beverly, taking with them the result of the election.

 

When it became apparent that the Union army had retired from the place, the Confederates went on down the lane and came on Bernard Sharp and carried him to Duncan=s house.  It was apparent that he was near death, but they sent for a doctor and did what they could for him, but he expired in a few hours.

 

The Union soldiers wounded were: John Armstrong, Moffatt Walton, John E. Adkison, William Kinnison.  James L. Rodgers, received serious wounds. Moffatt Sharp shot in the mouth.

J. R. Moore, who was under fire from the first, says that no one was hit at the first fire, that is the firing that occurred when the Union soldiers were getting the honey for lunch in William Beverage=s yard.  I think this is correct.  I think Bernard Sharp was hit in the hips with a mountain rifle ball while he stood behind a tree, returning the fire of the Confederates.  He was a fine tall, slim young man, and his untimely death was greatly regretted. 

 

The wounded soldiers were taken to a cave near James McClure=s under the shadow of Red Knob, and concealed they were treated with great kindness and consideration by the McClure family.

 

There was no one hit on the Confederate side. The Confederates turned back at Henry Duncan=s and they took from his farm a bee hive  and bees which they carried to William Beverage to replace the one that he had lost to the Union army.  There seems to have been no cause for this other than Duncan was for the Union and Beverage was for the Confederacy.

 

I have talked with Register Moore and Peter McCarty, soldiers of the Union on one side and Godfrey Geiger soldier on the Confederacy. Godfrey Geiger was in some of the biggest fighting of the war.  George McCollam was 8 years old and he has a vivid recollection of the soldiers returning from the battlefield, shouting, and victorious. He was at his aunt Ruth Kee=s on Buck=s Mountain; George M. Kee, a wounded Confederate soldier, being at home.

 

It is probably impossible for complete lists of the soldiers to be obtained at this late day and time, and the names here given are those furnished by survivors of the affair.

 

Union Soldiers: Capt. Samuel Young, Capt. I.W. Allen, Lieut. Wm. Kinnison, Corp. John Armstrong, William Hannah, William Gay, George Cochran, Clark Dilley of Ewing=s battery, Jeremy Dilley, Sheldon Hannah, Clark Kellison, Newton Wanless, Moffett Wanless, James L. Rodgers,     Aaron Moore, J. B. Moore, Henry Pugh, William Simmons, John E. Adkison, Peter McCarty, James Rider, Aaron Kee, Columbus Silva, Henry Sharp, George McKeever, Moffatt Rodgers, Hanson Moore, and Moffatt Sharp. 

 

Confederate soldiers: Capt. J. C. Gay, James Shannon, Jacob Simmons, Michael Willerton (one armed soldier), Godfrey Geiger, Adam Geiger, Azri White, Bax White, Charles L. Moore, Mathias Moore, James McLaughlin, George H. McLaughlin, Charles Jackson, Jacob Beverage of Clover Creek, Harvey Lindsey, George    Simmons, Hiram Dorman. 

 

There can be no question but that there are many names omitted on both sides.  It was not a battle that would be reported in detail to the war office of either country. And though I have known the most of the soldiers mentioned above  intimately, it was not a case that was discussed freely in the olden days.   It was only when the story of this battle was about to be lost to history that I gathered some of the salient facts in connection with it and fortunately I was able to talk to soldiers who had been in it.

 

As a battle it does not rank high in the national issue to be decided other than it had a direct bearing on the election of Lincoln the second time.  If he had been defeated, it would have been a long farewell to the greatness of America.   But it was not the plan of Providence for him to fall.                             

As a part of the travail of West Virginia in her birth throes such contests as these, occurring in the border counties, are of the greatest importance. 

 

(Here the news article says “To Be Continued”, but I have no more.)