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KANAHWA COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA - BIOS: WHEELERS
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
SSpradling@aol.com
September 19, 1999
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History of Kanawha County
George W. Atkinson
1876
p. 123
MASSACRE OF THE WHEELERS.
John Wheeler and family came to the Kanawha Valley about 1790 or '91, and
remained for a year or two at the Kelly's creek settlement. He decided to
move further westward, and accordingly came down the Val-ley to a point a
short distance below where Col. William Dickinson now resides, fourteen miles
above Charleston, where he bailt a log cabin and cleared a field of grdund.
The summer passed without disturbance, but the fall brought with it a band of
lurking Indians, who did much damage to all of the frontier settlements. One
night, as Wheeler and his family were sitting in the yard roasting chestnuts
in a fire, which was blazing brightly, they were fired upon by Indians, and
all were killed but one, "Nat," who ran into the darkness and made his escape
to the Kelly's creek fort.
The Indians scalped all their victims-husband, wife and three children and
piled their bodies in the cabin, which they then burned to ashes. When the
hunters came down the next day, they found nothing but the charred remains of
five unrecognizable bodies, piled in a heap. They buried them in an
extemporized grave, and returned to the settlement, which they closely
guarded during the remainder of the year.
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