I received the below from Gary Huff, President of “The Paddle Creek Golf Club” who lives in Fishers. IN. This might have appeared some time earlier in the Viking Chronicles but if so, it is well worth repeating. Gary begins below.
“I was doing some genealogy research and ran across this article. I thought it might be interesting for the Viking Chronicles. Enjoy.”
Wayne County News
October 27, 1927
HOW TUG FORK OF SANDY WAS NAMED, IS TOLD
Few people know the interesting story connected with the Tug Fork of Big Sandy River, which borders Wayne County for half the entire length of the county’s western boundary, says The Big Sandy News.
There are a few persons now living who have seen the gas burning on the waters of Tug as it came out of the bowels of the earth and up through the bed of the river near Kermit. The blaze was extinguished many years ago after it had burned for no one knows how long. But, few are the people, very few, who know that this “burning spring” played a prominent part in naming of the river which now separates the states of West Virginia and Kentucky.
Few have heard of the little band of soldiers sent out in the fall of 1757 to establish a fort at the mouth of the “Great Sandy,” how they camped one night at these “burning springs,” killed two buffaloes and hung their skins on a beech tree near the blazes from the water; how they were overtaken two days later by a messenger as they were within a few miles of their destination and ordered to return to Virginia; how they killed their pack horses in the middle of winter and ate them after their provisions had become exhausted and the proximity of Indians prevented their firing a gun or kindling a fire; how many of them perished from cold and hunger, and how, when they retraced their steps to return to Fort Dinwiddle, 300 miles away, and arriving again at the “burning springs,” the officers took down from the beech tree the two buffalo skins, now warmed by the gas flames, and cutting them into tugs gave each soldier a tug to last him as food until they arrived home. All this is condensed into the name of the north fork of Big Sandy–and perhaps more. Yet, it has all but been forgotten. A leatherbound book dimmed and faded by age, found in a group of discarded possessions, is perhaps all that has preserved this interesting history for the future generations which will inhabit the valley and flourish.
Gary A. Huff
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