opened as far as the Big Sandy. 

Under date of December 31, 1787, Arthur Campbell, Andrew Cowan, and Daniel 

Boone, county lieutenants of western Virginia counties, wrote an 

interesting letter to Governor Edmund Randolph, which reads as follows: 

"If it is found next spring that war with the Indians is unavoidable, all 

are of the opinion that two companies of rangers of fifty men each will be 

necessary to protect the borders of Washington, Montgomery, and Russell 

counties. Those allotted to range so as to be a safeguard to the 

inhabitants of Montgomery, be stationed on the west side of the Great 

Kanawha where the Greenbrier road crosses to Kentucky, and on Sandy River 

where the said road crosses that river." 

At that time Kentucky was only a state in contemplation, and it was 

supposed it would have the Kanawha for its eastern boundary. What is now 

Cabell County was a part of Montgomery, and the old state road had just 

been opened to the Big Sandy. 

Along the route of this old state road, the first to be built in southwest 

Virginia, settlements were made about the time the road was open for 

travel. Doubtless the first settlement in the lower Mud River country was 

made about that time, but who the party, or parties, making it were is not 

a matter of record available to the writer of this sketch. 

Early Settlers

Late in the eighteenth century Thomas Teays secured a patent for a large 

tract, which he located in the eastern end of the valley, now mainly in 

Putnam County. Beginning in 1785 and extending through a number of years 

later, John P. Duvall of Harrison County secured several land patents that 

in their combined area included all the land from the Great Falls of Mud 

River to Indian Fork of Killgore's Creek beyond Milton. About the same 

time William Hepburn and his son-in-law John Dundas, of Alexandria, 

Virginia, secured title to the land extending from the falls of Mud River 

nearly to Barboursville. From these senior patents land owners in Teays 

Valley and in the lower Mud River Valley trace the title of their present 

ownership. 

In 1803 James Cox of Buckingham county, Virginia, bought land and settled 

on the west side of Mud River a few hundred yards above the Great Falls. 

The house in which he lived still stands just across Mud River from the 

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