Introduction
Spring had arrived in all its glory along the banks of the Monongahela River. Filled with the remains of rapidly melting mountain winter snows, the river flowed gently northward through the Allegheny Plateau as wildflowers bloomed, birds sang out announcing their return and the trees of the dense forest surrounding Prickett’s Fort exploded in new, green life.
It was April 1780. The American Revolution was going into its fifth year, and as yet, the end could not be seen. Many of the local men had served in Monongalia County’s various militia companies, most spending their enlistments patrolling the woods for signs of Indian activity, while a few went east of the Allegheny Mountains to fight the British as members of the Continental army.
For most residents, the return of spring meant that it was time to begin planting the small fields they had worked to carve out of the forest and start another year of farming in the hopes of harvesting enough for their own subsistence with perhaps a little left over to sell across the mountains in the Shenandoah Valley. However, spring also meant the return of another more deadly kind of activity: Indian raids.
Attacks on farms and settlements were an unpleasant fact of life on the Virginia frontier, and that was why Prickett’s Fort had been built. Erected in the summer of 1774, the fort was one of many such structures built for the protection of local settlers. Named for the family on whose land it stood, the fort was located on a small hill above the confluence of Prickett’s Creek with the Monongahela. Typically, when militia scouts sighted signs of an Indian raiding party in the vicinity or when raids became either numerous or persistent in nature, settlers would arrive to “fort up” until the danger subsided. However, on this particular April day, while the network of trails leading to the fort saw many local families heading toward it, they were not seeking shelter from Indian attacks. Rather, they were making the trek via horse, mule or on foot for a much more pleasant reason. There was to be a wedding at the fort, providing a much-needed cause for celebration and merrymaking after a long, hard winter.
Modern re-creation of the site where Phebe and Thomas Cunningham were married in 1780: Prickett’s Fort at Prickett’s Fort State Park, West Virginia. Photo by the author.
The couple being married was twenty-four-year-old Thomas Cunningham and his bride, nineteen-year-old Phebe Tucker.1 Phebe was born in England in 1761 to John Tucker and his wife, Jane Allen Tucker. Her parents were Scots, and her father was born about 1735, while her mother was born around 1740. Beyond that, little is known about her family history. The Tuckers left England for the colonies in 1774, just before the onset of the war for American independence, and family history documents indicate they traveled directly to the frontier of the upper Monongahela Valley. Phebe, who was later remembered by her granddaughter Leah as being “a tiny women and always very charming,” is described as having been a truly lovely young woman with dark red hair, blue-green eyes and a flawless, pale complexion.2
However, while little is known about Phebe’s family, the groom and his family have a better-defined history. Thomas Cunningham was born in 1756 in Fairfax County, Virginia, and was the youngest of thirteen children born to Hugh Cunningham and Nancy O’Neil Cunningham. His parents were born in Ireland, and both came to America sometime before their wedding in Fairfax County in 1728. The Cunningham family was part of the Scottish nobility and included men such as Robert Cunningham, the Second Earl of Glencairn, who sat in Parliament in 1489, as well as leaders who fought against the English kings at places such as Flodden Field and Linlithgow. As a result, like many Scots, the Crown eventually exiled the family to Ireland, and in the Cunningham’s case, that exile followed the defeat of the Scottish army during the Second Bishop’s War in 1640.3
By the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775, much of Hugh and Nancy Cunningham’s family had left their home in Shenandoah County, with five of their eight sons heading across the mountains to what was then the Virginia frontier. In 1772, Thomas, along with his older brother, Edward, and Edward’s wife, Sarah, arrived in Monongalia County on the Allegheny Plateau. Edward settled on land located along Shinn’s Run, and Thomas found land nearby along the right-hand fork of Ten Mile Creek. Like most local settlers of the time, both men were active in the militia. During Lord Dunmore’s War against the Shawnee in 1774, Edward was a member of Captain Zackwell Morgan’s company while Thomas enlisted with the company of Captain David Scott, with both units assigned to patrol the area around Fort Pitt. Then, in 1777, Thomas would enlist again, this time as a member of Captain James Booth’s company, where he would serve thirteen months as a “spy” searching the forests for signs of Indian activity.4
When Thomas and Phebe met is unknown, but their wedding seems to have been a notable occasion for those near Prickett’s Fort. William Haymond, the commander of the fort’s militia company and a justice of the peace for Monongalia County, officiated the wedding.5 Legend has it that the wedding was well attended, with music, dancing and much merriment. Following the ceremony and celebration, Thomas and Phebe returned to Thomas’s farm near Ten Mile Creek to begin their life together. Within a year, their first child, Henry, was born, and three more children soon followed. By 1785, they and Edward’s family had moved to a new farm near Bingamon Creek along Cunningham’s Run, west of the West Fork of the Monongahela, a few miles from the present-day town of Shinnston, West Virginia. There, they built a cabin a few yards from that of Edward and Sarah, worked the land together and supplemented their income by trapping furs.
This map depicts sites of major events in Phebe Tucker Cunningham’s story. Drawn by the author.
Farm life on Virginia’s frontier was not easy, to be sure, but it certainly could have been a good one. However, forces created by events beyond Thomas and Phebe’s control would conspire to alter their lives forever. These forces, whose evolution began years before Thomas and Phebe were born, were the product of kings, parliaments, governors, assemblies, generals, soldiers, chiefs, explorers, Jesuit priests, land speculators, trappers, traders, greed, war, ambition and the inevitable collision of European and Native American cultures. Like so many people throughout time, Thomas and Phebe would suddenly become small, unwilling players on history’s stage. The result would be violent, bloody and tragic, as Phebe’s life intersected with the culture of another race and with two men considered by many to be among America’s most infamous traitors. Most of all, however, the events that would follow tell a story of survival, resilience, love and tremendous courage.