A Talk With Charles Wilgus

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Ironton Register, Thursday, September 8, 1887
Excerpt from:
OLD TIMES
A TALK WITH CHAS. WILGUS
HOW THEY LIVED IN THOSE DAYS

Submitted by Sharon M. Kouns

The Miller brothers carried the mails from Maysville to Limestone and for a year from Wheeling, Va. They would travel sometimes on one side of the river and sometimes on the other. If they noticed Indian trails on the Ohio side, they would return on the Virginia side. They camped in the woods and built fires in a hole dug in the earth so the blaze wouldn't show. They would scrape the snow away and roll themselves in their blankets and sleep. Joe was, at one time, returning on the Ohio side; he had shot a deer and was skinning it. Hearing a slight noise on the hill above him, he looked up and saw what he supposed to be elk's horns glistening in the sunlight. What was his surprise to see about thirty Indians appear on the bluff above his camp. He hastily tied his shot pouch to his head, grasped his rifle in his hand and swam across the river. He reached the other shore, ascended the bank and got behind a tree. The Indians called him to come to them, but he knowing them too well, fired his gun at the crowd and ran as fast as possible on his way leaving them to enjoy his hard earned supper on the other side.