It all began because of a mid-19th century flood in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. As tragic as this event was, it had the good effect of sending a strong German family across the mountains into what later became West Virginia. They put down deep roots there, and the story of the Row family has been intertwined with the history of the Barbour County town of Junior ever since.

I learned the early part of the story while my wife and I searched courthouse records for information about my ancestors. In the town of Woodstock, Virginia, I found the names of Benjamin Row and Sarah Rinehart in marriage records dated March 4, 1830.

Information is sketchy about the first years of their marriage, but by 1840 they had acquired four children and about 350 acres of hillside on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. The place included a mill and mill dam. The Rows seem to have been well settled and might have stayed there, had not disaster struck.

It was sometime in the early 1840's that flood waters swept away the mill and dam. The disheartened Rows sold their land and prepared to move away. Looking for high ground, "Benny" Row set his eyes on the mountains to the westward. He moved his family across to the Tygarts Valley and bought about the same amount of acreage in the extreme southern end of newly created Barbour County.

Benny Row -- the old German name was Rau -- built a new mill on his new land. Having seen enough high water, this time he chose to construct an undershot mill which did not require a large dam; a low wall and mill race directed the water under the wheel.

	(Left) Benjamin Row's old Newport, VA mill location. The first grist mill was destroyed by a flood. After the flood, Benjamin sold the location and moved to Junior, WV (Barbour County). A new mill was rebuilt by a family of the name of Fultz. (Photo by Howard Brady)
	(Right) J. Spotswood "Spot" Williams, who is the great-grandson of Benjamin "Benny" Row, has the family millstones in his yard. Benny Row built the new grist mill about one and a half miles up the Tygart Valley River from Junior, near the town of Gage. (Original Photo by Robert L. Campbell - Goldenseal Staff Photographer)

Benny and Sarah's only son, Andrew Jackson Row, and three sisters grew up in a log house not far from the mill. Through some whimsy, the Rows had chosen to name their daughters Julia Ann, Polly Ann, and Mary Ann.

The Rows lived together in the log house they'd built until the children started moving away. Two left on Christmas Day, 1855, when Andrew Jackson and his sister Julia Ann were married in a double wedding ceremony to a brother and sister by the name of Williams. Mary Ann married a Viquesney, from one of three French Huguenot families who had settled in the growing village. (The other Huguenot families, bearing the names Elbon and Shomo--the latter from the French "de Chaumont"-later married into the Row family, as well.) Polly Ann Row married "Uncle Sammy" Latham, an immigrant Englishman who was noted for his unusually slow manner of speech.

As the only son, Andrew Jackson inherited his father's land and seems to have been the family leader in the second generation. "A. J." Row was an enterprising man. He started a general store in connection with the mill and soon a post office was opened in the store building. it bore the name "Rowtown," with A. J. Row as first postmaster.

With his father dead and his sisters married, A. J. Row was left to perpetuate the family name. He had no trouble. He and his first wife, Delilah Williams, produced seven children. The oldest was a son, William Alva, and the second a daughter, Mary Elizabeth.

She became my grandmother after her marriage to Granville Bland. Brady of Upshur County. Delilah Row died in childbirth in 1873, and A. J. later remarried, to a Fitzgerald*. They had three daughters before Row's death in 1905.

The major property again went to the eldest son, with William Alva Row taking over the family general store upon his fathers death. William Alva's brother, James Benjamin Row, also settled in Rowtown. The mill was sold to William Simon, a cousin by his marriage to one of the Viquesney daughters. Simon moved the mill about a mile up Tygarts Valley River, to the mouth of Beaver Creek. The family had apparently forgotten old Benny Row's fear of high water, and a regular mill dam was constructed. Simon operated the mill at the new site until the 1920's.

Rowtown people were from a mixed religious and ethnic heritage-by the surnames, they were German, Protestant French, Welsh, English, and Scotch-Irish--but one church served them all. Called the Coffman Church, it stood on a high sandstone cliff near the main community. The church was abandoned in the early 1900's and the building destroyed. Only a well-filled graveyard marks the place today. 

The cliff at Coffman Church itself became an important site in the community as a major regional quarry. The cliff was an outcropping of the Homewood (locally called "Roaring Creek") sandstone, the hard geologic stratum which makes up most of the canyons and plateaus of the western Allegheny area. Stone was quarried there for the Randolph County courthouse, for U. S. Senator Henry Gassaway Davis' "Graceland" mansion in Elkins, and for the culverts on the Western Maryland Railroad. My grandfather Brady was killed in a rock fall at the quarry in 1898.

Quarrying continued as a local industry until about 1900, but was surpassed in economic importance by the opening of coal mines in the area. Outcroppings of the Middle and Lower Kittanning coal veins were discovered in the early 1890's. Although the coal surfaced just below the Row store and post office the family received no direct gain from mining, for mineral rights had been sold to Senator Davis and associates in old Benny Row's lifetime. The rights reportedly brought from $5 to $15 per acre. This was an excellent price at the time, presumably reflecting the fact that Benny Row also gave up surface land for a coal tipple, coke ovens, and railroad station. He also ceded right-of-way to the new railroad being built down the Tygarts Valley from Elkins to connect with the Baltimore & Ohio line pushing upriver from Grafton to Belington.

Senator Davis and his partner, son-in-law, and eventual successor in the Senate, Stephen B. Elkins, owned the railroad as well as the mines, and Rowtown was pulled closer into the orbit of that powerful industrial family. Davis and Elkins did not own much of the community itself, however, for Benny Row had shrewdly reserved most of the surface land. The land was passed on within the family or sold in small parcels to individuals who would build their own houses and businesses. Thus Rowtown avoided the uniform drabness of a company town, although it did become an important mining center.

Rowtown retained its independence during industrialization, but it did lose its name. It was renamed, in a curious way, for Henry Gassaway Davis, Jr. Young "Harry" Davis, as the Senator's son and presumed heir, had been put in charge. of the local mines.

According to a 1964 article in the Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail, he seems to have preferred to spend his time elsewhere. "Young Davis did not stay around Rowtown very long," the article says. "He liked to travel, and in May, 1896, was swept from a ship and drowned in a storm off the African coast. His body was lost at sea. Rowtown was renamed in his honor, incorporated as Junior in 1897." According to current Junior resident Alva Row II, this was at the specific request of the influential elder Davis.

The name change made little practical difference, of course, and the community continued to prosper in a modest way. A clipping from an unidentified magazine, datelined "Elkins, West Virginia, November, Nineteen Hundred Six," describes the local coal operation a little less than a decade after Rowtown became Junior. "The Junior mine is located within three miles of Harding," the unknown author wrote. "There are 51 coke ovens with a daily capacity of 100 tons of coke. The mine capacity is 600 tons daily. 100 men are employed and eleven mules are used."

The company, known in 1906 as the Davis Colliery Company, had earlier been called the Junior Coal Company and - at some intermediate time - the West Virginia Coal & Coke Company. Benny Row's land dealings had kept his village from ever becoming a company town, but there was nothing to prevent the opening of a company store. The mine operators did just that, putting their Junior Mercantile Company store into direct competition with the old Row family general store and other local businesses.

Junior reached its zenith during and immediately after World War I. There were seven grocery and general stores in town at that time, along with two banks. There was also a millinery and clothing store, operated by a maiden lady named Mary Jane Booth. She became a legendary character, noted for her blunt speech. Junior was at its most populous then, and my own earliest memories of the place were formed during these years. 

The Viquesney family ran a bowling alley, which was off limits to many of us, and a roller-skating rink. The skating rink doubled as a basketball court, and the town had an excellent team from about 1918 to 1922. Belington High School, some four miles away, also used this court, since they had no gymnasium until much later.

Junior supported two doctors in its heyday, with Dr. Nelson B. Michaels spending most of his active life there. The other physician, a Dr. Davis, was there only during the boom years. My grandmother Mary Elizabeth, the widow of Granville Brady, was the local midwife, delivering most of the babies in and around town. She called in a doctor only if the birth didn't go well.

The early families continued to be important in the town's life. For many years all of Grandma Brady's children lived in Junior. A 1913 photograph shows more than 40 of them proudly gathered around her. I can recall my parents going down the list of over 700 residents in 1920, and finding that all but three families were related to us by blood or marriage. In later years those three also intermarried with descendants of Benjamin Row I. 

These people enjoyed the prosperity of a boom town, but they paid a price, as well. Some suffered industrial accidents, the same as my Grandfather Brady had a generation before. One of my earliest recollections is of standing above the mine opening as the body of Benny Row III was hauled out on a mule car. He had been killed in a slate fall.

Prosperity brought other problems, fortunately of a less serious nature. We had our petty criminal youth, known as the "Midnight Gang." They enjoyed stealing chickens for roasting over the coke ovens. One member was known as "Cateye," because he could see so well inside dark chicken coops, and "Weasel" could slip through small holes when that skill was called for. Their nighttime work was not always without its pains. One of the gang caught a load of birdshot in his fleshy backside while going over a fence in West Junior one night. Dr. Michaels had the job of picking it all out.

Junior was a "dry" town, even before Prohibition and down to the advent of 3.2 beer in the early 1930's. The thirsty never suffered, however, for the town of Weaver, two miles east, at one time had as many as seven saloons. The imbibers had to climb a high intervening ridge, and sometimes came back across in worse shape than when they had set out.

The drinkers occasionally got into trouble on their way home, and one gang of young fellows provoked an incident still remembered locally as the "war with Italy." About a mile east of Junior they had to pass the home of an Italian immigrant family, a farmhouse surrounded by a waist-high rock wall. Several people inside, doing their own drinking more quietly at home, were aroused when one of the high spirited young men passing by discharged his revolver. The immigrants imagined they were being attacked and returned fire.

About dawn the Italian flag was defiantly raised over the farmhouse, and the boys from Junior sent for reinforcements. Up to that time the standoff had been more comical than serious, but events took a tragic turn when one of the besiegers stood up from the back side of the stone wall to receive a shotgun blast in the face. Doc Michaels had another job picking shot that day, and the wounded fellow carried the scars for life. With a casualty on the field, the others sobered up enough to decide they had had enough war and headed for home.

I'll mention no names in connection with these shenanigans, although a few people may still remember who Cateye and Weasel really were. Maybe not, since nicknames were so common in Junior. We generally used them not to conceal identity, but merely to distinguish among the many people bearing the same or similar names.

We had four Charlie Bennetts, I remember, and they became Long Charlie, Short Charlie, Mountain Charlie, and Post Office Charlie. There were also Knothole Daniels, Pigtail Corley, Taterdigger McDonald, Shilally Moore, Domineck Row, Gig Moore, Fido Moore, Organ Stool Moore, P. I. Davy Moore, Chumhead Coy, Bevo England, Grinny Cooper, Thistle Thorn, Big Nose Brady, King Brady, and Shakespeare Brady, just to name some of the more colorful ones.

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1."Bennett" history at Rootsweb.com; 2. "Bennett" history at Rootsweb.com

Mostly, Junior was a peaceful place, with life revolving around the familiar institutions of small towns anywhere. The old Coffman Church stood to the south of town, and the first school was a log building on a hill to the east. Its single room was soon overcrowded, and Barbour County was persuaded to build a two-room school inside town. In 1912 this too was replaced, by a six-room building which served all eight grades until junior high students were moved to Belington.

The old names turned up in education as in other areas of community life. Charles Shomo was the first teacher at the log school. When the new two-room building was opened, the Reverend W. J. "Jack" Row was brought on as the second teacher, He was the grandson of patriarch Benny Row.

Today, Junior has still another school. The last frame schoolhouse has been torn down, and a new masonry building erected across the river in West Junior. Technically a separate community until recently, West Junior was once served by its own railroad, but the old Coal & Coke tracks have been abandoned and taken up. Junior proper is still on a rail line, and in more prosperous days as many as seven passenger trains stopped daily at the Western Maryland depot.

Like the schools, the church moved around, too. The original location was inconvenient to some worshippers. Spot Williams, great-grandson of Benny Row and keeper of his old millstones, recounts his own family's experience in this regard. "My mother's first husband was Grant Williams," Mr. Williams says, "He was a musician and played the organ at the old church. My mother told me that before the bridge was built, he used to have to cross the river in a rowboat to come to church." After Grant Williams died, his widow married his brother, William. They purchased land at the south end of Junior, across the river. 

 

The Methodist and Brethren Churches are community centers in Junior. Both churches are now served by the same pastor. (in 1984 when the article was printed. RmB) (Picture caption from the article in "Goldenseal Magazine") (Photos by Robert L. Campbell - Goldenseal Staff Photographer)

In 1900, the church itself moved north, into town. The new structure was built on Row Avenue, Junior's main street. It was intended for a union church for both the Methodists and United Brethren, but for some reason the deed was registered to the Methodists alone. Years of bitterness ensued and in 1905 the United Brethren built their own new house of worship across from the school. Even after the national uniting of the two denominations in 1965 the two groups still worship separately in Junior, although both are served by the same pastor. Nowadays the Valley River Church of the Brethren is located inside Junior, in a church building constructed in 1942. The Row family were all originally Brethren. The denomination bore the nickname "Dunkards" because they practiced "Trine" immersion--baptizing by dunking three times, face forward. 

In later years, many of the Rows became preachers. One of Benny Row's grandsons and five great-grandsons took up the ministry. All of them grew up in and around Junior, an area reputed to' have produced more ministers per square mile than any other place in the country. Local people had an explanation for it, according to a popular anecdote. A researcher from West Virginia University asked an area farmer about it, as the story goes. He caught the farmer working the yellow clay of his field, and the old-timer had a ready answer for him. "Huh," he is supposed to have said, "Our soil is so durn poor it won't grow anything but preachers!"

Actually, there were always plenty of others to carry on with more worldly affairs. One of Mary Row Brady's sons built a waterworks for the village just before World War I, constructing a large reservoir and burying water mains along most streets. The G. H. Brady Water Company operated for years before the utility was sold to Frank "Squib" Shomo, a son-in-law of old Andrew Jackson Row, and G. Frank Row, a grandson. The mainline pipes were made of wood, unfortunately, which eventually rotted and permitted pollution of the water supply. For a long time signs at each end of town proclaimed "City Water Unsafe."

In 1950 Junior and West Junior were incorporated as one town. Decline bad set in after the mines worked out, in the 1930's. Families had moved away and houses deteriorated, some to be torn down and others boarded up. But things began to look up with the new incorporation. A volunteer fire department was formed in 1961, and later that decade federal funds provided a new water system. The new system was dedicated in June 1970, with an elaborate funeral for the Unsafe Water signs. Senator Randolph, Congressman Staggers, and the Elkins Highlanders band were on hand to assist Mayor Bobby Channell in the procession and burial. Junior was also proud of a new sewer system, and the community generally had a more prosperous air about it.

The real wealth of a community lies in the perseverance of its people, and in these terms Junior is rich. The old names are still there. A. J. Row was the first postmaster; his grandson G. Frank Row held the position for 28 years; and a great-grandson, Eldon Shomo, is now in the job. Alva Row II now has charge of the family store's original sign. It bears the message "Rowtown Store, A J. Row," and less prominently the name of its sign painter, "Viquesney." These and other families have invested nearly a century and a half in the town, and as long as they're there the community will survive.

A flood drove the first settlers across the mountains from old Virginia, and it is significant that their descendants have since survived trials by high water. A major test came in March 1913 when Junior, like much of West Virginia, suffered a disastrous flood. It was at the end of winter, and I can recall seeing great chunks of ice coming down Tygarts Valley River. This time there was no selling out and moving on. Anchoring the bridge with steel cables and blasting a threatening ice jam with dynamite, the people stood their ground until the floodwaters had passed. Maybe they were tougher than old Benny Row in this regard, but that's doubtful. More likely, they just liked the spot he had picked for them.