Professional Drovers

 

 

 Professional drovers tended to gather their herds from the older settled areas of the region, such as the Ohio River, South Branch, and Greenbrier River valleys, which were the centers of stock-feeding operations. 

In turn, these centers provided local stock markets where mountain graziers could exchange their livestock for the cash to purchase items they did not produce for themselves. 

In 1823, John Howe Peyton, a Staunton, Virginia, attorney, trying a case in Huntersville, then the Pocahontas County seat, wrote to his wife describing his surroundings. “Pocahontas is a fine grazing county,” he observed, “and the support of the people is mainly derived from their flocks of cattle, horses and sheep, which they drive over the mountains to market.” 

The circuit-riding attorney noted that there was little money among the residents “except after these excursions, but they have little need of it— every want is supplied by the happy country they possess, and of which they are as fond as the Swiss of their mountains.’