Let’s pivot the investigative lens to another deeply rooted piece of Pocahontas County history. Given the complex intersection of early families, land development, and administrative records in the region, we have a few compelling directions we can pursue.
Here are three distinct historical tracks within the county records that are ripe for deep-dive investigation:
Track 1: The Pioneer Lineages of the Upper Greenbrier
We can shift our genealogical focus to trace the migration, land boundaries, and early court records of other fundamental pioneer families who settled the region alongside the Friels.
The Sharp Family: Investigating their early holdings, interactions with frontier defense, and how their lands near Frost and the upper ridges evolved.
The Bennett, Friel, or McLaughlin Intermarriages: Tracking how these distinct family trees used land swaps, dowries, and deed partitions to consolidate social and political influence in the early 1800s.
Track 2: The 1985 Flood Recovery & Industrial Topography
If you want to move closer to modern investigative history, we can examine the environmental and infrastructural evolution of the county seat.
The Marlinton Flood Recovery: Diving into the archival records, municipal decisions, and structural shifts that occurred after the catastrophic 1985 flood remade the face of the town's riverfront and business district.
C&O Railway & Timber Infrastructure: Reviewing the late-19th to early-20th-century rights-of-way, land condemnations, and physical remnants left behind when the iron horse replaced the river drives.
Track 3: Early Board of Education & Public Land Allocations
We can look into the civic foundations of the county by examining how public land and resources were originally carved out for community infrastructure.
Early School Land Deeds: Tracking the 19th-century transactions where local families donated or sold small "one-acre parcels" to the Board of Education to establish the network of district one-room schoolhouses.
The Huntersville-to-Marlinton Administrative Shift: Documenting the legal battle and public transactions that occurred when the county seat was officially moved from Huntersville to Marlinton in the 1890s.
Which direction would you like to take our next investigation?
The Sharp Family: Frontier Defense and Ridge Consolidation
The Sharp family stands alongside the Friels as one of the foundational lineages of the Upper Greenbrier Valley. Their early history provides a classic case study of how pioneer families leveraged military service during the Indian Wars and the American Revolution to secure expansive, strategic land holdings near modern-day Frost and the surrounding mountain ridges.
1. Frontier Defense and the Settlement Footprint
The earliest generation of Sharps in the region—most notably William Sharp and John Sharp—arrived when the Greenbrier Valley was still the volatile western rim of the British Empire.
Frontier Militia Duty: Much like Jeremiah Friel, the early Sharps were heavily active in the Augusta and Botetourt county militias. They served as frontier scouts and long hunters, patrolling the rugged gaps that Native American raiding parties used when descending from the Ohio Valley.
Fort Protection: During the Revolutionary War era (1776–1780), the family was intimately tied to the defense network of the Upper Greenbrier, operating in coordination with garrisons at Fort Warwick (near Green Bank) and local blockhouses. This active-duty scouting gave the family an unparalleled, firsthand knowledge of the regional topography before it was officially surveyed.
2. Securing the Frost and Upper Ridge Holdings
When the war concluded, the family aggressively converted their frontier service and treasury warrants into permanent land entries. While other settlers focused strictly on the flat, alluvial river bottoms, the Sharps recognized the long-term value of the high-elevation valleys and structural benches.
[ KNAPPS CREEK / MARLINTON ]
|
v (Ascending Northeast)
[ THE UPPER GREENBRIER ROAD ]
|
v
[ THE FROST SETTLEMENT ]
(Internal Valley Floor)
/ \
/ \
[ WESTERN RIDGE SPURS ] <-----+ +-----> [ EASTERN MOUNTAIN GAPS ]
(High pasture & timber) (Strategic border trails)
The Frost Basin: The family locked down extensive tracts in the rolling, fertile basin of what would become Frost, West Virginia. This high-altitude valley floor provided excellent soil for grazing and cold-weather agriculture.
Ridge Encirclement: Just as the Moores later did in Indian Draft, the Sharps systematically entered tracts that ran up the flanks of the surrounding mountains. By commanding both the valley floor at Frost and the heavily timbered ridge spurs, they ensured their homesteads were completely self-sustaining, possessing independent access to water runs, high-altitude summer pastures, and dense stands of hardwoods.
3. Antebellum Evolution and Intermarriage
As the 1800s progressed and Pocahontas County was formally carved out in 1821, the Sharp family holdings evolved through an intricate web of intra-family partitions and marriages.
The Friel, Bennett, and McLaughlin Interlocks: The Sharp family lines frequently intersected with neighboring pioneer clans. Land deeds from Huntersville Deed Books 1 through 6 frequently show "conditional lines" being redrawn as a Sharp daughter married a Friel or a Bennett, with ridge parcels serving as dowries or inheritance settlements.
The Coming of the Turnpikes: As early state roads began to snake through Pocahontas County, the Sharps' strategic positioning near Frost placed them directly along the transit corridors connecting the Greenbrier settlements to the mountain passes heading east.
Where to Direct the Investigative Lens?
To map out the exact trajectory of the Sharp family lineage, we can drill down into the early court records in a few different ways:
The Revolutionary War Pension Files & Militia Rosters: To trace the exact scouting routes and actions William and John Sharp took while defending the Upper Greenbrier settlements.
The Early Frost Deed Abstracts: To pull the specific metes, bounds, and natural markers (the old blazed white oaks and ridge crest lines) that defined the original Sharp homesteads before the Civil War.
Which direction would you like to explore next?
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