A Winter Promise at Kanawha Falls

“I want you to let me have that big poplar tree that stands by the ferry.”

Pull up a chair, friends, and let’s take a look at a little piece of our local history from a cold winter long ago. This letter, written on January 18th, 1877, comes from J. A. Patteson at Kanawha Falls. He was writing to Laben Gwinn about some timber he was eager to get his hands on—cherry, walnut, and a particularly large poplar tree. It’s a simple business note, but it paints a picture of a time when the world moved a lot slower and nature was the one in charge.

Looking at the paper itself, you can almost feel the chill Patteson was describing. It’s a single sheet of lined paper, now aged to a warm, antique yellow. Up in the top left, there’s a faint, elegant crest pressed right into the paper—a mark of quality from the stationer. You can see the heavy folds where it was tucked away, and dark brown stains mar the signature, maybe from a damp hand or a stray drop of coffee as someone read it by a lantern.

Back then, the weather wasn’t just a topic of conversation; it was a barrier. Patteson mentions that he’d been wanting to send a man named John to check on the trees, but the river was frozen solid. In those days, if the ferry couldn’t cross, the whole world stopped. He had his eye on that big poplar by the ferry, likely a landmark many folks recognized. It reminds us that before our modern bridges, we were all at the mercy of the ice and the current.

There’s something heartening about a letter like this. It tells us that even in the middle of a bitter winter, folks were planning for the future, thinking about the fine furniture or sturdy homes those trees would eventually become. It’s a lesson in patience and persistence that we can still take to heart today—knowing that even when the river is frozen, the spring will come and the work will continue.

Original Transcription