Virginia Sawmills of the 1900s

Looking over my topics from last week, I realized that the first one, my linguistics interest, would be essentially impossible to research from the standpoint of primary sources (that is, language development is a slow process, so people don’t realize it’s happening, and therefore there are no primary sources on the topic).  Because of that, I’m framing my potential research question in the topic of my genealogy.

There are two big question marks in my family’s history, both of which pertain to my ancestors on my dad’s side of the family.  First off, we know that a man named Jacob Adam Krout (or possibly originally Kraut) immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1749, when he was three years old, on the Ship Fane.   Obviously he was with his parents, as a three year old doesn’t travel alone, but nobody seems to have any record of them.  Two things pique my curiosity about this immigration.  First, why did the Krout (Kraut) family immigrate to the US?  And second, from where in Germany did they come?  We’ve long considered the possibility that one of the Penn brothers, who often traveled to Germany to convince people to move to their state, had an influence on their decision to move, but where they came from remains a mystery to us.

The second big question is much more recent.  My grandfather, Homer Lee Krout (one of many Homer Lee Krouts) was born and raised in Tucker County, West Virginia.  His mother’s name was Alderton, and my family has come across reason to believe that the Alderton family may have been partially or fully in ownership of the sawmill, which at the time, basically ran Tucker County’s economy.  Though the sawmill itself doesn’t exist anymore, it’s history is still well known in the area, and it even has a restaurant and inn named after it.  My question on this topic would be what was the Alderton family’s involvement in the sawmill in Tucker County, West Virginia?

For my primary source I discovered a book called History of Tucker County, West Virginia, which I found through the Library of Congress Digital Collections.  It’s fully readable online

Maxwell, Hu. History of Tucker County, West Virginia. Kingwood, West Virginia: Journal Printing House, 1884. http://archive.org/stream/historyoftuckerc00maxwe

Also through the Library of Congress Digital Collections, I found an 1898 map of Davis, Tucker County, West Virginia (the town where my grandfather was born).

Fowler, Thaddeus.  Davis, Tucker County, West Virginia 1898. 1898. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Accessed 6 Sept. 2012. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/gmd:@field(NUMBER+@band(g3894d+pm009920))

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