NOTE B.
There seems to be a wide-spread error, as to the date of this occurrence.
Within recent years, several writers have sprung up who pertinaciously
insist that the "first battle of Wheeling," was on the twenty-sixth of September,
1777. Another gentleman, delving among the old records of Ohio
county, thought he had discovered the true and unquestionable date in one
of the early order books of said county, and says that the siege commenced
on the 27th of September. Convinced, from information in our possession,
that these were both wrong, we determined to right the matter, and establish
the truth. This we have found a most difficult task. To upset an
authenticated record, we knew would be a troublesome matter; but feeling not
unlike Sir Walter Raleigh when he burned his history, because a fact which he
was personally cognizant of had been contradicted, we resolved to go no
further until we had investigated the case most thoroughly, and could satisfy
ourselves most fully. All the evidence at hand tended most conclusively to
prove that the first, and not the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh of September
was the day upon which the siege commenced. But how would this evidence
weigh against the order referred to,[34]
was the question? With much labor
and investigation, we are at length able to reconcile the apparent discrepancy.
Sergeant Jacob Ogle was not killed at Wheeling, as the record would
seem to imply, although it does not say so; but was one of the two who
escaped with his kinsman, Captain Ogle. Here then, the mystery ceases,
and the record and the facts perfectly agree. Sergeant Jacob Ogle, we
repeat, escaped the terrible massacre in front of the fort at Wheeling, on the
first day of September, only to fall in the deplorable ambuscade at Grave
creek narrows, September twenty-seventh, 1777!
These facts we have derived from an undoubted source. The late Mr.
Hedges of this county frequently stated that Sergeant Ogle was one of the
party who fell with Foreman.
