Author: Ian M. Cunningham
Thomas Cunningham was born about 1748 in Dublin, Ireland. After coming to the Colonies, Thomas made improvements on 400 acres of land in 1772, on a right hand fork of Ten Mile Creek in present-day Marion County, WV, in the vicinity of a place now called Lumberport. .

In April 1776 at the age of 28, Thomas and Phoebe Tucker, aged 15, traveled from Coon's Fort near the West Fork of the Monongahela River, Marion County, WV, to Prickett's Fort, five miles above Coon's Fort, to be married. Phoebe was born in 1761 in England, and is described as having dark red hair, green/blue eyes and a flawless complexion. Captain William Haymond performed the ceremony at Prickett's Fort.

Thomas enlisted in the Virginia Militia on the 5th of May, 1777 at Coon's Fort, which was built by Phillip Coon and son Joseph, under the direction of Captain James Booth. Thomas served for thirteen months as a private in "an expedition against the Indians" on the Western frontier, along the Ohio River. When Captain Booth was killed by Indians near his own house on Booth's Creek on June 16, 1778, the company was led by Lieutenant Edmund Freeman through 1779, then disbanded. In 1781, the company was reactivated, and Thomas spent one additional month at Winchester Barracks, guarding prisoners captured at Yorktown, after Cornwallis' defeat.

By 1784, Thomas had left his lands along Ten Mile Creek and moved north of Shinnston, bordering on the left fork of Bingamon Creek, which eventually became known as Cunningham's Run. It was a branch of the West Fork, south-west of the Monongahela River, where now stands the village of Peora, in the original area of Marion County.

Phoebe Tucker Cunningham survived an Indian Massacre in June, 1785, while Thomas was absent on a trading expedition. Six Wyandot Indians attacked Thomas' cabin while Phoebe and her four children were at dinner. The raiding party made off with her, after killing three of the children in the yard in front of their mother, and a fourth child in arms was killed while the party marched Phoebe 250 miles to a Wyandot Indian village located 20 miles west of present day Columbus, Madison County, Ohio, on Big Darby Creek.

In the fall of 1788, after Phoebe had been held captive in Ohio for more than three years, through the intercession of Simon Girty her case was presented to the British Indian agent Alexander McKee, who furnished the ransom trinkets that freed her. Upon return to civilization, she and Thomas established a new home, had eight more children, and in 1807 removed to Ritchie County, on the South Branch of the Hughes River, at Leatherbarke Creek, west of their former lands. The story of the Indian ordeal is contained in "Chronicles of Border Warfare", by Alexander Scott Withers, published in 1831, commencing on page 272.

The first child born after Phoebe's return from captivity was William, from whom your humble correspondent descends. Rev. William Cunningham was born February 7, 1789, and became a noted Methodist Minister. In 1812 he transferred to Cadiz, Ohio, serving the West Wheeling Charge (Methodist) in 1818. He married Rebecca Johnson in 1821, of Ritchie County, Virginia, and died in 1840 in Homer, Ohio, at the age of 50. William's first son, Wilson Benjamin C. was born in Ohio in 1822, became a teacher, and in his mature years he also became a Methodist Minister, returning to Marion County, Virginia, to establish the Pleasant Valley Church soon after the Civil War. Wilson Benjamin's son, John Cartwright Cunningham, your correspondent's grandfather, gave a lot on the NE corner of the farm on Leatherbarke Creek for the relocated Pleasant Valley Church in 1900.


Thomas died in Ritchie County, June 2nd, 1826, and is buried in the Cunningham Cemetery north of Rt 47 on County Rd 47/11, beside the Joe Frederick Cemetery at the Frederick Mill community, in the Fonzo Post Office District, Ritchie County. While the location of his grave is not exactly known, a monument was erected on the farm in his memory.