The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1867-11-15
DEATH OF A REMARKABLE
WOMAN.
Mrs. Lydin Roggs Shepherd Cruger.

Mrs Lydin Roggs Shepherd Cruger
To the Editor of the Cincinnati Commercial.
There has just died, near Wheeling,
West Virginia, \ very remarkable per-
sonage, and one of the historical char
acters of the West.
Mrs. Lydia Boggs Shepherd Cruger,
or Lydia Boggs Shepherd, was as well
known to the last generation in the
West as any woman in Virginia or the
Mississippi Valley. The iannals of the
country furnish no parallel to her case
in point of longevity, usefulness, energy
and unimpaired intellectual powers up
to the close of her one hundredh gear!
Born in Berkeley county, Virginia,
she was brought West by her father,
Captain John Bogss, when mere child;
married at the age of seventeen to
Moses Shepherd, whose father, Colonel
Shepherd, of Shepherdstown, Virginia,
was one of the first settlers in the neigh
borhood of Wheeling; settled at the
forks of Wheeling, where Colonel Shep-
herd had built blockhouse. She be-
came the leading and reigning woman
of her times-a period running far back
into the past centHry, and far beyond
the memory of the "oldest inhabitant."
1t requires no pen of romance to throw
around her history the allurements of
fiction. She was history itself, q living
epitome of life's varied progress and
development in the great Valley of the
West. From 1774 to 1867, she lived at
or near the forks of Wheeling, an active
participant, from girlhood to matured
womanhood-through long and event
full life--of all the stirring incidents of
frontier residence. In reclaiming the
wilderness and organizing civil govern
ment west of the Mountains, beating
back the savages, and building up
towns, cities and communities 20.
An Of which she saw, and part of which she
was"
This remarkable woman took more
than an active part. Whe she came
across the mountains, the wilderness
swarmed with Indians, who contested,
inch by inch, the intrusion of the whites,
and their privilege to live. The Titans,
who have left the impress of their great
and imperishable names on river, hill
and running brook, occupied the land,
and claimed it as inalienably their
own. The pioneer believed that he had
some rights, and determined to main
tain them. The sequence was carnage,
conhagration and death! Still, the set
tlement was effected, and the timid girl
ripened into blooming womanhood
amid scenes of strife and blood, such as
few border settlements have ever wit
messed.
Shepherds Fort was place of neigh
borhood rendezvous, but in the time of
general strife the little stockade was
abandoned, and the indwellers fed to
abe more formidable post at Wheeling,
which was called Fort Henry in honor
of Virginia's patriotic Governor. 1t
was in this fort Miss Boggs witnessed
the scene she so particularly narrates
in De Hass' History of the Indian Wars
in Western Virginia.
Soon after the evacuation of Fort
Henry, Miss Boggs was married to Moses
Shepherd, and took mp her permanent
residence at the forks of Wheeling Greek,
one of the most pleasant and attractive,
and valuable localities west of the
Mountains. Here she continued to re-
side, with almost unvarying fortune,
M to the day of her death, for one hun
dred and ten years! What history is
wrapped up in that single Lifetime
One hundred years ago, there was not q
single white settlement from the Ohio
to the Pacific. One hundred years ago,
the valley of the Mississippi, now teem-
ing with millions of people, was an
illimitable wilderness, as little known
and appreciated as when Ponce de Leon
sought here for that fountain of peren-
NAL life which was to restore to his
veteran limbs the vigor and elasticity
of youth. One hundred years ago, We
were q feeble Colonial dependence; now
an overshadowing power, scarcely sur
passed by any nation on earth. Did
the Kaleidoscope in its magic changes
ever work greater marvelsf