Ralph Wanless

Blacksmith, Revolutionary soldier and settler of the Hills above Huntersville, in what is now Pocahontas County, West Virginia; father of Elizabeth (Wanless) Hatten.

He was born in England. His mother Margaret was left a widow there; by the family’s account, written down from her letters by Lillian Kennerly Craig, his father died “after a long illness” just as the family were to sail, the children were bound out to “Masters,” and she won them back and brought them to Virginia in 1772, to the Calfpasture at Deerfield, Augusta County (source). That story is family tradition.

He served in the Revolution from the Calfpasture. His pension declaration of 7 Aug 1832, as Chalkley abstracted it, “refers to service at three times, one of them being under Capt. George Poage at Clover Licks” (source). Norman’s summary adds that he was drafted under Captain McCoy and discharged at Richmond, was nine months at Norfolk, and served under Captain Buchanan and under George Poage “as an ‘Indian spy’ at Clover Lick in Bath County” (source).

On 30 Sept 1788 he married Lucretia (“Crissy”) Nichols, daughter of Levan Nichols, in Augusta County. From 1794 he is on the personal property tax lists for the part of Bath County that became Pocahontas County, and he lived near Mount Tabor, in the Hills five miles north of Huntersville, until he died in 1842. Price’s Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County (1901) remembers the family as smiths: “Most all the Wanless brothers were industrious and skillful workers in iron, acquired from their father, who seems to have been a genius in that line of industry … When Ralph Wanless and his sons wrought at the anvil and caused the primitive forests to ring with their strong and resonant striking of hammers and sledges, their business was of essential importance” (source). Family memory made him “nearly seven feet tall,” and his Clayton nephews called him “Uncle Wandless” (Craig).

Norman lists twelve children: William (1789), Margaret (1789, wife of James Sharp), Lydia (wife of John Vick), Elizabeth (1797, wife of Thomas Hatten), Ralph (1799), Mary “Polly” (1800), James (1801), Ann (1803), Stephen (1805), John (1807), Thomas (1810) and Levan (1813). Rev. James Wanless was a Methodist local preacher who held up John the Baptist against the fashions: “How would John the Baptist have looked in a swallow tailed coat, pointed toed shoes, pipe, whiskey bottle, and stovepipe hat, et cetera!” (Price).

Research: research/hatten/Hatten_Philbrick_Marvin.md.

Open questions

• His will (Pocahontas County, 1842) and his pension file (NARA M804) should name his daughters, and would prove Elizabeth Hatten one of them.
• His father’s name: “Ralph” rests on family tradition and the tree.
• Where he is buried: Craig records two traditions, Pocahontas County and Green Valley, Virginia.