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White Oak Settled

This stream took it's name from the profusion of valuable White Oak timber upon its banks. It was named by Adam Weaver, a surveyor of Baltimore, who laid this section off in blocks before it was permanently settled.

Barton Hudkins was the first pioneer to find a home here. He came from what is now Barbour county, near 1826, and erected his dwelling where L. S. Clayton now lives, and after a brief stay, removed to the Bond's creek side, and settled at the forks of the Parkersburg and St. Mary's turnpike, where his life came to a close. He was of English-Irish origin, his father having come from England and settled in the Maryland colony. The father later removed to Randolph county (W.) Virginia, where Barton was born in 1773, and where he grew to manhood, and married Miss Naomi Ingraham, who was ten years his junior. She was also a native of Randolph county, but was descended from a prominent Scotch family by the name of Slavens of Highland county, Virginia. He (Barton) was a soldier of the war of 1812, and had been a resident of Harrison--now Barbour-- county for a number of years before coming to Ritchie. He died at his old homestead on Bond's creek, and his wife spent her last hours at St. Mary's, but both rest at Highland.

Their children were as follows: Mrs. Rachel (S. G.) Hall, and Bazil Hudkins, Highland; Mrs. Margaret (Arthur) Hickman, Tollgate; Mrs. Elizabeth (Archibald) Wilson, Pennsboro; Mrs. Edith (Simon) Davis, Tyler county; Mrs Sarah (Thomas) Dare, Parkersburg; and Allen Hudkins, Nebraska. All have joined the throng over there, but quite a number of the grand-children are still inentified among the older citizens of the county. Among them are B. H. Wilson, of Goff's; Mrs. Love Prunty, and Mrs. Eveline Bee, and J. M. Wilson, Pennsboro; John S. Hall, the blind poet of St. Mary's, is also a grandson, and the late Mrs. Elizabeth McGregor, of Highland was a grand-daughter.

History of Ritchie County, by Minnie Kendall Lowther, 1910, pp. 347-8.