by Nathan Schwepler

Created on: June 30, 2008

The Victory of Chief Flaming Arrow

Tad and Sal were too different to have so many things in common.

First, their names.

Tad was actually Thaddeus. Sal was really Salali. She usually won the weirdest name contest, but Thaddeus was a close second.

They got the same results in the race to Wellsville. Sal's was a direct descendant of Wellsville's first family, but Tad's family got there just a few years later. And that is why they both had to tell the story of Wellsville's first fire.

Tad's Story
Wellsville's First Fire

On the third Thursday in February, two more stones fell out of the old church wall. That got Grandma talking about rocks again. Not that Grandma was a geologist or ever studied stones. Her interest was in the masons that build her historic town. Her grandson, Tad, enjoyed her stories almost as much as she did.

"It made me a bit sad to hear that stones keep falling from the church wall. Those stones have been in the same place in that same wall since the second Thaddeus Matthias Wellborn put them there in 1863."

"I didn't know that he built the church."

"Most of it has been rebuilt, but stubborn people kept the stones of that one wall just where Thaddeus put them. And that old wall in the church is the oldest wall in Wellsville."

"The Wellborns built the fort too right?" asked Tad.

"Well no. The fort was already there. Jethro Burnswell and his family built that as soon as they got here."

"But the first Thaddeus was with them?"

"Right. They all came here together to start a new settlement. The Wellborns wanted to build a stone wall, so it would be strong. But the Burnswells wanted to build the wall out of wood, because the stone wall would take too long to build. And they were right."

"Who was right? The Burnswell family or the Wellborn family?"

"They were both right. The stone wall took too long and the wooden wall burned down."

They came here together in the summer of 1792 and decided on this spot for the settlement. They started arguing about the wall and they didn't settle it. The Burnswells started chopping down trees and quickly built a wall for the fort. The Wellborns started looking for stone. After a week they began to cut rock and haul it back to the fort. It took the whole winter to finish that wall.

The next summer, Indians attacked the fort.

Henry Wellborn, the son of Thaddeus, had been missing for three months. In early June, he ran into the fort dressed like an Indian. "Quick guys. I just risked my life to escape from the Indians and warn you. They are

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