Much Knollinger history was and is centered on Boggs Run, near Benwood, West Virginia.
The item below, compiled by Virginia Jones Harper, is an accurate description of the early
occupation of the area.

A History of Boggs Run

Captain John Boggs first arrived in the Ohio Valley in 1774, after being
stationed for a time at Catfish Camp (now Washington, PA). He settled in an
area just south of Wheeling, between acreage already claimed by James
Caldwell and William McMechen, with a picturesque stream flowing through
it. This stream became known as Boggs Run. At the time, this area (Wheeling
and the surrounding settlements) was the westernmost point occupied by
white men. Across the Ohio River was the Indians' favorite hunting grounds.

Shortly after the Boggs family settled in the Wheeling area, a directive
from Fort Pitt declared that war with the Indians was imminent, and Capt.
Boggs helped with the urgent construction of Fort Henry. Then, during the
first year of the Revolutionary War, Capt. Boggs was ordered to harvest his
crops and move his family 14 miles inland to Rice's Fort on Buffalo Creek.
When 1777 became known as the year of the Bloody Indian War, the Boggses
and others housed at Rice's Fort were evacuated again to Catfish Camp for
safety. Captain Boggs did return to Wheeling to aid in the defense of
Wheeling, but arrived too late and found the settlement around the fort
burned to the ground. His good friend, David Shepherd, who had a large
claim at "The Forks" of Wheeling Creek (about six miles upstream from the
Ohio), had left his property to take command of Fort Henry. When all was
said and done, he returned to find all but his gristmill burned and his
elder son and son-in-law dead.

Captain Boggs' daughter, Lydia, was to become a force in the pioneer
community, and later a woman of national importance. She married Moses
Shepherd, son of David Shepherd. After the Shepherds returned to The Forks,
the Boggs family was transferred to Wolfe's Fort, when Lydia really wanted
to return to Boggs Run. She had a deep passion for the land her family
owned, and loved the Wheeling area.

Lydia and Moses Shepherd

In 1781, Wolfe's Fort was in peril of Indian attack, and Capt. Boggs moved
his family to Fort Henry in Wheeling. On the morning of their departure,
Lydia's older brother, Billy, was captured by Indians. Lydia and her mother
raced to Newals' Blockhouse, while Capt. Boggs and his son James stayed to
defend the fort and attempt to rescue Billy. The attack was aborted, but no
sign was found of Billy. Only in 1783 did he return to Boggs Run, relating
the tale of how the Indians had held him prisoner for three months before
trading him to the British in Detroit for whiskey and trinkets. He spent
the remainder of time as a British prisoner. Finally, he was released in a
prisoner exchange. Jane Boggs died from a lengthy illness that same night.

After her mother's death, much of the work of a pioneer woman fell to young
Lydia. The family had a few slaves who did the field work, but Lydia spent
time on Boggs Run, along with her younger sister, eleven year old Martha,
preparing meals, churning butter, tanning leather, grinding corn, caring
for the younger children, feeding the animals, washing clothes in the run,
weaving, sewing, and otherwise managing the entire household. This went on
until Capt. Boggs married Sadie, a good-natured young widow with two sons,
whom he had met in Washington Town.

The wedding of Moses Shepherd and Lydia Boggs was the biggest social event
seen on the frontier. Everyone attended dressed in whatever finery they
had, and Lydia wore a gown of black silk, which Moses had brought her from
back East. She knew the color was inappropriate, but it was silk and no one
else had such a gown, since the normal wardrobe consisted of hide and
homespun. All the pioneer families were there... the McMechens, the
Caldwells, all the Zanes, the Wetzels and many others from Wheeling, West
Liberty, Grave Creek and Shepherd's Forks.

After their first rough cabin at Shepherd's Forks, Lydia and Moses became
increasingly prosperous, and in 1798 built the stone mansion located on
Wheeling Creek, at the foot of what is now known as 29th Street Hill in Elm
Grove. Shepherd Hall was the most astonishing structure anyone had seen in
the area, and was Lydia's home for the rest of her life. The mansion is now
home to the Osiris Shrine Temple and is used for receptions and the like.
Lydia and Moses grew in political influence, and even had the National Road
surveyed to run directly by their front gate, despite the fact that it
would require more bridges that way. The Stone Bridge and the "S" Bridge
still standing in the area are results of this whim of Lydia's.

It was the year that Shepherd Hall was built that Captain John Boggs sold
the property at Boggs Run and went on to Ohio with his third wife, Mary
(Sadie had died in a fall), and one of his sons and the Barr boys. With the
peace with the Indians, settlers were flooding the area, and Wheeling and
the surrounding area were becoming too populated for a man with "land
fever," as Capt. Boggs freely admitted he had.

Boggs Run is now an area of Benwood, West Virginia, in Marshall County and
is not to be confused with Boggs Hill Road in Ohio County, which is named
for Lydia's brother, Billy. Originally it was considered a settlement
associated with Wheeling, which is in Ohio County, so much of what happened
to the inhabitants of Boggs Run took place in Ohio County, making locating
facts and documents a "two-county" procedure. The site of the Boggs
homestead is believed to be in a widening of the bottomland along the Run
about a mile upstream from the Ohio River. This area likely bears little
resemblance to the area Captain John Boggs and his ambitious daughter,
Lydia, would have known. The meadow where their cattle grazed is gone,
bisected by Route 2, and filled with retail businesses. "The Run" is lined
with homes all the way up to where Boggs Run Road meets Route 86. My father
lives in a small apartment right by the northbound Boggs Run off ramp from
Route 2, and he can tell stories of Boggs Run going back to the 1920s, and
can recount stories told to him about the huge coal mine explosion that
killed so many men in 1924, the year he was born. The dead were stacked at
the fork of Boggs Run and Browns Run, about two miles upstream from the
Ohio.

Source: Time Steals Softly by Virginia Jones Harper