Note 41 — PART II
Reading edition
The Biggs family was an important one in the pioneer annals of Western Virginia. The father migrated from Maryland, and about 1770 settled on Short Creek above Wheeling. There were six sons noted as Indian fighters of whom General Benjamin Biggs was best known, having served in Lord Dunmore’s War and that of the Revolution, and acting as brigadier-general of Ohio County militia during the later Indian wars. His papers form part of the Draper Manuscripts Collection, belonging to the Wisconsin Historical Society. Probably the Colonel Biggs mentioned by Harris was Joseph, he having bought one of the first lots in Elizabeth (now Moundsville).
Joseph Biggs took part as a boy in the siege of Fort Henry, at Wheeling; defended a besieged blockhouse in Ohio, opposite Wheeling, in 1791; and finally died in Ohio about 1833. He claimed to have been in seventeen Indian fights in and about the neighborhood of Wheeling.—Ed.