Life in the woods produced men who abandoned breeches and wore loose hunting shirts of linsey woolsey, coarse linen, or dressed deerskins, lengthened their leggings and tied them to their belts by strings, and completed the outfit with deerskin moccasins, while a tomahawk and scalping knife hung from the belt even though they relied on an unreliable rifle. This region's landscape has long been considered especially favorable for livestock raising and one of only three grazing counties in West Virginia. One such shirtman was Thomas Hughes, who came with Pringle's band of settlers to Buckhannon in 1769, drawn by a passion for sport and adventure, and who later hurried to rescue the Flesher family when Native Americans attacked them in 1784 near this location.