WVU Jackson’s Mill marked Halloween with a story from its past, recounting a deadly dispute at the gristmill and the ghost stories that later grew around the property. The site shared the historical account on Oct. 31, while making clear that no haunting has been confirmed.
A dispute at the mill
According to the account, Andrew Jackson was the youngest child of Colonel Edward Jackson, who founded the site, and an uncle of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Only three years apart in age, Andrew and Thomas grew close while Thomas lived at Jackson’s Mill.
Andrew later moved to Indiana before returning toward the end of the Civil War. He rented the gristmill and sawmill from his sister Catherine, known as Katy, who was administering their brother Cummins’ estate. Cummins had died in California in 1849.
The post cites early Jackson biographer Roy Bird Cook’s account of a confrontation in the summer of 1865. Andrew had hired a mill worker named Hamback, whose name also appears in sources as Hanback, Handback and Barney Hamback.
In Andrew’s version of the dispute, criticism of Hamback’s work led to an argument and threats. Andrew said Hamback returned the next day, picked up lumber and advanced toward him inside the gristmill. Andrew struck him on the head with a piece of angle iron. According to the site’s account, Hamback rode home and died a few days later.
The post says Andrew was arrested on a murder charge and jailed first in Weston, then in Clarksburg. He apparently escaped around September 1866 and hid with friends. He died of typhoid fever on Oct. 31, 1867, and was buried in the family cemetery at Jackson’s Mill.
The family ghost story
The Halloween post also recounts recollections attributed to a woman identified as Mrs. Robert H. Pritchard, whose family lived at the property in the 1870s.
She described hearing mill machinery running at night, only for family members to find it still when they investigated. After iron and debris from the yard were stored in a loft above the kitchen, she recalled tapping on walls and books being thrown from library shelves.
A visiting relative, Aunt Atkins, reportedly described a silent man walking through the house during the night. The family later asked John Atkins, who operated the blacksmith shop, to remove the iron from the loft.
In Pritchard’s telling, Atkins found a stained piece he believed was the iron used in the fatal confrontation and forged it into a horseshoe. She said the disturbances stopped after the horseshoe was fitted to a local animal. The family believed the apparition had been Andrew Jackson looking for the iron.
Jackson’s Mill presented those experiences as a ghost story, not a confirmed haunting, alongside its account of the tragedy behind the tale.