Under Mr. Wickham, the assistant engineer is Big John, a life convict. John is colored man whose sentence for life was passed 14 years ago for a crime the penalty of which now in the United States, would average, say 14 years. In giving me his history, all the officers agreed that John was the most faithful, reliable and honest prisoner they ever had. He was here when the present prison was built. He worked on the walls, cut the first stone and did more work, and all in workmanlike manner, than any outside free employee. Once, I am told, John with another prisoner was taken by a guard to the pumping station at the river. The guard was compelled to go back to the prison, I believe, and left John and his fellow convict, believing they would remain. The officer was detained longer than he expected, and one of the prisoners ran off. John ran to the prison and reported the escape of the prisoner. Of course, the man is treated as well as it is permitted. I made a rough estimate of the amount of money saved to the State by John's labor as mechanic and engineer, and arrived at the conclusion that he had saved not less than $10,000 since his incarceration. At all events it would have cost that much or more to have employed that amount of equally skilled labor. Before John's time the prison was surrounded by a high wooden fence. In 1867 several members of the notorious

JENNINGS GANG,

among whom was Frank Jennings, son of old John Jennings, Wetzel county's notorious marauder. Frank Jennings was the leading spirit in all the mutinies and insubordinations of the prison, and one night during a terrible storm, in which the fence blew down, he led twenty-six prisoners in a dash for liberty. They were fired upon and pursued and all captured except Jennings himself, who escaped to the old haunts of the gang in Wetzel county, on Coal run, but a few miles back of New Martinsville. The house of old John Jennings was always an objective point to escaped prisoners, and it was so carefully guarded, and having secret means of egress and entrance, that very few were ever captured. The crimes of this gang, John Jennings, his four boys, William, Thomas, Frank and Jack, Godard, Barcus, Cannon, Parker, Willard, the Van Horn woman and others, are still fresh in the minds of the older residents of Wetzel, Tyler, Marshall, Pleasants and other counties. The pursuit of the gang, capture of several of them, and finally the descent of the "Red Men," after a series of horrible murders committed by the gang, upon the lair of the leader, old John, and his death after a terrible struggle, their descent upon Lynn Camp, the burning of the houses inhabited by the gang, and the exodus of outlaws and criminal refugees by the light of the torch and flame of burning houses is matter well known to many.