Wheeling Daily Intelligencer
July 29, 1864
Shooting Affair in Marion County - On Tuesday last some members of Capt. Alltop's company of Home Guards, stationed at Boothsville, in the southern corner of Marion county, were out on a scout a few miles north of that village, looking up some bushwhackers who were reported to be in the neighborhood. While on or near the premises of one Absalom Knotts, a noted secessionist, one of the Home Guards named Elias Ryan, who had got separated from the others, was shot through the breast and mortally wounded by a bushwhacker named Abel Knotts, son of the aforesaid Absalom. Ryan's comrades, hearing the report, came to his assistance and found him still able to speak. He told them it was Knotts who had shot him, with a revolver, he having come upon Ryan while sitting down, and then decamped.
Nothing has since been seen of Knotts, who had been absent two years in the rebel service. The next day, we understand - though we have no particulars - the old man Knotts, father of Abel, who had doubtless been harboring him, was killed by some members of Alltop's company. Ryan was still living on Wednesday, but the physicians had pronounced his wound mortal.
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: July 1864