Presumptive Settlers

 I just received the book Pennsylvania Land Records by Donna Bingham Munger.  I bought the book during the August 2023 Pennsylvania Genealogical Society's August 2023 event.  Ms. Munger hosts a website that can be found at:

https://donnabinghammunger.com/

By serendipity as I browsed through the book I noticed a great map inside the front cover that shows county boundaries through the years.  

But even more exciting was an article on page 65 on what she calls presumptive settlers or squatters.  I want to share this page with my McNeely group as well as my Morrison group....and any other Scotch-Irish researchers that I know.  Ms. Munger says on page 65: "Even as early as 1726 James Logan, William Penn's proprietary secretary, noted the consequence...."I doubt not but there are at this time near a hundred thousand acres possess'd by persons who resolutely sett down and improve without any manner of Right or Pretence to it. " 

and "The land lottery of 1735 was perhaps the first official program aimed at squatters"....because the lottery of 1735 attracted few squatters, the proprietaries next attempted a program of coercion.  The Land Office promised eviction for everyone who had not obtained a warrant or paid their purchase price by March 1739.  Again this was not complied with in significant numbers.

However, it would seem to me that it might have been one of many catalysts to the settlement of the Shenandoah Valley by white settlers which seems to have started about: "There were few settlers in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley until after 1732."  My McNeely seem to have moved up the Valley before 1736 when George's daughter married John Dickey.  

Morrison family in Cabell County in what is now WV

I thought that I had already put the following information on the blog site, but I could not find it this morning when I looked to print out maps and etc to take with me on a jaunt close to home where the Morrison and Hensley family lived in the very early days of Cabell County.  There were four of us.  Amanda Morrison who is a dna match to me, her mother Judy, and George Swann.  All but Judy share the early Cabell County couple of William Morrison and his wife, Rachel Witcher.  

I found a notation in the Lambert Collection at the Marshall University Special Collections several years ago:

Patrick Henry Morrison was the son of William Morrison Sr.  Patrick Henry Morrison was also the 

son-in-law of Thomas Ward.  He married Anna Ward who had first been married to a man with surname Scales. However I have not found proof that her fist husband was related to Noah Scales.

So we know that William Morrison and his wife, Rachel Witcher were living at the mouth of Booten's Creek.

 have a typed account that is written by Patrick Henry Morrison, 80 years old, September 22, 1910.  This is also found in the  Lambert Collection at the Marshall University Special Collections.  The Lambert Collection has now been digitalized.

MS 76 Box 11 Notebook 10 page 166

I had assumed that William and his wife, Rachel, were buried on the piece of land that Patrick Henry Morrison had bought 16 February 1816.  But it seems that a bit more research needs to be done to be sure.  Today's jaunt showed up another place that Patrick Henry may have lived.  It seems that much of the land that lies between the road labelled 42 and the Guyandotte River belonged to the Morrison family.  We need to look at the dates that the land was bought.  William died  around 1819.  George has told me that he is found on the tax book before that date.  But Rachel is found on the tax book after that date.  I am doing this from memory and need to double check dates and information.  And when did Patrick Morrison move to the land that we viewed on down the road?  What does 100 acres look like on a map?  Does that go from the mouth of Booten's Creek to the church we looked at and beyond?  Is there a later deed for more land?  where is the grave yard that they bull dozed to put in the trailer?  How much land did the Morrison family have along the Guyandotte River?  Was the original cabin just above the graveyard on which the Sadler family now lives?  How old was Patrick Henry when he bought the land on which William Witcher now lived?  When did William Morrison, Rachel and their family move to Cabell County.  It was after 1809 when the sold their land on the Pigg River in Pittsylvania County to Harmon Cook.  And before 1816 when Patrick Henry Morrison bought the land on the Guyadotte river on which William Morrison is now living.  How old are the children of William and Rachel?  Elizabeth did not come with them ....she was already married to Solomon Hensley.  She married him c. 1809 as Bird was born c 1810-1811.  Patrick Henry was born c. 1791 using census to approximate.  So he was about 25 when he bought the land.  The KYOVA information suggests that Noah Scales was not Anna's father-in-law, but her husband.  That the sale of this property to the Morrison family was from Anna's husband and her father.  If this is true, Patrick Henry was most likely still living at home with his parents when he bought the land.   William and Rachel's son William had married Elizabeth Jones in Pittsylvania County.  Billy Morrison lived on Cavill Creek.  John Tyler also seems to have lived on Cavill Creek