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.