III. Moses McKay Arrives in Waynesville

In 1805, Moses McKay, Andrew’s son, brought Jane Ridgeway McKay, his 74-year old just widowed mother, to Waynesville. In October, the next year, she married Joseph Cloud, the first recorded minister in Miami Meeting. She died in December, 1806, and is likely buried just south of a more recent marked tombstone in the first row west of the Red Brick Meeting House.

In 1741, Bethany (Bethanah) Haines, (also from Burlington County W. Jersey, I assume, since his father, Richard, and grandmother Haines arrived there in 1682, coming on the ship, "Amity", where his grandfather, also Richard, died during the voyage . They were Quakers when they left England, but his father had been baptized in the Church of England in 1656.) bought 300 acres of Branson’s 1370-acre tract. Bethany’s youngest son, Robert, was born 3 September, 1736. When Robert’s will was proved on 3 February, 1796, he bequeathed the 300 acres his father had given him to his three youngest sons: Amos, Robert, and Nathan, all under 21 years old. He also willed other land to his son, John, and to his son, Noah.

John’s mother was Esther Wright. John owned a mill in Waynesville in March, 1804. He lost a water right law suit in the new Ohio Supreme Court, and moved 14 miles upstream on the Little Miami, where he bought a part of the land of the former Shawnee Village called Old Chillicothe, from Amos Haines, his half-brother.

Margaret Smith was the mother of Robert Haines other kids. They included Noah, who married Anna Silver; they were the parents of Seth Silver Haines, the founder of the bank and Waynesville’s first millionaire. Margaret’s daughter, Mary, married Jacob McKay, Moses’ brother. After Mary died, Jacob married Rachel Ridgeway, Moses’ sister-in-law. In 1816, or so, Moses bought land in Clinton County from Jesse McKay, son of Jacob and Rachel.

The first five Collett-McKay Picnics were held on this land, starting in 1866, on the site where Francis McKay (Moses and Abigail’s son) started Mt Pisgah Methodist Church just after his sisters families started Jonah’s Run Baptist Church in 1838, and where he is buried. The next picnics have been held a half mile SE on the south side of, now, Gurneyville Road, on the 1,000-acre land that Moses bought from the surveyor, Nathanial Massie, in 1805.

Amos Haines was the next son. I think he was an Indian agent. Robert was next.

Then, son, Nathan Haines, married Rachel McKay, oldest daughter of Moses McKay. They moved to the east side of Caesar Creek about 1815, about the same time Moses and Abigail McKay and family moved to the west side, a mile north of Harveysburg. Nathan/Rachel’s son( I forget his name), got that farm and one to the east which included the site of Haines School, ½ mile north of Underwood’s on Brimstone Road where Mom and Aunt Sara and their sisters started to school.

Howard