Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Revolutionary Daniel Collett

Our ancestor, Revolutionary Daniel Collett, was a private-it says that on his tombstone in Caesar Creek Quaker Cemetery, a mile up New Burlington Road from where I’m sitting. He was not a Quaker; his wife, Mary Haines Collett, moved her Northern Virginia Hopewell Quaker Meeting membership to Caesar Creek Meeting, perhaps in 1812, after her daughter-in-law, who was also her Haines niece, had joined there.

This was also after Mary was re-instated, after getting kicked out of Hopewell Meeting in 1781-or 83, for MOU(marrying out of unity). In 1814, That Daniel and his son, Jonathan, purchased 2356-or 2358 acres, including 80 acres that I now own, which was the west half of VA Military Survey 1994. Because the surveyor, Nathanial Massie, messed up and left a "no-man’s" area there, it did not include the church site or even the site where the Collett cabin at now Pioneer Village was located, on the SE corner of now Collett Road.

That Daniel did not get 4,000 acres in recognition of his Revolutionary service. As a private, he was eligible for 100 acres, but I’ve not found where he received it. I’ve found no such record in Warren or Clinton or Greene County. In 1815, he did buy 971, or so, acres in northern Clinton County adjacent on the east of the first 1,000 acres that our other g-g-g grandfather, Moses McKay, bought from the surveyor, Nathanial Massie, in 1805.

I conclude Revolutionary Daniel and Moses, my two g-g-g grandfathers, must have known each other in Va. Although Daniel and Moses lived maybe 24 miles apart, Mary Haines and her cousins, were all members of Hopewell Quarterly Quaker Meeting, as were the McKay’s, and Haines families were neighbors to both Daniel and Moses, and had already married into both families in Virginia. As I will present in the story, I think Haines families likely caused both of my g-g-g grandparents to come to near here.

Of course, after four McKay’s married four Collett’s here in the 1820’s, their kids started the Collett-McKay Picnic in 1866, on McKay land. The 150th annual picnic is only two years away, so, starting this year, I’ll use some of this to promote that event.

When I first started writing the C-M Picnic story, I proposed it should be called the Haines-Collett-McKay Picnic. Then, after attending the 50th annual Zemri Haines Picnic at Caesar Creek One-Room School site in southern Greene County, I learned that I was related to that group only through the brothers who first came to Burlington, West Jersey, in 1682.

Soon, I learned from Bill Stubbs in Waynesville who had attended it, that my line had started a Haines Reunion at Caesar Creek Quaker Meeting, near our home, in 1850, 16 years before our first Collett-McKay Picnic. Although I’ve seen Haines family members still mowing the grass and maintaining the cemetery, now in the Park, that reunion was stopped when the Meetinghouse was moved to Pioneer Village.

(Now, back to Jonah Eaton who Roger mentioned in the church bulletin-Thanks to being a slave of the Shawnees who let him roam the area, after he was traded to the Virginians, Eaton, who was 15 when he was captured in Pa by Iroquois, served as a scout, probably for George Rogers Clark, and others; and he could and did draw pictures of the terrain for Major Anderson, the VA officer assigned to record the military land grants. Once, while reporting to Anderson in Louisville or Lexington, he got married, but only for a weekend, and he returned to his tree house-near the mouth of , now, Jonah’s Run, except it’s now under the Lake-alone. There’s more.)

Oh, I had not read about Jonah Eaton when I first heard the area near the JR church, including the place where I was born on Brimstone Road, was named "Eaton Township", from 1803 to 1810. I thought it was spelled EDEN, and I told some friends that was where I was born, before the apple. Based on the stories Mom told us while sitting on, now, Grismer’s front porch, Mom would have agreed with me. As you may remember, she said, "This is the one spot in the world where everything is in its right place."

What fun, I’m glad I rambled above. I wrote some stuff I hadn’t remembered earlier.

Howard

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