tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14418428672853936792024-03-05T04:27:29.372-05:00Howard's History & GenealogyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-15611317273620081692013-05-01T13:31:00.001-04:002013-05-01T13:36:54.218-04:00Thanks, Dad!<div dir="ltr">
<span style="line-height: 115%;">Thanks, Dad.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">My wife, Barbara, and I just returned from clearing a fence-row on, now, our Doster Road farm ten miles away. I brought home a piece of old, silver, not rusted, barb wire. I'm writing this story to share with our kids and grandkids, who will become the eighth generation of our family to own some of that farm.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">Stringing that wire above all his fences was one of the last jobs my, then, over 80-year old Dad did. I remember he could still drive his little Massey-Ferguson tractor, including along the fence rows. Soon after Dad died at age 85, my brother sold the cows. I doubt that some of the fields had cows in them after Dad put up the new wire.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">It didn't matter. Dad had faithfully fixed up the fences that he, himself, had constructed, soon after he and his brother bought the mostly wooded land in 1926 from their cousins for perhaps $12 per acre. He was one of the last farmers around here to have cleared most of his own farm.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">I'm now 80. Although I'm still playing eight softball games a week, and Mom didn't decide to die until she was 105, I know we'll not harvest the young walnut trees Barbara and I pruned at the farm again this spring. That's OK. Perhaps some of our kids and grandkids will tell their grandkids we had fun as we were also thinking of them.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">D. Howard Doster (April 30, 2013)<span style="font-size: 16pt;"></span></span></div>
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Howard Dosterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09571696811742674875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-77265920879278772932013-04-01T19:27:00.000-04:002013-04-23T22:16:01.798-04:00McKee, Not McKayHi Terry, <br />
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As I mentioned, my g-g-g grandfather, Revolutionary Daniel Collett, never a Quaker, was buried there in 1835, not far from the now brush and trees. Now, I do wonder if his wife, Mary Haines Collett, my Quaker g-g-g grandmother, who died in 1826, may have been buried there, where she was a member, as was her daughter-in-law, Rebecca Haines Collett, who died in 1847. Oh, I have not found where Daniel/Mary’s son, Moses Collett, Rebecca’s husband, who died in 1823, was buried. Moses and Rebecca lived near now Roxanna, but I haven’t found where either was buried, and I’ve looked in books for Greene, Clinton and Warren counties.<br />
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Also, I haven’t found where my Sexton g-g, or g-g-g, grandfather was buried. I showed you a tombstone reference to him in Caesar Creek cemetery. Somewhere-I think in McKay records, since there was a Sexton/McKay/Steer marriage in Virginia, and that’s how I sorted out how my dad, William Sexton Doster’s, grandmother Sexton got to Wilmington after marrying a McCune in Clermont County- I’ve seen that he was buried in Greene County, but his name is not in cemetery records there. Caesar Creek cemetery is in Warren county, but close to Clinton and Greene Counties.<br />
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Now, I wonder if anyone, say, any Haines, has a cemetery record for Caesar Creek Cemetery. I know that my dad had one for Jonah’s Run Baptist cemetery on SR 73, just east of the Warren/Clinton County line. He gave it to Mabel Terry when she became a trustee in about 1967. But, she died soon after, and her heirs didn’t return it.<br />
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Hey, wouldn’t Caesar Creek cemetery be a good place to hold a tombstone restoration clinic like the one John attended with you last September near Red Lion?<br />
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No, none of my relatives are as good looking as your Reverend McKee below.<br />
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What fun,<br />
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Howard Doster<br />
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Hi Howard,<br />
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Happy Easter!<br />
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Enjoyed the visit to the Caesar's Creek MM Burying Ground. Glad we could find the neglected and IGNORED markers.<br />
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I checked the genealogical society's list and Jesse Arnold is not on it. Could be that most of the others in the overgrown area were not read or photographed, either. I'll try to speak with Chester Dunn about it, but his memory may not be that good. Mine probably wouldn't be.... <grin><br />
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So, my mystery people whose photographs are in my G Grandmother's (Springboro) photo album are McKees, not McKays, so I'll have to keep looking.<br />
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As I said, I sent them to Thomas Hamm at Earlham College and he couldn't find any record of them, so they may not have been Quakers. However, my G Grandmother was a practicing Quaker to her end, in 1924.<br />
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So, here are the pictures (c. 1875) on the slim hope that you hear some reference to them, sometime.<br />
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Terry Easton<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-91154159691674109802013-01-23T19:09:00.000-05:002013-04-23T22:35:19.108-04:00Jonah's Run 175th Anniversary<div class="WordSection1">
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This year is 175th anniversary of Jonah’s Run Baptist Church, started by Collett’s. Including Collett, McKay, McCune, and Doster stories, I am writing stories about various other of our family members as they related to the church, including how Quaker Daniel Underwood, my mother’s father, never a Baptist, came to a Jonah’s Run Box Social where he bought Wilhelmina Hahn’s box. She was the new teacher at the Collett school south of Katy’s Lane, and she was staying with Collett "girls". Anyway, Dan and Wilhelmina soon married. <br />
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If Jane Desotelle sends me more info about her, I want to include some stories about Matilda Downing Underwood. Her first Underwood husband built her the Tower House to the east of Jonah’s Run. Her second Underwood husband owned the rest of the land adjacent to JR on the north side of SR 73. She was a recorded Quaker minister, a temperance and women suffrage leader.<br />
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I’ve just discovered that second generation Daniel Collett, one of the founders, bought 4+ acres, on both sides of the then Waynesville to Wilmington State Road, that apparently included the future site of Jonah’s Run church and cemetery, from Levi Lukens, the first Quaker to come here from Northern VA in 1802 or so, in 1839, just after the church was founded. In 1907, his two surviving daughters sold the 1+ acres on the north side of the road-where the church was built in 1839 and the cemetery was almost full before 1870 when the Collett’s quit burying there -of his 1839 purchase to the Jonah’s Run Baptist Trustees for $1.00. <br />
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My brother, John Doster, is working with others to clean up the cemetery again. After looking at grave markers and at the Howard Collett blueprint, I drew the following possible conclusions: I concluded why Revolutionary Daniel Collett, never a Quaker, was buried at Caesar Creek Quaker Meeting Cemetery (a mile east of where I’m writing this at, now, our Moses McKay House). The reason? He had six Quaker daughter-in-laws, including a granddaughter-in-law. Some were members at Caesar Creek. Daniel died in 1835. In 1839, some of those Quaker daughter-in-laws persuaded their Collett husbands to put two Quaker-style front doors on their new Jonah’s Run Baptist Church.<br />
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Where was Quaker Mary Haines Collett, Revolutionary Daniel’s wife, buried in 1826? Her sister-in-law, Sarah Collett Ashby, died in 1824. She was buried on the farm, and then her body was moved to Springfield Quaker Meeting cemetery, 1+ miles SE of the SE corner of the original Collett land. I’ve not found Mary’s name listed in any cemetery records in Clinton, Warren, or Greene Counties. I wonder if her body was buried a half mile west of Jonah’s Run, on Hatton’s Hill, 300 feet north of now SR 73, in the SW corner of Survey 770. Mom told me she used to pick wild flowers there while her father, Daniel Underwood, mowed that cemetery. <br />
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About 1821, neighbors, likely including Collett’s, built a public meeting house there, "so Betsy Gaddis could have a Presbyterian service". The Gaddis family had bought the SW corner of that survey 770 in 1816 from Abijah O’Neal, the first Quaker to come to SW Ohio in 1797 or so, from SC. (The land became my grandfather Underwood’s farm.) When the chimney fell down on some kids in 1835, the public meeting house was closed.<br />
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Howard</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-33468282392932185692013-01-11T23:45:00.000-05:002013-04-23T22:19:17.078-04:00I. The Branson ConnectionFrom page 329 and 326, Cecil O’Dell’s "Pioneers of Old Frederick County, Va.", plus my comments.<br />
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Thomas Branson, Sr. (b.1675 c.) bought and sold several tracts of land in Springfield and New Hanover Township, Burlington County, West New Jersey from 1725 to 1731. Thomas Branson, Jr. (b. 1700 c.) was in Virginia by 27 November, 1732, when he hired a surveyor to survey 1370 acres on both sides of Crooked Run. He received a patent from the Colony of Virginia for this tract on 3 October, 1734. <br />
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That same day, October 3, 1734, Robert McKay, Jr., my g-g-g-g-g grandfather, also received a patent from the Colony of Virginia for 828 acres, adjacent on the south to Branson. That same year, McKay built a two story walnut log cabin, where at least one Quaker Meeting was held in McKay’s house in 1734. During the Civil War, this house-with a new east end-was used as a hospital, by whichever side possessed it, and both did, several times. Until it burned in May, 2009, this was the oldest house in the Shenandoah Valley. Barbara and I visited it, and the nearby foundation, including fireplace, of my g-g-g grandfather, Moses McKay’s, house multiple times.<br />
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In 1731, McKay had come from Cecil County, Maryland, and before, from Monmouth County, East New Jersey, with his father and Jost Hite, who came from east of Philadelphia with 16 Dutch/German families, including Thomas Doster, Sr., my g-g-g-g-g-g grandfather. They were the first families into the Shenandoah Valley, arriving at about the same time as Alexander Ross and numerous Quakers who started Hopewell Meeting to the NE of the Hite/McKay group. <br />
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Recently, I’ve learned that Doster acquired some of Ross’s land. Also, from Hopewell Quaker, James Crumley’s will, we know that a Doster and Crumley had a granddaughter, Ruth Doster, perhaps a sister of my g-g-g grandfather, John Doster I, who was born in Culpepper, VA, in 1770, and is buried in Walnut Creek Quaker Cemetery, south of Washington CH, Ohio, as are his son and grandson. The next three generations, including my grandfather, dad, and brother, Richard, are buried in Corwin.<br />
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Thomas Branson and his wife, Rebecca, had moved to Orange County, NC, by 16 November, 1753. On 1 June, 1758, they deeded a 99-year lease for four acres "for use of Friends (Quaker) Meeting House and burying grounds." This was Crooked Run Meeting. It is on the west side of US 340/522, ¼ mile south of Nineveh, and maybe 10 miles south of Winchester, and 2-3 miles north of Cedarville, Va. <br />
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HowardUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-20393028641959861432013-01-11T23:40:00.000-05:002013-04-23T22:21:00.803-04:00II. Crooked Run Meeting<div class="WordSection1">
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Meshech Sexton - my Dad’s middle name was Sexton and this was his g-g grandfather-was "com", whatever that means, on 1785, 5, 6 at Crooked Run Quaker Meeting. Anyway, Moses McKay and Abigail Shinn, another of my g-g-g grandparents, were married at Crooked Run in 1793.<br />
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(This was two years after McKay’s and three other families received 3,000 pounds in settlement of the 50-year law suit with Lord Fairfax’s heirs over who owned the land in the Northern Neck of Virginia that Hite, McKay, Dillon, and Duff had received 20,000, and 40,000 acre grants from the Virginia Colony.)<br />
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Barbara and I have visited the Crooked Run cemetery, behind a now Presbyterian Church. <br />
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Why? Andrew McKay, my g-g-g-g grandfather, was buried there, about 1804. At that time, Quakers buried persons in a row, when they died. Because they thought it was too worldly to write on a tombstone, a McKay man showed us his likely headstone, a limestone field stone.<br />
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Howard</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-19723015630440380672013-01-11T23:35:00.000-05:002013-04-23T22:22:02.447-04:00III. Moses McKay Arrives in WaynesvilleIn 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.<br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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Amos Haines was the next son. I think he was an Indian agent. Robert was next. <br />
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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.<br />
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HowardUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-53188989940761676092013-01-11T23:30:00.001-05:002013-04-23T22:23:04.849-04:00IV. Moses McKay<div class="WordSection1">
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Moses and Abigail McKay likely lived on Caesar Creek while they built, now, our house in 1818, about two miles to their north.<o:p></o:p><br />
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I told you a Doster and a McKay came into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in the same group in 1731. In 1893, Ed Doster, whose Dad, James Taylor Doster, had died when Ed was four, and who just moved around mostly with his mother’s relatives, was a hired hand, milking cows for his Quaker Aunt’s recorded minister husband-they were two of the first four 1875 Wilmington College grads and he(Amos Cook) was a member of Grove Meeting in Harveysburg as was another recorded minister, Matilda Downing Underwood, Mom’s step-grandmother, whose two Underwood husbands then owned all the land on three sides of Jonah’s Run Baptist Church. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyway, Cook’s neighbors to the east were Will and Lizzie Macy(Her grandfather was a Guilford, NC Quaker.) Collett, then members of Jonah’s Run. Will’s mother was Sarah McKay, and his sister, Ann, a JR charter member, was the oldest child of the four marriages in the 1820’s between the Collett’s and McKay’s. Ann’s daughter, Mary, was an unmarried Hickoryville one-room school teacher, who had attended Denison University on a Collett scholarship, and was Jonah’s Run organist.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Somehow, the Quaker Cook’s and Baptist Collett’s introduced their nephew/niece. They were married in 1893, and became tenants of the farm where Moses McKay first built a log cabin on the west side of Caesar Creek in 1815. This was just 162 years after a Doster and a McKay first came into the Shenandoah Valley together. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Dad and his three siblings, starting with Ann, were born there. I suppose Cook’s and Collett’s staked them their farming equipment and livestock. And, you must read Dad’s poem describing his first livestock production. It’s in Mom’s “Hello Cousins” book. Also, I must share my story of taking our daughter, Anne, to visit Ann Mason, my colored friend, in Harveysburg.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At a Collett-McKay picnic, Dad told me his red-haired McKay cousins used to come and visit. He said they always looked in the log cabin woodhouse at the McKay Stretcher. When I asked, he said it was a wood frame with four legs and two hinges plus two more legs for placing dead bodies at a funeral. He said there was one under JR church. I looked, but didn’t find it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When Will died, Aunt Lizzie asked Doster’s to rent her farm, which they did, and moved in with her for two years, before starting a 40-year rental on, now Doster Road, where they moved when Dad was ten, a half mile from Dad’s grandmother, Ann Collett McCune. His father never owned any land. Somehow, Dad got Will/Lizzie’s bed, perhaps because Dad was also named William. Anyway, Barbara and I now sleep in that bed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Howard<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-42251660618613970872013-01-11T23:25:00.000-05:002013-04-23T22:30:20.001-04:00V. Early 1800'sI need to figure out exactly how the Haines were related to each other. Because they were related to both Collett’s and McKay’s, and were in Waynesville early, I think they likely caused both McKay’s and Collett’s to come to near here. (Doster’s came from VA to southern Fayette County-forty miles east of here-in 1810.)<br />
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As referenced in an Ashby genealogy I have, and will expand here later, there are two versions of where Collett’s originated-England or France, but in Virginia, Collett’s lived 25 miles NE of McKay’s, and also had Haines neighbors. My g-g-g grandmother, Mary Haines, whose father, Joshua and his brother, Abraham, bought 1120 acres with the surveyor, George Washington in 1750, just before she was born, was kicked out of Hopewell Quaker Meeting for marrying Daniel Collett, a recent Revolutionary private. She was re-instated and moved her membership to Miami Meeting in Waynesville in 1812, perhaps. <br />
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Though he was never a Quaker, Revolutionary Daniel Collett’s six Quaker daughter-in-laws, including a Rebecca Haines (Perhaps a niece of her mother-in-law), and three of my g-g-g grandfather Moses McKay’s daughters, buried Daniel’s body a mile NE of, now, our Moses McKay House, at Caesar Creek Quaker Meeting in 1835. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Howard</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-68752556545708156582013-01-11T23:12:00.000-05:002013-04-23T22:31:42.710-04:00VI. The 1840'sThen, in 1839, they caused their husbands to put two Quaker-Style front doors in their new Jonah’s Run Baptist Church. It was built on land purchased that year by Revolutionary Daniel and Mary Haines Collett’s son, Daniel, from the first Quaker to come from northern Virginia in 1802, Levi Lukens; and adjacent on the SE of land formerly owned by the first Quaker to come to SW Ohio in 1797, South Carolina Quaker, Abijah O’Neall (Quaker Elihu Underwood’s, where Daniel and his siblings, Mom and her siblings, Robert, and I were born), and, on the NE, perhaps (I need to check this at the court house.) NY Quaker, Perseverd Dakin or his descendant, (Quaker Zephaniah Underwood’s, where PA Quaker Matilda’s klds were born). <br />
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While Collett bought an acre+ for the church and cemetery on January 22, 1839, his descendants didn’t sell it to the church trustees until March 4, 1907, long after the cemetery was full and the church had been remodeled. ???<br />
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Oh, I have a beaver hat that belonged to Zephaniah/Matilda’s daughter, Ruth Anna Underwood Tomlinson. You may remember that Matilda was a temperance leader and got the saloons closed in Clinton County. Mom, also a temperance leader, told me Matilda sent her daughter to an eastern Quaker boarding school to get her away from a Collett, because some of them drank alcohol. I wonder if this is the reason JR cemetery wasn’t expanded after it became full in the early seventies. Maybe Matilda just refused to sell anything to Colletts.<br />
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I need to add here how Colletts hired Wilhelmina Hahn, a German Lutheran from Blanchester, for their teacher, how Cotchum Collett, later the long-time national treasurer of Sigma Chi Fraternity, jumped out the school window and headed home only to be caught by Miss Hahn, how she came to a box social at JR with three Collett sisters. How Catherine, Aunt Kittie, Underwood who wanted to be a Baptist missionary, brought her brother, Daniel, to the box social, how Daniel bought Wilhelmina’s box, and they were soon married, etc. And, how Mom and Aunt Sara created their family welfare program as they paid Aunt Kittie to teach us all piano lessons, and she put all her money in the JR collection, and I learned to count by helping Dad count the money, some of which Mom traded for pennies to pay Aunt Kittie, also, our SS teacher.<br />
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HowardUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-8607611380370668512013-01-11T23:05:00.000-05:002013-04-23T22:32:55.433-04:00VII. Jonah's Run CemeteryAbout ten years ago, after Mom gave money for Jonah’s Run to get five acres of former Zephaniah/Matilda land, I tried, unsuccessfully, to expand the cemetery. Mom had picked out the spot, which I marked-fourteen 15-inch rows north of the seventh row of present tombstones. After church one Sunday, I put a white bucket on a steel fence post at the spot. She and I then went over to, now, Grismer’s, and sat on the front porch where many of you have seen us sit. It’s where she and Dad were married, in the house where she and her father were born. <br />
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She again looked to the SE where the Bullskin Trail ran, where the 1822 Public Meeting House was built with a cemetery on the SE corner of Underwood land where she used to pick wildflowers while Grandpapa cut the grass. Once, when I asked how her father cut it, she responded, "With a scythe, of course." She noted where the Hatton House was, saying Dr. Hatton called it "Pleasant View" Farm. She again said that was because they looked down on four Underwood girls. She noted the Martin House. She pointed out where Ruth Sullivan, Charles Ellison’s mother, lived and remembered they walked to Jonah’s Run and to Haines School together, saying Ruth was her oldest friend. (Charles and I started to school together.) <br />
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She said she and her sisters watched out the front porch door for two older Doster boys to drive down Collett Road in their horse-drawn school wagon to pick them up on their way to Kingman School. She remembered that Aunt Sara used to wrap yarn around my Uncle Charles’ ear as he drove the horses. She pointed out the site of the Collett Blacksmith Shop, and said Kathleen Graham rode her dad’s farm team over there to get the horses’ hooves shod. She remembered the McCoy House on the corner-now the Collett House at Pioneer Village. And, she told more stories about Underwood involvement at Jonah’s Run-which I’ll add later. Then, she looked SE to the apple storage she said her father built at Zephaniah’s place, and on to the Tower House, where she remembered taking her first bath in an inside bathtub-saying Matilda built the first house in the county with an inside tub, but not with an inside toilet, because that was not considered to be clean.<br />
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After I pointed out the white bucket on the post behind the church, Mom again said, "This is the one spot in the world where everything is in the right place". I agree. Perhaps we’ll figure out how to end a story on our Jonah’s Run website this way. Son, Dave, has reserved both .org and .com, and I plan to write articles this year for the local paper and the website regarding the 175th anniversary of JR. I will include some stuff that is in this doc .<br />
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Of course, I’m still thinking of how/when/where to increase the JR cemetery, including into the now Grismer Farm where I was born. Currently, I’m looking for an opportunity to interest Grismer’s to sell maybe two acres just west of the present cemetery, so as to extend now Collett Road north. Someday, SR 73 will be made four lane limited access, and I’d like to have that access be from an extended Collett Road.<br />
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HowardUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-38976295112178970462012-12-19T18:56:00.000-05:002013-04-23T22:34:05.454-04:00Revolutionary Daniel Collett<div class="WordSection1">
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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(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.)<br />
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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."<br />
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What fun, I’m glad I rambled above. I wrote some stuff I hadn’t remembered earlier. <br />
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Howard</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Waynesville, OH, USA39.529782399999988 -84.08660099999997339.480795399999991 -84.167281999999972 39.578769399999985 -84.005919999999975tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-279675234709341612012-05-28T23:05:00.000-04:002013-04-23T23:13:11.321-04:00Doster Family Cemetery Sites: Underwood Part IUnderwoods came from England, and were early Quakers in America. Multiple generations lived in Pennsylvania before Zephaniah and Priscilla Louis Underwood, my g-g-g grandparents, moved to Columbiana County, Ohio in 1809. He died there, and she moved with her many kids to northern Clinton County, Ohio about 1826. Her son and grandsons bought the farms north of Jonah’s Run Baptist Church, in 1856 and later. They planted large acreages of apples and other fruit. I was born on one of them.<br />
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One fall Saturday morning, I figured out why Underwood’s picked the land for their orchards. John, my brother, had rented the farms after Paul Tomlinson, our cousin, had sold the Tower House place. That morning, John was greasing his combine on the north slope on the north end of the farm. I walked up to the top of the ridge and looked down on Jonah’s run Baptist Church, as well as the west farm where Grandpapa and Mom and I were born. Although the soybeans were still damp and too tough to harvest on the north slope, the stalks and seeds were dry on the south slope. That’s because of the great air drainage there, and that’s why my ancestors picked that place. Someone claimed to have visited all the Underwood farms back to Pennsylvania. They said they all had orchards. I remember noting an early Underwood purchase here was just east of the Tower House, for a place to raise fruit trees. <br />
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Chester Quaker Meeting, Gurneyville Road, maybe two miles east of Collett-McKay Picnic site in NW Clinton County, Ohio. <br />
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Priscilla Louis Underwood, my g-g-g grandmother, who died in 1835.<br />
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Center Quaker Meeting, Center Road, maybe two miles south of Chester Meeting. <br />
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Amos and Mary Shirk Underwood, my g-g grandparents.<br />
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Miami Cemetery in Corwin, near Waynesville, Warren County, Ohio.<br />
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Elihu and Hester Kirk Underwood, my g-grandparents. A few minutes ago, I showed our grandsons, Nathanial and Eric Glaze, the location of the headstones for Elihu; for his first wife, Hester; and for his second wife, Matilda. When she and I visited the cemetery on Memorial Day, Mom always remarked how her father, Daniel Underwood, decided how to place them. Elihu is buried next to Hester, but his head is next to Matilda’s head. Hester, from Clarksville, died in 1899. Zephaniah, Elihu’s older brother, 1820-1900, died a year later. Elihu then married his sister-in-law, Matilda Downing Underwood, 1851-?. Jane Haines, Zephaniah and Matilda’s youngest child, was born in 1888, when her father was 68. She died in 1986. Note the time span for Jane and her father-1820 to 1986, 166 years.<br />
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Born in Pa, Matilda came to Ohio with her mother, sister and brother, to cook and keep house for Zephaniah, after he went back there to see his grandfather’s relatives. Her mother was an Underwood cousin of Zephaniah’s. Matilda wrote a book, “Bluebells of the Forest”. Matilda soon got involved with the Temperance movement and helped close the saloons in Clinton County in the early 1870’s, and was selected a Recorded Minister at Grove Quaker Meeting (Hicksite) on the east edge of Harveysburg, as well as being involved with the woman suffrage movement. Mom said Elihu, her grandfather, was pleased when she and her three younger sisters, all born after the Elihu/Matilda marriage, all called her “Grandmother”. Matilda’s sister married a Romine and became the first woman physician in Ohio. Her office was in the house on the east side of Maple Street at the south edge of Harveysburg. She influenced Mary Cook (of Mary Cook Library in Waynesville), who graduated in the first HS class at Harveysburg in 1887, to become a physician. Her brother became a noted local photographer. I have also seen a copy of his patented invention for causing auto lights to blink.<br />
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HowardHoward Dosterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09571696811742674875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-38800931609077187092012-05-28T23:00:00.000-04:002013-04-23T23:03:41.578-04:00Doster Family Cemetery Sites: Underwood Part III think Hester Kirk’s mother, or grandmother, was a Morrow. Morrow’s came from Lake Champlain, NY, in 1814, to near Clarksville. Mrs. Morrow, a Quaker, told her sons to take enough men to run the Redcoats north into Canada and away from Lake Champlain. Earlier, they had lived in the Delaware River Valley, and had been hounded by British soldiers during the Revolution. Morrows brought China dishes, which I now have, in saddle bags from Lake Champlain.<br />
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When Elihu married Matilda, he moved into her Tower House. She had designed it after Zephaniah offered to build it to help her recover from the death of a child. Built in 1886, I think, it was the first house in the area with an indoor bath tub and rain water stored on the second floor from the eaves. The toilet was outside. Mom remembered going there to take a bath. When Elihu moved to the Tower House, his son, Daniel, was living in the house where he was born with his three sisters; Hattie who married a Furnas, Mary who married a Gilliam, and Kathryn who married a Heston. Daniel soon met and married Wilhelmina Hahn. When she moved in, Daniel’s sisters left.<br />
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Daniel and Wilhelmina Hahn Underwood, my grandparents. Wilhelmina Hahn, from Blanchester, attended Lebanon Normal School before starting to teach at the one-room school on the south side of now SR 73, just south of Katy’s Lane, about 1900. The first day, Robert ”Cotchum” Collett, jumped out the window and over the fence and headed for home. Grand Mama saw him leave and jumped out and over and brought him back. When the boys kicked as high as they could and made a mark on the school wall, Grand Mama out kicked them.<br />
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Cotchum, who built the nice house on the south side of SR 73 maybe 1/2 mile east of Jonah’s Run Church, was the long-time national secretary of Sigma Chi, our son Daniel’s fraternity. He is also likely the “Collett” who was making eyes at Ruth Anna Underwood, Matilda and Zephaniah’s daughter. Though she wouldn’t say anything to embarrass anyone, Mom told me Matilda sent Ruth Anna to an eastern Quaker Boarding School, so as to get him away from “those Colletts, some of whom drank alcohol.” Last year, Ruth Anna’s granddaughter gave me Ruth Anna’s beaver bonnet.<br />
Although Quaker Grand Papa never attended Jonah’s Run, Aunt Kitty, Grand Papa’s sister, walked to Jonah’s Run Baptist Church, and she studied for missionary work at Chicago Northern Baptist Seminary, but never got an assignment. She was a longtime JR member, and my Sunday School and piano teacher. I wonder how many times she put the same pennies in the JR church collection that I helped Dad, the longtime JR treasurer, count on the desk I now have, and Mom used to pay her for piano lessons. I now realize my parents, plus my Braddock and Furnas cousins’ parents supported Aunt Kitty by having their kids take piano lessons from her. I still remember her saying she put her last pennies in the SS collection.<br />
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(Dad replaced his father as Jonah’s Run Treasurer. I replaced Dad. Jonathan Collett, my g-g grandfather, was the first treasurer in 1838.)<br />
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Grand Papa did go with Aunt Kitty to a church Box Social where he bought the new school teacher, Miss Hahn’s lunch basket. Grand Mama stayed with three Collett sisters on Denny road, just SE of the school. She was upstairs sewing her corset when Daniel Underwood came calling. A Collett sister came upstairs and told Grand Mama that Mr. Underwood was there. “He must be here to see you,” Grand Mama responded. “No, he’s never come to see any of us. He’s here to see you,” the Collett woman said. They were soon married. I have a picture of them on their honeymoon at Niagara Falls. Mom said Grand Papa could touch his fingers when he put his hands around Grand Mama’s waist. <br />
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William and Esther Underwood Doster, my parents.<br />
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HowardHoward Dosterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09571696811742674875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-89824925700631403962012-05-28T22:00:00.000-04:002013-04-23T23:18:20.615-04:00Romohr: Crosson Cemetery in SE Warren CountyMy g-g grandparents who came to America on a sailing ship in the 1850’s from Germany. They built the large barn at Blackhawk crossroads, south of Clarksville. Mom and I found their still inhabited walnut log cabin-inside a stucco house on west side of road, ¼ mile south of Blackhawk intersection. Sara Romohr Hahn, my g-grandmother, was born in this log cabin. She didn’t get to attend much school, but she could do math with her kids. She married Mark Hahn. They lived just south of Blanchester on the west side of the road south of the location of the former Blanchester Fairgrounds, where I later played softball. Mark farmed, taught school, and was a founding Director of the Blanchester Bank. He died at a young age, and Ma’s only income was from the bank stock, which my mother eventually inherited. Ma kept house for Ada, our Auntie, her school teacher daughter, until Auntie became a mail order bride living in Texas; then moved to North Spring Street in Wilmington where she kept a cow and chickens and garden. She died at age 82, I think, after getting hot from chopping up a cherry tree. She chided Mom for taking too many naps, but Mom lived to 105.<br />
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When Mom and I drove by their south of Blanchester house, she always pointed out the two large trees in the front yard; one for her sister, Sara, and one for her. Oh, starting with Ma’s name, there has been a Sara or Wilhelmina in each succeeding generation as follows: Sara Romohr Hahn, Wilhelmina Hahn Underwood (my grandmother), Sara Underwood Braddock, Wilhelmina Braddock Branson, Sara Branson Homstad.<br />
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Two of Ma’s brothers are buried west of Blanchester. Even after she couldn’t walk over to the graves, I drove Mom near the site, and she shared, “After the first joined the Union Army, the second tied his team of horses to a tree and followed his brother. They were prisoners together in Atlanta. One asked the other, ‘Is that the same moon we used to see at home?’”<br />
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HowardHoward Dosterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09571696811742674875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-10007134250860895462012-05-28T21:30:00.000-04:002013-04-23T23:23:14.415-04:00Hahn: Blanchester CemeteryMark and Sarah Romohr Hahn, my g-grandparents, are buried in this cemetery, as are Clifford and Roberta Hahn, their son and daughter-in-law, in a different lot. Mark’s headstone has been moved slightly. Uncle Clifford liked to play baseball. He was a red-hat conductor on trains out of Cincinnati.<br />
<br />Charles and Wilhelmina Kipp Hahn came from Germany in 1826, I think, to perhaps near Georgetown, but Mom and I never found their farm.<br />
<br />(Somehow, I remember that either Romohr or Hahn met an Irish woman on the way from Germany and married her.)<br />
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Doster, Thomas Doster, immigrant, likely came to America in 1715, a year when no ship records were kept in Baltimore. He lived in West Jersey and perhaps eastern Pa, before joining Jost Hite’s group of 16 German families to go south and, with his wife, and baby son, Thomas II, become the first families to move into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1731, just a few months earlier than other Quakers moved just east of them and started Hopewell Quaker Meeting. There is no record of Thomas buying land, but in his 1845 will, probated in now Winchester, Va, he gave 200 acres each to three sons. Likely, Thomas did not negotiate his land with Lord Fairfax when Fairfax came to near Winchester in 1735. When I hired a professional genealogist, she concluded Thomas’ land was now likely the city dump in NE Winchester. Although the Hopewell Quaker records were burned with the meetinghouse in 1756, Thomas II likely married Quaker Jane Crumley, and, in 1770, they became the parents of John Doster I, who came to Ohio in 1810.<br />
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Three generations of Dosters; John I, John II, and James Taylor, my g-grandfather, are buried in Walnut Creek Quaker Cemetery in southern Fayette County, Ohio, across road from now Greenfield Country Club. John I and John II came here from northern Virginia in 1810. <br /><br />James Taylor Doster died when his son, Edward Barclay Doster, born in 1862, was only four. Edward then lived around with his mother’s relatives. On Labor Day, in September, 1984, I took Dad to view Doster sites in the Greenfield-New Martinsburg area. We found one or two Doster graves in Walnut Creek that are not mentioned in the Doster Genealogy.?? We also found Jane Eyre’s grave (James Taylor’s wife and my g-grandmother) in Greenfield cemetery with her daughter, Alice, and her husband. Jane’s mother was a Quaker named Reese. I want to check on that name in Highland County. I think Rees came from northern Virginia, also. Dad said his father told him that he lived some with his Eyre uncle, perhaps a county commissioner, in northern Highland County. Ed told Dad that, as a boy, he sometimes caught minnows in the morning in a small stream on one side of the farm; then, in the evening, he fished in a stream on the other side of the farm.<br />
Dad said his father took him fishing only two times, even though Dad was born and lived for ten years along Caesar Creek, now under Lake Caesar. Dad took me fishing only two times; once when the family vacationed on an Island in Lake Superior, and before that, in a pond near Kingman. That day, a storm came up and lightning struck a tree which hit our fishing poles hanging out of our car as we drove home.<br />
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I now have James Taylor’s double barrel gun, likely made about 1850. I also have a wooden sugar box. These are about the only Doster things any of us have. Ed never owned any land. <br />
About 1890, Ed Doster came to just west of Harveysburg, to milk cows for Amos Cook, his cousin’s husband. Cook and his Doster wife were in the first (1875) Wilmington College graduating class of four persons. Amos was also a recorded minister at Quaker Grove Meeting in Harveysburg.<br />Cooks neighbors to the east were William and Lizzie Macy Collett. William was a younger brother of Ann Collett, my g-grandmother. Their parents were Jonathan and Sarah McKay Collett, my g-g grandparents. These Colletts had an unmarried Hickoryville school teacher niece named Mary McCune. Somehow, this Doster met this McCune. They married. Somehow they got a cow and horse or two and rented the Romine Farm, maybe a half mile upstream from Colletts on Caesar Creek, where they had all four of their kids, including Dad who was born in 1899.<br />
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Once, at a Collett-McKay Picnic, Dad said his red-haired McKay cousins used to visit them at the Romine Farm. He said they always looked in the log cabin woodhouse at the Mckay stretcher. “What’s a McKay Stretcher?” I asked. “It’s a table with four legs, plus hinges and two more legs, where they placed dead persons,” Dad said. He went on, “There’s one under JR church.” Later, I looked under the church, but found nothing.<br />
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(On a late November Sunday AM, son Dan, maybe age 12, and I took slide pictures of many of my family’s houses, including the Romine House, where Dad was born and the Will Collett House, where Ed and Mary Doster moved their young family in 1909, when Will Collett died, and Lizzie, his widow, rented it to Dosters, before Dosters moved in 1910 to the Mrs. Harris farm they rented for 40 years on now Doster Road, where I grew up. Oh, Barbara and I now sleep in the Will and Lizzie Collett bed, which Dad and Mom used. I don’t know why Dad got the bed. Maybe it was because Dad’s name was also William.)<br />
<br />William and Esther Underwood Doster, my parents, were married on June 18, 1930, on the front porch of the Brimstone Road Underwood brick house, where Mom and her father, Daniel, were born.<br />
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HowardHoward Dosterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09571696811742674875noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1441842867285393679.post-60945545837621447002012-05-28T09:00:00.000-04:002013-04-23T23:26:27.082-04:00McKayLikely Scotch Irish, Robert McCoy (McKay) and his son, Robert, somehow came into the Shenandoah Valley of northern Va in 1731, with Jost Hite and Thomas Doster. McKay and Hite soon went down to Williamsburg and got another land grant for 40,000 acres, and then another. When a Lord Fairfax appeared from England to claim “all the land in America that wasn’t already claimed, McKay and Hite soon got in legal fights with Fairfax which lasted until after all were dead and after the Revolution. Fairfax may have had the better claim-it was given to him by King Charles, I think, after a Fairfax ancestor loaned him money when Charles was trying to retain his title- but Fairfax heirs lost the lawsuit. I have a multipage copy of the records which span many years which I found in a library at the University of Kentucky. Unfortunately, the last page is so messed up, I can’t tell how it ended.<br />
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In about 1725, a McCoy daughter married a Quaker in eastern Pa. This is the first known reference to McKays. Soon after arriving in VA, Robert, Jr. married a Quaker, at Nottingham Meeting in SE Pa, perhaps. Robert Jr’s 1734 home at Cedarville,Va., was used as an early Quaker Meeting site. Barbara and I first found this recently destroyed house, then the oldest house in the Shenandoah Valley, 18 years ago. Later, at a McKay reunion there, we learned it survived many, many Civil War battles because it was used as a hospital, no matter which side occupied it. One of Moses McKay’s sons stayed in Virginia. Thus, McKay cousins served on both sides in the Civil War.<br />
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On one of our Virginia trips, Barbara took a picture of me standing in the fireplace of Moses Mckay’s home-which burned about 1950, which was just 200 feet south of his ancestor, Robert’s home. Between the two houses is/was the largest spring in the area. (Remember, our Moses McKay House is built on the site of many springs.) The city of Front Royal, maybe seven miles to the south recently bought the former McKay house sites so as to pump the spring water to Front Royal.<br />
I want to do more checking, but I am aware that a Haines family lived adjacent to McKays at Cedarville, and another Haines family lived next to Daniel and Mary Haines Collett, some 24 miles NE of Cedarville, SE of now Charlestown, W, Va, and perhaps 4 miles from Hopewell Quaker Meeting. Dosters lived maybe in between Colletts and McKays.<br />
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There are perhaps three McKay generations between Robert, Jr and Moses.<br />
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After first bringing his just widowed mother, Jane Ridgeway Mckay, from Cedarville-between Winchester and Front Royal, Va, to Waynesville in 1805 when he also bought 1,000 acres, including the now four acre Collett-Mckay Picnic site, from Nathanial Massie, the surveyor, Moses McKay, my g-g-g grandfather, brought his family to one mile north of now Harveysburg on the west side of Caesar Creek in 1815. Although I think Sarah McKay Collett, my g-g grandmother, inherited this farm, it was soon owned by a Mr. Romine, whose family rented it to my grandfather Doster.?? This house, on the northwest side of Caesar Creek, was perhaps 1 ½ miles south of our present Moses Mckay House, on the south side of the Little Miami River.<br />
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I have seen a contract between Moses McKay, my g-g-g grandfather and Arvinia Gaston, a free woman of color, which I included in a story in the 200th anniversary issue of Waynesville. The colored persons helped build our present home in 1818, and the next McKay generation served as an Underground Railroad Station Master, as did four of my Doster relatives near New Martinsburg and Walnut Creek in southern Fayette County.<br />
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In the 1820’s, four McKay kids from our house married four Colletts, including two of Moses Collett’s kids from just up the road near Roxanna, and two of his siblings, from Dan Collett’s farm, south of now Jonah’s Run. Sarah McKay married Jonathan Collett in 1823, and moved to the now Hole in the Woods House where McKay Collett now lives, where Ann Collett, my g grandmother was born in 1824. I have a pink luster plate, one of four brought to this Collett-McKay wedding in saddle bags.<br />
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Moses McKay was kicked out of Quaker Meeting in Virginia at age 13 for marching on the Front Royal town square with a broom stick during the Revolution. He was kicked out again, for non-attendance of Meeting, or by another account, for having stills. Abigail Shinn McKay, my g-g-g grandmother, and their kids moved their Quaker membership to Caesar Creek Quaker Meeting, just a mile east of now, our house. However, she got kicked out for joining a sect. When she and Moses both died in 1828, they were buried just north across the Little Miami River in Mount Holly Methodist Cemetery. Their kids started Mt Pisgah Methodist Church on Gurneyville Road, on Moses’ land, where some Mckays were buried and where the first few Collett-McKay picnics were held before the picnic was moved maybe 200 yards across the road to the SE.<br />
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HowardHoward Dosterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09571696811742674875noreply@blogger.com0