Thanks, Dad!

Thanks, Dad.

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.

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.

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.

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.

D. Howard Doster   (April 30, 2013)

McKee, Not McKay

Hi Terry,

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.

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.

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.

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?

No, none of my relatives are as good looking as your Reverend McKee below.

What fun,

Howard Doster

　
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Hi Howard,

Happy Easter!

Enjoyed the visit to the Caesar's Creek MM Burying Ground. Glad we could find the neglected and IGNORED markers.

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>

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.

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.

So, here are the pictures (c. 1875) on the slim hope that you hear some reference to them, sometime.

Terry Easton

Jonah's Run 175th Anniversary

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Howard

I. The Branson Connection

From page 329 and 326, Cecil O’Dell’s "Pioneers of Old Frederick County, Va.", plus my comments.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Howard

II. Crooked Run Meeting

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.

(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.)

Barbara and I have visited the Crooked Run cemetery, behind a now Presbyterian Church.

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.

Howard

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

IV. Moses McKay

Moses and Abigail McKay likely lived on Caesar Creek while they built, now, our house in 1818, about two miles to their north.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Howard