When I did my first article on Jonas Friend for the Allegheny Regional Ancestors I was confident that I had said pretty much the final word on one of the more interesting frontiersmen of western Virginia.¹ I was surprised a few weeks later to get a copy of a payroll for the service of Jonas Friend and his company of 20 men, previously completely unknown, during Dunmore's War. It was sent along by Dr. Peter Stebbins Craig who had it from Merrill Hill Mosher, C.G., of Coos Bay, Oregon. She had found it at the Virginia State Library on a microfilm of an original book of pay records for Dunmore's War. The Archives maintains a list of Virginia soldiers in the war on cards, but somehow the indexers overlooked Captain Friend and the men who served under him at Point Pleasant.

The source of the list is found in the Augusta County records. On 17-19 January 1775 a court of claims was held for Augusta County according to statute to settle the accounts of the militia "lately drawn into the actual service and for making provision to pay the same."² The proceedings show that on the 18th Jonas Friend produced a claim for himself and others which was proved before William Bowyer and O[rdered] C[ertifie]d."³ Clearly these claims were sent along to Williamsburg for payment, and included the document examined here.⁴

The company was gone from the Tygarts Valley for 48 days, although a few men either left early or joined it late.⁵ The rank and file were paid lsh 6d a day, while Elias Barker, who was apparently paid as a Sergeant, earned an extra shilling for his pains. The Indian scouts were paid 5 shillings daily, no doubt as extra compensation for the risks they took. No payment is itemized for Captain Friend, but immediately after the claim for his men (and on the same microfilm) we find that Captain John Hopkins put in a claim for 7sh 6d by the day for his service.

There were apparently 20 survivors from the company who are listed in the following order:

ELIAS BARKER. He is listed first, and presumably served as Sergeant of the company. He was paid £6 (at 2/6) for his 45 days of service. His performance must have been exemplary as he was promoted to Lieutenant in the Augusta County Militia a few months later on 25 March 1775.⁶ According to descendants he was born in 1740 and took his wife Rachel and their family from Mill Creek near Belington (in what is now Barbour County) to Kentucky in 1781. Elias Barker, Senior, his brother Joseph, and his son Elias, Junior, were living at the mouth of Muddy Creek (now Doylesville) in Madison County in 1795 according to the tax list and a newspaper notice about stray beasts that they had in their custody.⁷

CORNELIUS KING. He was paid £3 12sh (at 135) for 48 days of service. He was born in New Castle County, Delaware in 1753, and he and his wife Sarah followed the Cleavers to Nelson County, Kentucky, by 1785.⁸ His father Peter King and his sister Mary (wife of Jacob Westfall, Jr., 1755-1835) are first noticed on the Nelson County tax list of 1789. Cornelius King lived later in Orange County, Indiana, but died on 26 August 1839 in Morgan County, Indiana.⁹ Peter King, the father, was probably nearly related to the Cleavers in Delaware, but the particulars have not been sorted out.

BENJAMIN CLEAVER. He was paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He was horn in Maryland on 29 January 1751 (the eldest son of William Cleaver, Senior, by his first wife) and moved to what is now Nelson County, Kentucky, in the summer of 1779 where he later entered land on Beech Fork.¹⁰ In 1782 Benjamin Cleaver and his brother William Cleaver, Junior (who married Susannah, daughter of Daniel Westfall), volunteered in Captain James Davis' company for the expedition against the northern Indians [Shawnees] and marched towards Detroit. William, in his pension application, says that Benjamin Cleaver was wounded and that they were both taken prisoners by the Indians and detained by them for six months. Benjamin died in Grayson County, Kentucky, soon after 27 May 1833 when he gave an affidavit taken at Leitchfield about his brother's service in the Revolution).¹¹

CHARLES CLEAVER. A younger brother of Benjamin Cleaver noticed above, he was paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He had made a settlement before 1778 on Leading Creek north of the present town of Gilman. He assigned his interest to this tract (which was adjacent to his brother Benjamin Cleaver) to Joseph Summerfield before leaving for Kentucky.¹² No mention of him has been found in the early records of Jefferson County (which included Nelson until 1785), and he seems to have died before this date either in Virginia or soon after the family arrived in Kentucky. Charles Cleaver appears (by elimination) to have left an only daughter Sarah (born about 1780), who married William Blackford on 12 September 1802. She was a daughter of Jennet King (who in turn may have been the daughter of this name remembered in the will of Peter King noticed above). Elizabeth Blackford Unsel consented to her son's marriage, and the bond notes that while Sarah Cleaver was of full age in 1802 Blackford was not. He was still the ward of William Cleaver, Senior (presumably the bride's grandfather), who served as Blackford's surety.¹³

JOHN STEWART. Paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He lived on Stewarts Run on the east side at the southern end of Tygarts River near the present town of Mingo, He, his wife and child, were killed on 16 December 1778 by Indians, and his sister-in-law, a certain Miss Hamilton, was taken prisoner.¹⁴ William Hamilton was appointed his administrator, and his estate was appraised on 28 March 1778 by Benjamin Wilson and John Warrick.¹⁵

FRANCIS STRADER. Paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He was a signer of the petition of 6 November 1777 (as Francis Trader) but then disappears from Virginia. He was a part of the migration to Nelson County, Kentucky, in 1779, He, or his son of the same name, was taxed in Hardin County, Kentucky, in 1795,¹⁶ Francis Strader, probably the son, married Susanna Easter on 1 May 1795 in Nelson County and was living in what is now LaRue (formerly Hardin) County a neighbor to Thomas Lincoln (and the future president) in 1810.¹⁷

JOSEPH FRIEND. Paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He was born about 1750, the eldest son of Captain Friend and his wife Sarah Skidmore and was later a Captain of Spies under Anthony Wayne. He died in what is now Webster County, West Virginia, in 1827).¹⁸

ANTHONY HOUSTON. Paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He was a stepson of William Cleaver, Senior, and had been born on 10 March 1757, a son of James and Hannah Houston. He would have been not quite 18 at the time of Point Pleasant. He married Mary Moore on 17 April 1778, and had moved to Scott County, Kentucky, about 1788 where he died on 18 August 1831. He and his wife are buried there in a family cemetery on Cherry Creek.¹⁹

JAMES MOORE. Paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He was still in he Tygarts Valley on 28 August 1776 when he signed a petition as James Moor.²⁰ On 29 August 1792 the court ordered that Henry Delay, William Barker, James More. George Harper, and John Elliot "of the State of Kentucky. County of Bourbon" take depositions from Thomas Lackey and James Prather as testimony for a suit to be tried in Randolph County.²¹

JACOB ABERMAN (EVERMAN). Paid £3 12~h for 48 days. He is shown to have been the heir at law to his father John Everman in 1780.²² Part of his homeplace on what is now Chenoweth Creek (then called Everman Creek) is now occupied by the Wal-Mart store there according to David Armstrong. His daughter Catherine (noticed later) had married David White who was killed at Point Pleasant. Jacob Everman returned a deed from what is now Clark (then Fayette) County, Kentucky, to Randolph County in May 1792 ²³ While the Evermans were not a part of the migration to Nelson County in 1779 they may have been there briefly in 1796 with old friends or kinfolk from the Tygarts Valley ²⁴

SAMUEL ABERMAN (EVERMAN). Paid £3 12sh for 48 days.²⁵ He was at the vendue sale of David White, and was taxed as late as 1788 in Randolph County.

JOHN MCDONALD. Paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He signed the petition of 6 November 1777 done in the Tygarts Valley but then disappears, perhaps returning home to Culpeper County. It is only due to a bit of serendipity by Jeff Cart while looking for the Powell family in Orange and Culpeper Counties that enables us to write a Honorable scenario for McDonald's connection with what is now Barbour County. In his will written on 15 July 1776 James Powell bequeathed the "800 acres as I had of John Mackdoner at the Tigers Valies upon Glady Creack" to be equally divided among his foot daughters ²⁶ It seems likely that he was the John McDonald who made (with others) their oath of importation directly from Great Britain in Orange County on 25 May 1756. They promptly made over their individual rights to 50 acres of land each to Honorious Powell.²⁷ To this we can append the pension application of a possible son, John, Junior, who stated that he was born in Culpeper County on 26 December 1764 and enlisted there in the Revolution as a substitute for his father John McDonald, Senior.²⁸8 Nothing more is known at present about the father, but John McDonald, Junior, died on 5 January 1843 in Franklin County, Kentucky.

MICHAEL ISENER (ISNER). Paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He was born about 1732 in Germany, and emigrated to Pennsylvania on the Neptune before settling in the Tygarts Valley. He signed as Melchor Eisnert on an allegiance from the passengers at Philadelphia on 24 September 1753.²⁹ He had made two settlements by 1778: one near the Evermans at the present Glenmore Subdivision, and another at the mouth of Chenoweth Creek on the west side of the Tygarts River. He is, no doubt, the Michael Austner who was at the vendue sale of David White. He served on the first grand jury in Randolph County in 1787, and was living in 1790.³⁰ Two of his sons filed pension applications on 1 November 1834. Thomas Isner, the elder of the two (born 1758), states that he "was raised in Randolph County, Virginia" but says nothing about his birthplace.³¹

DENNIS CRAGAN. He was paid 13sh 6d for only for 9 days of service. He is perhaps the mail of his name who served soon after as a private in the Maryland Line, for which he had a bounty land warrant for 50 acres in September 1792.³²

ANDREW SKIDMORE. He was paid £1 7sh for only 18 days. He was born on 8 November t750 in Virginia. Andrew Skidmore and William White (noticed below) are said to have been part of the party of five men who were guilty of the Bulltown Massacre in June 1772. He was wounded in the hand at Point Pleasant, and drafted a petition to the House of Delegates at Richmond in August 1818 (as Andrew Scidmore) asking that they pass a special bill for his relief.³³ The receipt of the petition on 7 December 1818 is noted in the journal when it was referred to the Committee on Claims. Nothing more has been learned of his request. He died on 15 November 1827 in what is now Sutton in Braxton County.

JOHN CARR, Paid £3 for 12 days of service as a scout. He had a settlement before 1778 two miles north of Beverly on the west side of the Tygarts River near Beaver Creek which he assigned to John Pringle, and another near by (formerly George Whitman's) which he assigned to William White, Junior. There is another man of the name who was enrolled in Captain John Harness' company on 17 October 1775 in Hardy County.³⁴ The John Carr who served in Friend's company is more likely to have gone out to Nelson County in 1779. If this supposition is correct then he was a small loss to the Tygart Valley, On 5 March 1782 "At a Court held for Jefferson County [which included Nelson in 1785]... Satisfactory proof made to the Court that the lower part of David Sullivan's ear was bitt off in a fight with John Carr [and] ordered that the same be admitted to record." The administration on the estate of John Carr was given to Isaac Morrison, Gentleman, on 5 May 1784, but on July 7th "It appearing to the Court that John Carr is still alive… Ordered That all farther proceedings thereon he enjoined untill a Certainty can he had whether John Carr is alive or not."³⁵

JOSEPH BARKER, He was paid £19 10sh for 78 days as a scout. He went later to Madison County, Kentucky, with his older brother Elias, noticed above. There was another Joseph Barker of much the same age who married Catherine Carpenter "about 1774 in Monongalia County" according to descendants and remained in Virginia. Another William Barker, perhaps from the Monongalia family, was born in Londoun County in 1765 according to his pension application filed later from Kentucky. Whether the two families were nearly related is unknown. ³⁶

WILLIAM WHITE [JUNIOR]. The best paid, he had £23 10sh from the public purse for 94 days as a scout. He was horn on Cedar Creek in what is now Shenandoah County, Virginia, and was living in the Buckhannon Settlement by 1771. He and Andrew Scidmore were implicated in 1772 in the Bulltown Massacre. Captain White married Elizabeth Wallace (who was still living at the age of 102) and was killed by the Indians at Buckhannon Fort in 1782 leaving an only daughter, Elizabeth named for her mother. She was the first wife of Joel Westfall, Jr. (1779-1858), and died on 14 July 1820 leaving a distinguished family in Upshur County.³⁷

JAMES STEWART. Paid £3 12sh for 48 days. He is said to have died before the death of John Stewart and his family, noticed above, and nothing more is known of him.

Curiously no particulars are given about the dead or wounded. It is generally said that 75 men were killed and 140 wounded in the expedition as a whole. David White, a brother of William White and a son-in-law of Jacob Everman, is the only one of the dead who can be assigned beyond doubt in Captain Friend's company. His widow Catherine petitioned the justices in March 1775:

"Augusta County to the Worshipful Court of aforesaid: Whereas my husband, David White, was killed in the last expedition, I not being able to come to Court, humbly pray that your honors will see for [supor?] my father, Jacob Eaverman, to administer on his estate. Witness my hand this 15th of March, 1775. [Signed] Catheren (mark) White. [Witnesses] Robert Minnes, Andrew Skidmore."³⁸

There was never a British bureaucracy to administer the affairs of the dead or wounded veterans in Virginia of the French and Indian or Dunmore's War. Elsewhere we learn in the Point Pleasant Claims that John Lewis produced a claim for David White "for serving as a spy which is OCd."³⁹ No particulars are given, but it seems likely that he was paid five shillings a day for a term of days similar to that of his brother William. That the claim was paid is apparent from the final settlement of his estate recorded at Staunton on 19 May 1778 winch fists "cash received of the public for pay of the intestate as a spy."⁴⁰

It should probably also be mentioned that no John Everman died at Point Pleasant, as is sometimes said.⁴¹ The John Everman whose probate was started at Staunton on 16 November 1774 was the father of Jacob Everman (not his son) and the grandfather of Catherine (Everman) White.

Point Pleasant is frequently called the first battle of the American Revolution, but it is clear that the old soldiers who served there realized that they had no claim against the Federal government in their old age. Many of the men who served soon after in the Revolutionary army sometimes mention the earlier troubles with the Indians in their petitions, but none ever claimed any compensation for this period in their lives from the United States Pension Office. Of all of the men who served in the company, only two (Isner and Skidmore) appear to have left posterity in the Tygarts River Valley down to the present time.

An unexpected biproduct of these notes has been the discovery of considerable detail on the migration of several of Captain Friend's men (with others) from the Tygarts Valley to the Beech Fork (of Salt River) area of what is now Nelson County, Kentucky, in the summer of 1779. The reasons for this exodus are not hard to find. All of the bottom land had been taken up on Leading Creek and the other tributaries of the Tygarts River, and the settlers and their maturing sons had been reduced to expanding to the occasional gentler slopes squeezed in between the mountains. Hearsay (and the occasional newspaper article) pictured Kentucky to be the new Canaan, and the more vigorous citizens were up and away in the pursuit of what they hoped were untold opportunities in the west.⁴²

The leader of the expedition to Beech Fork was probably William Cleaver, Senior, who must have been born by 1730 and was probably the oldest and most substantial of the men who made the journey. A petition read to Congress on 23 August 1780 from the "Inhabitants of Kentucky" states that they came 700 miles down the Ohio River to their new homes.⁴³

Some other names of men who were not members of Captain Friend's company turn up in the records of what is now Nelson County. Edward Skidmore (1737-1782), who had been a partner in the site of Friend's Fort, was a member of the Cleaver party. He was called out as a Sergeant of a company on 24 June 1782 to assist in the construction of Fort Nelson at Louisville. and no doubt put his experience working on Friend's Fort to good use. He was there until 13th July when the company was paid and discharged. Alas, he died a few months later soon after his will was written on 17 October 1782. He had been in Kentucky for only three years, but the name Skidmore is said to have survived there for a time as the name of a small community five miles due east of Bardstown. It is still found on modern maps (now called Woodlawn) with a population presently estimated by Rand McNally at about 100.

John Hunter, probably identical to the man found earlier in the Tygarts Valley, was another man who did not survive long in Kentucky. He had died before 28 February 1786 when an appraisal was ordered taken of his estate in Nelson County.⁴⁴

James Rogers, who built a station (fort) just west of Bardstown, can probably be safely identified with the man of his name who was a purchaser (with Edward Skidmore) at the vendue sale of Moses Thompson on Leading Creek held on 10 July 1778. He was a Baptist clergyman and married many of the progeny of his old neighbors from the "Tygarts Valley (including the young Skidmores) in Nelson County.

Abraham Hornbeck (1758-1834) married Hannah, the eldest daughter of William Cleaver, on 3 April 1783 hi Nelson County. She had come down the Ohio River at the age of 15 with her father. Hornbeck had enlisted earlier in Hampshire County, Virginia, in the Revolutionary army but whether he came with his future wife in the party in 1779 is left unstated.⁴⁵

The party who made the journey to Beech Fork in 1779 (with later additions) is better documented than most. Some general genealogical truths appear, which may be useful to remember, individual families rarely traveled alone in this dangerous period, but were more likely to move about in parties of old friends and cousins united by a tangled skein of intermarriages. Alas, it can take more time than most people are willing to invest to sort out all the relationships between members of a new community, but it may be the best (or sometimes only) way to arrive at a common place of origin.

1. See "Jonas Friend and Friend's Fort," ARA, IV (Fall 1995) 4-12

2. Augusta County Order Book, XVI 33-48.

3. Augusta County Minute Book, 1775, 118-29. Katherine G. Bushman has published a transcript of the three day session with a valuable introduction in the Augusta Historical Bulletin, IX. no. 1 (Spring 1973) 33-41. Most of the claims were for supplies and not for military service. Jonas Friend, William Cleaver [senior], Jacob Aberman, and David White (presumably his estate) also produced claims probably for beef or other commodities. Ann [Agnes] Skidmore seems to have been the only married women who entered a claim, probably for cornmeal or flour from the mill near Ruddle which she was running with the help of her son Samuel Skidmore during the absence of her husband. (One other claim was from an executrix of her husband, and the status of a third woman is unclear.)

4. State Library of Virginia, Misc. Reel 78 [Soldiers and Public Service in Dunmore's War].

5. In the only personal account we have of Friend's company Benjamin Cleaver reported some 58 years later in an affidavit attached to his pension application that "they had a battle with the Indians," that he was gone some four months (which does not agree with the payroll), and that he had been marched about three hundred miles.

6. Lyman Chalkley, Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia, I, 184

7. TLC Genealogy, The 1795 Census of Kentucky (Miami Beach, 1991), 10. See also Karen Maurer Green's The Kentucky Gazette, 1787-1800, Genealogical and Historical Abstracts (Baltimore, 1983), 149. Elias Barker, Senior, in addition to several sons, had a daughter Mary born in 1775 in Virginia who married Hamilton Tincher on 4 February 1796 in Madison County.

8. Peter and Cornelius King are noticed on 26 November 1792 in the first Randolph County Order Book as living in Nelson County, Kentucky, a welcome confirmation of what was already known of them.

9. Virgil D. White, Genealogical Abstracts of Revolutionary War Pension Files (Waynesboro, Tennessee), II, 1950.

10. William Cleaver, Senior, had owned a part of the tract on which Friend's Fort was built. His will was proved on 14 December 1807 in Nelson County, Kentucky, when execution was granted to his son Stephen Cleaver (Will Book A, 1017-9). Stephen Cleaver (1766-1846), later of Ohio County, Kentucky, and Ralls County, Missouri, was Brigadier General of the 12th Brigade of Kentucky Militia. He had been named executor of Peter Springstone, an old friend from Leading Creek, on 16 July 1803 in Ohio County. I am grateful to Peggy F. Rush of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, for this information on the Cleaver family. She has published books on both the Cleaver and Phillips families (presently out of print) which can be found at the Kentucky Historical Society and certain other large libraries. Mrs. Rush has very kindly shared all of her information on the Nelson County families with me, but she is not to be held responsible for my errors in interpretation.

11. White, I, 670.

12. It adjoined the tract where Moses Thompson lived, and was adjacent to the land 0f Benjamin Hornbeck who was the assignee of Benjamin Cleaver. These tracts were at the mouth of Stalnaker (formerly Thompson) Run four miles north of Elkins on U.S. Route 219. See "Early notes on the Summerfield Family: Pre 1780" by David Armstrong, ARA, I (Fall 1992) 27. Benjamin Hornbeck and his entire family were killed by Indians at the time of the Leading Creek massacre in April 1781. This fate might very well have happened to the Benjamin Cleaver family if they had stayed on the tract and not gone to Kentucky in 1779.

13. In addition to the loose marriage bond see the Nelson County Deed Book 3, page 44, which supplies much the same information. It is possible that Sarah Blackford was the daughter of Joshua Cleaver, who was presumably somewhat younger than his brother Charles. While Charles Cleaver had land on Leading Creek (which suggests that he was married by 1778) he is never mentioned in Kentucky. His brother Joshua is named only once in Virginia when he signed the petition of 1777 with his father William, Senior, and his brothers William, Junior, Benjamin and Charles. Joshua did get to Kentucky and signed still another petition from that place read to the Continental Congress on 23 August 1780. There is nothing to suggest that Joshua ever married. One of these brothers is probably the unnamed Cleaver who died in a hunting accident on Muddy Creek in what is now eastern Ohio County (soon after 1780?.) at the newly-built cabin belonging to a man named Blackford. See Mary T. Logan's Ohio County, Kentucky (1969) 6. The parentage of Sarah (Cleaver) Blackford awaits some further proof.

14. Alexander Scott Withers, Chronicles of Border Warfare (Cincinnati, 1895), 234.

15. Chalkley, III, 152.

16. TLC Genealogy, 169.

17. Elizabeth Strader married Wilford Clark (who had been added to the tithables in 1790) on 12 July 1792 in Nelson County. Clark was taxed in Nelson County in 1795.

18. See my earlier article on Jonas Friend (noticed above) for an account of Captain Joseph Friend, his wife Elizabeth Davisson, and their only daughter Mary Arthur.

19. This is based on the research of Merrill Hill Mosher, C.G., noticed above

20. ARA, II (Winter 1993), 11, His name appears between the brothers-in-law William Hamilton and John Steward which might suggest his abode.

21. Randolph County Order Book I, 138, Delay, Barker, and More were taxed in 1795 in Bourbon County, while Harper, Elliot and Prather were now in Clark County, Kentucky (which had been cut off from Bourbon in 1793). A James More, Senior, was living in Clark County in 1795, It would be interesting to know if either of these men was related to the wife of Anthony Houston.

22. See the document "Minutes of the commission appointed to settle claims to unpatented lands on the Western Waters of Virginia. January-April, 1780," edited by Katherine G. Bushman, in the Augusta Historical Bulletin, XIII, no. 2 (Fall 1977) 26. Other references noticed here to settlements made in the Tygarts Valley by 1778 stem from these minutes (with useful additions about localities from David Armstrong).

23. Randolph County Deeds, I, 73. John Wilson, attorney in fact for Jacob Everman of Fayette County, sold to Jonathan Smith 260 acres adjoining James Harness. (The witness for John Wilson were all Virginia men: John Polsley, James Bruff, William Wilson, and Abraham Kittle.)

24. Arthur Everman and Ann Vanwinkle were married on 17 September 1796 in Nelson County. Arthur Everman, probably born in Pendleton County, was undoubtedly named for Arthur Johnson, his maternal grandfather. This family should be included in Irene Everman Haraldson's Record of Michael Everman of Germany, immigrant [of] 1732 … (Reed's Spring, Missouri, 1967) which has not been seen.

25. Jacob, Michael, and William Everman are listed on the delinquent tax list of 1795 for Clark County, Kentucky, probably in that part taken off two years later as Montgomery County. The first tax list of Montgomery County for 1797 lists Jacob Everman, Senior, and his presumptive sons Jacob, Jr., Michael, and Samuel Everman as tithables only (with no real property). This list has been printed in the Register of early Kentucky tax records from the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (1984) 201.

26. Orange County (Virginia), Will Book II, 502-3.

27. Orange County, Order Book VI, Part 1, 237.

28. White, II, 2267.

29. Ralph Beaver Straussburger, Pennsylvania German Pioneers: a publication of the early lists of arrivals in the port of Philadelphia from 1727 to 1808 (Norristown, 1934), I 543. According to David Armstrong of Elkins his signature on this list matches that on documents found in the Tygarts Valley. Where he lived (in Pennsylvania?) prior to 1772 is not presently known. He and his eldest son Thomas are called Ausner on the petition of 6 November 1777.

30. Hu Maxwell, History of Randolph County, West Virginia (Morgantown, 1898) 183. Isner seems to have died without the benefit of probate.

31. White, II, 1806. Thomas Isner claimed to have served as an Indian spy, but his petition was apparently denied or never pursued.

32. White, I, 794.

33. His claim was supported by a statement of Thomas Collett (1739-1823) on 26 August 1818 that he and Andrew Skidmore had both served under Colonel Andrew Lewis "in the old Indian war" and that Andrew Scidmore had been wounded there. It is likely that Collett, living in 1774 in what is now Pendleton County, was in the company of Captain John Skidmore. (No payroll is known for this company perhaps since Captain Skidmore was wounded twice at Point Pleasant and was not physically able to get to Staunton in January 1775.)

34. There were two John Carrs (one a son Of Henry Carr, Senior) taxed in Hardy County in 1787. Neither is likely to have been the man at Point Pleasant. The son of Henry Carr was the elder of the two (born in or soon after 1760), and is last noticed in the tax list of 1843 living at his grist mill near Dryfork at the mouth of Red Creek near the present Randolph-Tucker County line. He and his older brother Conrad both served in Captain Harness' company according to Jeff Carr of Charlottesville, Virginia, a descendant. See E. L. Judy, History of Grant and Hardy Counties, West Virginia (Charleston, 1951), 220.

35. Early Kentucky Settlers. The Records of Jefferson County, Kentucky, From the Filson Club History Quarterly, (Baltimore, 1988) 25, 112, 124. If there was only one John Carr in this part of Kentucky, then this man was alive since he is found on the first tax list from the new county of Nelson in 1785 (and again in 1786).

36. White, I 182. He applied on 1 May 1834 while living in Henry County, Kentucky.

37. Joel Westfall, Senior, married Mary Houston (born in New Castle County, Delaware), a sister of Anthony Houston noticed above. (Joel Westfall was a brother of Daniel Westfall whose daughter was the wife of William Cleaver, Junior.) After his death John Wilson (the attorney for Jacob Everman) married the widow and became the stepfather of Joel Westfall, Junior. For the death and posterity of Captain White see Minnie Kendall Lowther's History of Ritchie County (1911) 77-82, Genevieve Lentz, Westfall Research (1985) 122, and W. B. Cutright, History of Upshur County, West Virginia (1977) 467.

38. Chalkley, I, 511. Her petition was granted and Jacob Aberman was given the administration on 25 March 1775. (Chalkley, 1, 184.) The estate of David While "of Tyger's Valley" was appraised by Elias Barker and John Warrick on 4 June 1775. (Chalkley, 11I, 141.) From the Land Commissioner's report, noticed elsewhere, we find that he was also survived by a son David, presumably an infant (although this is left unstated), who was heir at law to his father in 1780. Although the date is suitable he is not the David White who married Elizabeth Summerfield on 19 June 1800 in Randolph County. David White, Jr., may very well have been taken by his mother or grandfather to Kentucky. For an account of the death of David White at "the Battle of the Point" (as remembered by his sister-in-law Elizabeth [Wallace] White at the age of 102) see Lowther, 80--1.

39. Augusta Historical Bulletin, IX, 37.

40. Chalkley, III, 152,

41. Violet Gadd Coonts, The Western Waters: Early Settlers of Eastern Barbour County, West Virginia [199l] 128-9, 131, 165. A dispatch from Point Pleasant did not get to Williamsburg until a few days before i0 November 1774, when it was published in the Virginia Gazette. It listed only the commissioned officers killed or wounded. It is exceedingly unlikely that a probate would have been started less than a week later for an enlisted man as that of David White (cited above) demonstrates.

42. An excellent account of life in the Tygarts River Valley (and the journey west by the Cleavers) is to be found in William A. Owens' A Fair and Happy Land, (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975). Owens' book takes his Cleaver ancestors through nine states from Pennsylvania to Texas. It includes (with much more of interest to ARA readers) the complete text of the grant from Governor Benjamin Harrison to the five partners of the Friend's Fort tract. The book must still be used with caution for the author's first intention was to tell a good story (at which he was successful), but sometimes inadvertently at the expense of genealogical fact. Thus on page 65 we find that Owens misread the abbreviation "sd [William] Cleaver" as "P Cleaver," made this P stand for "Peter," and tied the Leading Creek Cleavers onto a Quaker family in Pennsylvania where they may (or may not) belong. There is only one Cleaver (William) mentioned in the Hampshire County, Virginia, records and his relationship (if any) to the William Cleaver, Senior, in the Tygart River Valley is unknown.

43. Kentucky Historical Society Register, vol. 72, no. 3 (July 1974) 41-48. This petition was signed by the Cleavers (William, Benjamin, and Joshua), Edward Skidmore, and a good many others soon after their settlement on Beech Fork.

44. It must be pointed out that none of these identifications which I have suggested are to be taken as carved in granite! All of them seem probable, but interested descendants are urged to make a more intensive search for further evidences about all of these men and their families.

45. White, II, 1708. He died on 16 November 1834 in Spencer County, Indiana, leaving his widow Susannah who survived there until 1842.