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into smaller tracts and sold it to various parties.
FIRST SETTLERS.
One of the earliest settlers in the upper part of the manor,
in fact in this region, was Jeremiah Cook, Sr., who
emigrated from Virginia, having moved up to Crooked creek in
1769. He was the father of Conrad, George and
Jeremiah Cook, whose names are on the assessment list
of Allegheny township for 1805, with whose limits the manor
tract was then included. Others were James Barr,
one of the associate judges of this county, James
Claypoole, John Monroe, Joel Monroe, Jonathan Mason and
Parker Truitt. John Mason volunteered in
Captain Alexander's company, and was killed by a
bombshell. What induced Claypoole, and probably
the others to settle here was their impression that the
manor bottom would be divided into tracts of about 100 acres
each, and sold at moderate prices. But when the
Duncans became the owners they determined not to sell in
small tracts. Barr and Claypoole
purchased elsewhere. Some of the others remained as
renters.
Among the first, if not the very first, white settlers
on the southern part of the Manor were William
Green and his sons James, John and
Samuel, who emigrated from Fayette county, in the spring
of 1787, and took up their abode above the mouth of Crooked
creek, on what is now the site of Rosston. They
brought with them a quantity of cornmeal, which, for want of
shelter, became wet and was spoiled. The nearest
points of supply were Pittsburgh and Brownsville, and as
food was very scarce, they lived for about six months on
milk, venison and ground-nuts. They boiled the
ground-nuts in milk, which imparted to them a taste somewhat
like that of potatoes. John Green said
that he and the rest of them became quite weak on that kind
of food, so much so that it required two of them to carry a
rail. Deer were caught by means of a large steel trap
set in a deerlick, with a chain to which three prongs were
attached, which left their marks on the ground, whereby the
deer were traced and captured.
Wolves, bears and deer were numerous. Samuel
Green, Sr., killed a very large bear with a club.
He shot and killed a panther on Green’s, now Ross’
island, which is said to have been the largest one ever
killed in this county. It measured eleven feet from
the tip of its nose to the end of its tail.
The pioneer settlers here experienced the want of a
mill for grinding corn and other grain. For a few
years they used handmills for that purpose. In 1789,
or the next year, William Green erected a
small tubmill, about sixty rods from the river, at a short
turn on the stream still called Tubmill run. The fore
bay was constructed from the trunk of either a gum or
sycamore tree, and a pair of small millstones, from material
near the run, which were moved by the stream that flowed
through the millrace and forebay falling on fans attached to
the shaft. That was the only mill for grinding grain
in this region, until Alexander Walker’s mill
in Bethel township was erected.
William Green and his sons removed, prior
to 1804, to the west side of the river, and Judge
Ross became thereafter the first permanent white settler
in this southwestern portion of the Manor, as he is first
assessed in Kittanning township in 1808. He and his
family occupied for a while one of the cabins near Fort
Green. In the course of a few years he built the stone
house now owned and occupied by Margaret, the widow
of his son, Washington Ross, which was the
first one of that material erected in this region, on the
east side of the Allegheny river, except the one in
Kittanning borough. He was then assessed with 100
acres, valued at $4 per acre. He was first assessed
with a gristmill and saw mill in 1820, so that they were
probably erected in 1819. They were situated on the
right bank of the Crooked creek, about 200 rods above its
mouth. In the former were two runs of stone.
Grists were brought to it at times from a distance of from
twenty to thirty miles. It is said that this portion
of the Manor tract was once called “Egypt,” on account of
the abundant quantity of grain which it yielded.
Lieut. Samuel Murphy related in his life time
that a man by the name of McFarland had a store about
fifty rods below Fort Run, between 1787 and 1790, and
carried on a considerable trade with the Indians, with whom
he was apparently on friendly terms. They finally
captured and took him to Detroit. McFarland was
a brother-in-law of General Andrew Lewis,
of Virginia.
Among the white settlers near the mouth of Garrett’s
run, in the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part
of the nineteenth century, was James Henry.
Jeremiah Lochery, a singular and somewhat noted
character in those times, lived with him. Lochery
was reputed to have accompanied General Armstrong
in his expedition to Kittanning, and to have been wounded in
one of Capt. Sam Brady's raids.
AN INDIAN TRADER.
AN EARLY GRAIN CRADLE
MANUFACTURER
ROSSTON
MANORVILLE
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SCHOOLS OF MANORVILLE.
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houses, $6,000; teachers' wages, $1,280; other expenditures,
$919.66.
The school directors were: H. C. Richards,
president; J. B. Klingensmith, secretary; George
Fitzgerald, treasurer; William Copley, H. W. Hileman.
A lodge of the Odd Fellows has
existed here for many years, and is still in a thriving
condition. John Householder, who died in
1913 at Rosston, aged eighty-two years, was a member of this
lodge for nearly thirty years.
POPULATION OF MANORVILLE
SCHOOLS OF THE MANOR
APPLEBAY MANOR MEMORIAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH -
1843-1892-1908. Appleby is an old English
name, and was given to one of the Manors set apart by
William Penn and his heirs, the titles to which were
never vested in the State of Pennsylvania. This manor
comprised about five thousand acres of the most beautiful
and fertile land in Armstrong county, extending four miles
along the eastern bank of the Allegheny river, near the
center of which there stood for fifty years the old Manor
Church, and now stands by Appleby Manor Memorial Church to
perpetuate the name.
We are told that when George Ross, son of
Judge George Ross, lay on his deathbed, he requested his
parents to bury him on that spot, assigning as a reason that
it was the best site for the church which he believed would
some day be built in that part of Appleby Manor.
When Josiah Copley, a well-known editor
and writer, removed from Pittsburgh to the hill above what
has since become the village of Manorville, he and Mr.
Hamlet Totten, of Rural Village, instituted
Sunday school and prayer meeting services in the log
schoolhouse which then occupied the site of the present
parsonage, these good men walking from their homes, three to
five miles distant, for this pioneer missionary labor.
In this they were joined by John Christy, on
whose farm the
APPLEBY
MANOR MEMORIAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
MANOR TOWNSHIP, ARMSTRONG COUNTY
(PICTURE)
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THE MANOR'S
POPULATION
GEOLOGICAL
END OF CHAPTER XXV.
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