Stewarts and Lower Chanceford in the Civil War?

York county is the next county east of Adams county, the county seat of which is Gettysburg.  It's near enough it had a fair amount of Civil War action.  The York blogs have mentioned some of this.  This post at Universal York has a list of names from Lower Chanceford township which were in a hastily-alerted unit mustered during July 1863.  I see several Stewarts, who might descend from Capt. John and Mary Orson.  I also note some surnames which are familiar in NY: Grove, Fulton, Boyd, Smith--I often wonder whether the migration to Geneva, NY accounts for some of the overlap in names between the two areas.

With this number of men from Lower Chanceford, I also wonder how many were away fighting?

A House Captain John Saw

We don't know what the house of Captain Rippey and Mary Orson looked like, but here's the York Town Square blog post on the Willis house, which dates to that time.

Did Captain John and Mary Go to the Fair?

No, not the Ontario county fair, whenever it was founded, but to the York fair, chartered by the Penns in 1767.  See this blog post from 2006.  Apparently York County likes to claim the title of oldest continual fair, but that's a bit iffy. But the 1767 charter is real.

Did Captain John Rippey Hear This?

Jim McClure has a post at York Town Square on the reading of the Declaration of Independence:

"Four militia companies and 300 to 400 old men, women and boys joined Smith for a public reading..."

In our dream world, Captain John would have been there at the head of his company and James Smith, the York signer of the Declaration, would have been related to the William Smith who became connected to the family in Ontario county, NY.  But in reality there's nothing to indicate the two Smiths are related and there were several companies from the York area, and Captain John's was one of the later ones.  But the post is an interesting sidelight on how politics worked in 1776

Was Rev. Cathcart Related?

The Universal York blog has a nice post on the Rev. Cathcart and his garden. He was a Presbyterian minister in York at the end of the eighteenth century into the nineteenth who kept a diary, mostly on his garden. "Cathcart" must be a relatively common name, but there was a Cathcart in northwest PA who married a Harshaw.  Too lazy to doublecheck the data.


Anyway, all gardeners will recognize this sort of thing:

In late winter he planted lettuce and radishes, and triumphed March 12, 1803 that his peas had come up in 12 days. The Cathcarts feasted on asparagus each spring. In May 1821 he wrote: "Vegetation rapid--one stalk of asparagus grew in 35 hours 16 inches and at 48 hours was 19 inches.' On April 26, 1822, Cathcart cut 162 stalks of asparagus and 111 stalks on the 30th. It is hoped that the Cathcart children shared their father's enthusiasm for asparagus.

My wife exults when she can have her peas up by mid March.

To and From York, PA

June Lloyd at Universal York has a post on the railroad age in York, which permitted people and goods easy access to many places.

One little appreciated vehicle of transportation for the York area was the Susquehanna River. I bought, skimmed, and almost immediately misplaced a book on working lives in the Broome County, NY area. Apparently for many years lumbering was the big industry there, beginning in the 1790's and going on until about the 1850's. Men would fell the trees, particularly during the winter, skid them to the river(s), and in the spring float them down the Susquehanna to market. Then the raftmen would travel back to Broome county.

My guess is the river path was probably the way the Rippeys, McCauley's, Blacks, and McIntyres traveled from York and Lancaster Counties to Ontario County, NY

York County and German

June Lloyd reports on the prevalence of German in York County. It's not clear to me when the influx occurred. My impression is that the Scots-Irish were the first immigrants, although I know that Pennsylvania had many Germans (if I remember, Benjamin Franklin was worried about whether English or German would be the common language).

Mills in York County

Here's a blog from York and a post providing background on the mills operative at the time of the Orsons and Rippeys. Remember Jonas Lighty was a millwright.

Google Maps and USGS Topographic Maps

Having fun trying to work between Google Maps and USGS Topographic maps. It had been a while since I visited the USGS site and I was pleased to find that you can now do a free download of the detailed topographic maps and see them in PDF format (with an added plugin.) Start here.

Google maps has also been improved, with a "terrain" tab, as well as the old road map and satellite tabs.

I set up a York area map, trying to nail down the sites of interest to descendants of Mary Orson and John Rippey. (See below.) The basic map is Google, with the placemarks. But I identified the lower Chanceford church location from the Topo map, as well as the "Orson run" id. Ideally I"d have links from the placemarks to the documents Jean extracted for the various tracts of land. Maybe next year.



View Larger Map

James Smith--A Near Miss?

One of the mysteries in my genealogy is William Smith. We aren't sure where he came from--was it from New England which was the source of most of the settlers of upstate New York, or from Pennsylvania, where most of my ancestors came from.

I bought a history of the First Presbyterian Church of York, PA off E-bay (please use the site, I own stock in the company ;-) ). Not from any real likelihood of finding something, but York's just north of the area Capt John Rippey and Mary Orson lived (about 20 miles according to Google Maps) and there's not likely to be a history of the Lower Chanceford Presbyterian Church available. The history is really short (the history of No. 9 church is longer and more detailed). [tongue in cheek on] But it did mention a "James Smith", both as being prominent in the church and, by the way, a Signer!!

Signer of what, you ask?? Of the Declaration of Independence, of course, you ignoramus! So today I did some googling. Alas and alack, I'm not an heir. [tongue in cheek off] Smith was from Ireland, emigrating with his father, being trained as a lawyer and practicing first in Shippensburg, PA and then in York. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and an early organizer of the militia in York. Rather interesting guy, if rather different from the usual stereotype of the dour Presbyterian. This was the most complete bio I found (which is downloadable if you have broadband).

So I can say that Capt. John Rippey would have met James Smith, but that's it. But, given the concept of 6 degrees of separation, there's now 6 degrees of historical separation between me and George Washington. (me to grandfather William to Rev. John to Joseph to Capt John to James Smith to George Washington).