“We are never going to do anything here,” George
Westlake told his wife. The lands which he had been farming in the mountains of
Western Maryland were now depleted, and his crop yield had been declining for
several years.
2 “What will we do?” Mercy asked. “I’ve heard that
Colonel Lockwood has settled on some new lands across the Ohio River,” he
replied. “But Samuel and Benjamin are just getting started here,” she
protested. “There won’t be much of a future for them if they stay here,” George
assured her.
3 That evening, the couple discussed the possibility
of moving to the Northwest Territory with their children. “I think that we
should do it!” Samuel exclaimed, but his wife didn’t look quite as enthusiastic
about the prospect as her husband (she was pregnant with their first child).
“It won’t be easy,” George cautioned. “This move will involve a great deal of
hard work, and we’ll have to leave many of our things here when we go.”
4 “I thought that you wanted to do this, father?”
Benjamin asked with a puzzled look on his face. “I do,” his father replied.
“But I don’t want to hear a bunch of complaints after we get started.” “We understand,”
Samuel interjected as he nudged his younger brother. One by one, everyone
nodded to acknowledge their acceptance of the proposal.
5 George quickly sold his house and land to one of his
neighbors for practically nothing, and they loaded as many of their belongings
as they could onto a wagon. “We’ll leave early in the morning,” George told
them.
6 The following morning, just before daybreak, they
pulled away from their Maryland home for the last time. Mercy and Elizabeth sat
together in the wagon and watched the cabin and outbuildings fade into the
darkness. Mercy grabbed her daughter-in-law’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Both
women’s eyes were wet with tears.
7 They followed the road along the Potomac River for
several miles, and then turned north into Pennsylvania. Fortunately, it was
high summer now, and the roads were dry. As a consequence, they made good
progress for the first three days.
8 On the fourth day out, however, it began to rain;
and it continued to rain for the next two days. The roads were so muddy that
the wheels on the wagon made a clicking sound as they slowly turned through the
muck. In fact, the mud was so thick in places that they had to hug the edge of
the roadway to be able to pass.
9 Finally, after a little over two weeks of traveling,
they reached the Ohio River. Then George and Samuel made arrangements with one
of the local ferryboat operators to take them across the river. George and
Samuel purchased land in what was shortly to become Belmont County.
10 “These mountains feel like home!” Mercy gushed.
Elizabeth was too tired and washed out to care what the place looked like. She
was still recovering from the birth of their first child. Samuel had named him
Josiah. “A new son for a new land!” he had proclaimed with a grin.
11 “Welcome to Mead,” Colonel David Lockwood said as
he took the hand of his old comrade in arms (they had served together in the
Revolutionary War). As the first permanent White settler in the area, Lockwood
had named the township after his mother (who was a descendant of that same
William Mead of Connecticut who was the father of Martha and John). “Thank you,
sir,” George replied with a broad smile on his face.
12 “I hope that you and your family will be happy
here,” Lockwood said as he shook his friend’s hand. “The land is good, but the
people who have settled here will make this a great place to live,” he
finished. A few years later, Lockwood would build the community’s first mill
and would also befriend a man named Squire McMasters (a descendant of the same
James and Susannah who had settled in North Carolina).
13 Within a few years, the crude cabins which they had
erected upon their arrival there were replaced by nicer homes, and the Westlake
family quickly acclimated to life at Dillie’s Bottom. Moreover, in 1803, Ohio
became the seventeenth state to be admitted to the still new United States of
America.
14 The following year, a young couple from Virginia
became their neighbors. Robert and Mary Powers also quickly became favorites of
Samuel and Elizabeth, and the two families enjoyed many meals and good times
together.
15 “We are moving into the interior,” Robert told them
one day. “Why?” Samuel demanded. “There’s some good land there, and there
aren’t as many taxes,” he told them. “Maybe will meet again someday,” Elizabeth
added through her tears.
16 However, although the Westlakes prospered as
residents of Mead Township over the years that followed, Samuel grew
increasingly disgruntled with the amount of taxes which they were required to
pay to live there. As a consequence, he would eventually reach the same
conclusion which Robert and Mary Powers had reached before him and move to the
interior of Ohio in the third decade of the Nineteenth Century.
17 Now these are the generations of George Westlake:
18 George and Mercy Westlake were the parents of
Samuel, Benjamin and other children.
19 Samuel Westlake married Elizabeth Reed, and they
had children: Josiah, Nancy, Sam, Zephaniah, James, George, Lizzy, Mercy,
Richard and Mary.
20 Josiah Westlake married Christenia Knouff, and they
had children together. One of them was a son name Henry Amziah Westlake.
21 Mercy Westlake married Andrew Amerine and moved to
what would eventually become Union County, Ohio.
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