In the early 1800s, amid the hills and hollows of Lewis County, (West) Virginia, Mary Taylor Squires was born into a world of rugged terrain and deep faith. The daughter of Asa Squires and Sarah Eastep, Mary grew up along Salt Lick Creek, where her family helped build one of the region’s earliest Methodist meeting houses.
It was here, in the shadow of campfires and sermons, that she met a young circuit rider named Shadrach Cheney.
On Wednesday, October 9, 1793, in a log cabin in the Pennsylvania Appalachian Mountains, Martha Cheney gave birth to her ninth child. She named him Shadrach, a namesake of his paternal grandfather.
Shadrach Cheney is our 4th great-grandparent.
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In the years following independence, Gilbert and Martha Cheney transitioned from renters on Penn Proprietorship land to landowners in the new American republic.
Their names appear in oaths of allegiance, tax rolls, and land warrants—each record a step toward permanence in the Pennsylvania frontier.
Continue readingBy the mid-1700s, the Appalachian frontier beckoned. Gilbert and Martha Cheney—our fifth great-grandparents—joined the wave of settlers seeking land and opportunity in the remote valleys of central Pennsylvania.
Their story unfolds on Warrior’s Ridge, between Shaver’s Creek and Standing Stone Creek, where wilderness met perseverance.
Gilbert and Martha Cheney are our 5th great-grandparents. We’re sure of that. We have a paper trail from Gilbert and Martha to our present-day Cheneys.
But we have a problem. We don’t know Gilbert Cheney’s parents.
Continue readingFamily Nibbles – Volume 9 is here! This book is about the lives of our Large and Gallagher ancestors, with a little bit of Dugan thrown in.
The mine workers lived under the complete control of the coal companies. It was a relationship much like the oppression from English landlords they had suffered in Ireland.
Continue readingIn 1854, a new mine and coal patch town of Eckley was created in southern Luzerne County wilderness.
Continue readingOnly five years later, the enterprise had proven so profitable that the town included 130 houses, a sawmill, a hotel, a company store, several shops and three churches.
Coal Patch, Take Two: The Preservation of Eckley Miners’ Village
The demand for anthracite coal kept growing through the 1840s and 1850s. Coal operators looked for new lands for mines.
Family Nibbles 