The
History Of Stony Branch Valley
(Part 1)
Benjamin’s Good Luck
Michael
Hillman
When
the very first American homesteaders settled the Stony
Branch Valley, ownership of land went to the one who had
it surveyed. Folklore has it that Benjamin Biggs and
Jonathan Hayes, neighboring land owners, discovered that
there was a large tract of untitled land between their
estates. As the Biggs' friendly version goes, Biggs and
Hayes split the cost of the land survey. Being the
sporting type, they then waged a bet whereby the first
to reach Annapolis, where the grant for the land from
the royal governor would be made, would "win"
the land. Benjamin Biggs, having the faster horse, won,
and in celebration of his good luck called the land
'Benjamin's Good Luck'.
However,
in the Hayes' version, Hayes commissioned the survey,
intending to have any untitled land entered in his name.
When the surveyor found a large strip of unclaimed land
between Benjamin Biggs and Jonathan Hayes, he, for a
reason now lost to time, offered the survey records to
Benjamin Biggs. Biggs accepted the ill-gained survey and
"hightailed" it to Annapolis, where he had the
land deeded under his name, calling it ‘Benjamin's
Good Luck,' perhaps mistaking "luck" for
"cunning." Hays, having paid for the survey,
did not look favorably on this act. He called the land
‘Benjamin's Treachery' and predicted destruction for
all generations of Biggs.
Sadly
for those who love folklore, neither story appears to be
true. What does appear to be true is that the Biggs' and
the Hays' both settled the land during the mid-1700's
with very different intents. Benjamin Biggs acquired the
land to divide it into smaller parcels and to sell to
later settlers at a profit. This gained him the
distinction of being one of the first land developers of
the valley. On the other hand, Jonathan Hays came to the
Stony Branch Valley with a vision of settling down with
his family and not growing an empire, but a family farm
that his family could cultivate and grow on for many
generations. The Biggs' and Hays' lived as neighbors for
many years and their stories unfold as a reflection of
the different types of settlers that inhabited the Stony
Branch Valley.
History
records that Benjamin Biggs' grandfather, John, came
from Worchester England, with the English expedition
against the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now known as
New York City. Benjamin's father, John Biggs Jr., an
up-and-coming, moderately well-to-do aristocrat, left
New York and settled on land west of today's
Walkersville, near a ford in the Monocacy that now bears
his name. Over his lifetime, John Biggs, Jr. laid to
rest one wife and three children.
In
spite of his trial and suffering, he nevertheless still
inspired each of his children to achieve their best.
Benjamin, his first son to reach maturity, (and the
second to bear that name) moved to open land a few miles
north of his father's at a bend in the Monocacy, between
the mouths of Tom’s Creek and Stony Branch. In May of
1745, he had 100 acres of land deeded in his name under
the title 'Benjamin's Good luck', a full nine years
before Jonathan Hays appeared in the valley. Thus the
name could not have come about as a result of either a
horse race or treachery. In 1747, he went on to claim
another 211 additional acres of untitled land adjoining
his ‘Benjamin's Good Luck', made available to him
because of his aristocratic roots.
Jonathan
Hayes' father (Jonathan, Sr.) was an officer in the
British Army stationed at Philadelphia. He met a young
Quaker girl, Elizabeth Elliott, whom he wished to marry.
Her parents, being Quakers, were opposed to war and
would not give their consent. Unwilling to lose his
love, Hayes sold his commission, left the army, and
married Miss Elliott. Moving eventually to Delaware,
Jonathan and his wife took up farming and raised twelve
sons.
In
1739, one 17-year-old son, also named Jonathan, set out
to explore the wilderness, or the land we call home
today. During his travels, the young Jonathan Hays
married Mary Henderson, who had came to Maryland via
Nova Scotia. The couple eventually made their way to the
scenic country nestled between the foot of the mountains
and the Monocacy River. They had been forewarned that
there were a great many Indians here, but that they were
friendly. A peaceful couple, Jonathan and Mary quickly
won the Indians’ friendship and respect. Nevertheless,
the Indians refused to let them settle on land bordering
the river, as that was their prime hunting ground.
Instead, the Indians offered the Hays' a 200-acre track
of land bordering on Tom's Creek, about one-quarter mile
above where Tom's Creek empties into the Monocacy.
Jonathan
and Mary Hays quickly set about establishing a
homestead. A log cabin was built at the top of the hill
overlooking the creek, near where today the Grimes'
Bridge crosses it. Now as folklore goes, Jonathan Hays
had a brother, Samuel, for whom he had great affection.
Jonathan reportedly exacted a promise from Samuel that
he would pay him a visit when Jonathan had settled and
built his home. True to his word, Samuel Hays paid his
brother a visit. When Samuel was about to return home,
Jonathan told him that if he would remain, he would give
him one hundred acres of his land. Samuel accepted the
offer and Jonathan had the land surveyed and, following
the sentimental custom of the time of applying names to
parcels of land, Jonathan had the track titled under the
name 'Brotherly Love'.
At
the time the Hays, the Biggs, and other inhabitants of
Stony Branch were settling their land and having their
families, the Royal English government was casting a
worried eye at French moves to claim the interior of the
American continent. In this time in history, title to
vast tracks of unsettled land was based upon having
settlements at either the headwaters or the mouth of
rivers. The French, by placing settlements deep into the
Great Lakes and at the mouth of the Mississippi, were
well on their way to claiming sovereignty of the vast
interior of the American continent. Their holdings
threatened to limit the English land holdings to the
coastal strip east of the Allegheny Mountains and also
the English dominance of Northern America.
In
answer to this impending dilemma, the English government
began an active policy of promoting settlement of the
wilderness, which wilderness included modern day
Frederick County. Once settled, the English could then
press their claims for the interior of North America
based upon ownership of the headwaters of the
Mississippi River.
Before
settlers could be enticed into the wilderness however,
the English Government had to first deal with the
present landholders, the Indians. The Algonquian
Indians, long occupants of this land coveted by the
English along the south of the Potomac, were enticed by
English offers and sold their ancestral lands and moved
west. To the north, the Iroquois signed a treaty with
the English never to cross south of the Susquehanna.
Fortunately for the English, the Susquehanna Indians, to
whom the Tom Indians were related, had by this time been
decimated by both European instigated intertribal
warfare and colonist introduced morbidities such as
small pox. As a result, the land east of the upper Blue
Ridge Mountains, present day Frederick County, was
fairly clear of Indians and ripe for settlement.
While
the Royal government opened the land to all settlers for
a nominal fee, it nevertheless still played favorites,
offering a few select aristocrats large tracks of land
in reward for support of the Crown. While this was
classic patronage, it also removed the burden from the
royal government of having to hire staff to solicit
settlers for the land. Instead, the government left it
to the land barons to solicit settlers and to divide the
land for them, being satisfied to simply collect taxes
on the produce from now 'productive' land.
One
of the earliest land barons in the valley was John
Diggs. Diggs, a grandson of the Royal Governor of
Virginia, was a wealthy Catholic who played a
predominate role in the sometimes bloody border dispute
between the Maryland and Pennsylvania governments, which
in many ways mimicked the land dispute between France
and England. With ownership of the Chesapeake and the
mouth of the Susquehanna, Maryland was pressing its
claim of what is now middle Pennsylvania. As early as
1727, John Diggs, under Maryland Authority, was offering
land to settlers in present day Hanover.
With
Pennsylvania pressing their claim to the land in the
Royal Court in England, however, title to lands
purchased by settlers from Diggs proved vague and
conflicting. It gradually became apparent to many
settlers that Diggs was a man of somewhat doubtful
honor. Indeed, it was eventually discovered that Diggs
had sold land he did not posses. Diggs apparently
assumed his right to land based upon his aristocratic
standing, and thus felt entitled to most of northern and
western Maryland. In 1732, Diggs formally claimed,
though without any authority, all the vacant land on the
Monocacy and its many branches. In spite of these
outlandish claims, John Diggs still managed to receive
grants for land. In July of 1743, Diggs received title
to three tracks of land in the Tom’s Creek Valley,
comprising close to 1000 acres, the first 547 acres, he
aptly named 'Diggs Lot'.
Diggs'
land grabbing was quickly mimicked by others, albeit in
a smaller fashion. In April of 1752, Daniel Dulany
claimed 1,680 acres along the head waters of Stony
Branch, which he titled 'Buck Forest', obviously for the
great quantity of deer within it. Not to be outdone, in
1754, John Diggs claimed an additional 1000 acres of
land to the north of his 'Diggs Lot'.
While
the land barons were quickly grabbing the best land,
some early pioneers still managed to stake claim to open
land. As noted earlier, in 1754, Jonathan Hayes claimed
his 200 acre 'Brotherly Love'. In 1756, Mathias
Zacharias, a recent German immigrant, laid claim to 210
acres, which he called 'Mon-Doller', and in 1757, Samuel
Emmit bought 2,250 acres at the head waters of Tom’s
Creek.
With
so much open land available, both land speculators as
well as settlers selected only the prime ground that
consisted of the open fields and meadows which could be
readily turned into productive farms. Rocky hills,
marshy areas and thick woods were often ignored, and
untitled for several decades. In many cases, the borders
of these prime land tracks are still denoted by the
wooded lots that now grace the Stony Branch Valley.
Unfortunately
for the land speculators and the settlers, the race
between the French and English for the interior of the
continent soon got out of hand. In 1754, the English
were not only fighting the French, but their Indian
allies as well. While little fighting actually occurred
in the Stony Branch Valley, Indian raiding parties
periodically moved through the area in search of
revenge. These raids proved a strong deterrent to
settlement in the open wilderness of the Frederick area.
Many settlers withdrew to the relative safety of coastal
cities.
By
1759, however, the English had captured most of the
French forts along the upper Ohio and to the west of the
Blue Ridge Mountains and Indian attacks on settlers in
this area became increasingly rare. However, it was not
until 1763, the end of the Seven Year War in Europe, in
which France ceded sovereignty of the interior of North
America, that settlers once again cast their eyes toward
the wilderness.
With
the end of the Seven Year War war, expectations for a
flood of new settlers caused existing land holders to
cast about and claim any heretofore unclaimed land
adjacent to their present land holdings. In October of
1762, Benjamin Biggs increased the size of his
Benjamin's Good Luck by laying stake to an additional
800 acres to the north and west of Stony Branch.
Jonathan Hayes laid claim to an additional 100 acres,
increasing his ‘Brotherly Love' Track to slightly more
than 300 acres, and William Diggs, who had inherited
‘Diggs' Lot’ from his father, laid claim to 3,012
acres to the east of Tom's Creek which he called
‘Carolina'.
The
names selected for tracks of land tell much about the
land. ‘Rich Level’, claimed by Benjamin Tasker and
Charles Carroll, is a broad flat flood plain which,
because of its frequently inundation, has been heavily
silted over the years and is thus richly fertile. The
track of ‘Rich Level’ on the western side of the
Monocacy, originality went by the name 'Fish Dam'. Prior
to European Settlement, the Indians are known to have
built dams in streams and rivers to create pools for
fish. One such dam is still evident just north of
Mumma's Ford on the Monocacy.
The 'Fish Dam' track of
land mirrors the lake that would have been created by
this dam up on the Monocacy and up Stony Branch. The Dam
was destroyed by early settlers to facilitate travel on
the river, at the time, the only means of communication
with the 'civilized' world.
‘Stony
Hill’, claimed by Jacob Shiyer in 1766, was aptly
named by anyone who has ever walked it. Lucas Flack's
logic in naming his grant 'Long Field' become obvious
when one stand upon the land and grazes across it as
Lucas must have. His son's titling of a small track of rocky
hilly land 'Hard Planting' needs no interpretation.
While
each individual settler undoubtedly had their own unique
reason for settling there, the cause of their removal
from their native countries was equally varied. Some of
them fled from severe religious persecution, others from
the oppression of civil tyranny, and still others were
attracted by the hopes of liberty under the milder
influence of English colonial rule. But for the greatest
part, the settlers flooded to the American continent in
the hopes of abandoning the crushing poverty of their
homeland and for the chance to own land and prosper by
their own designs.
The
Stony Branch Valley began to fill with the settlers from
across the Atlantic. Mathias and Elizabeth Zacharias,
and Jonathan and Mary Hays were soon joined by settlers
who, like themselves, came with fresh hopes and
aspirations. And with their arrival, the Lower Valley
began to echoed with the laughter, the tears, and the
dreams of pioneer families bearing last names such as
Crabb, Flack, Forney, Hockersmith,
Keffer, Koon, Marker, Miller, O'Neal, Paterson, Shiyer, Troxel, Whitmore,
Williams, and Wilson.
Read
Part 2
Index of
articles on the
History Stony Branch Valley
Read
more articles by Michael Hillman
|