This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: HARDESTY, ASHCRAFT Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/Ci.2ADE/4744.1 Message Board Post: My 3Great-Grandfather, Elijah ASHCRAFT (1800-1867) was married to two different daughters of Thomas HARDESTY. First to Elizabeth HARDESTY (1802-1859) and later Margaret Alice (1800-1890), widow of Robert EDINGTON. According to a biographical sketch in the book : "The History of Coshocton County, Ohio - Its Past and Present 1740-1881"(1881), Thomas Hardesty arrived in Coshocton Co.,Ohio with his brother Edmund about 1811/12 and entered land on the SW Quarter of Section 19, Washington Twp.; and remained there until migrating to Greene County, Indiana. It also indicates he spent his youth upon the sea as a sailor. If he were with George Rogers Clark in his expedition to Kaskaskia and Vincennes in 1779, he would have been about 15 years old. The book "Early Indiana Trails and Surveys" (1919) by George R. Wilson, which was reprinted is for sale by the Indiana Historical Society, has a discussion of Clark's Grant on pages 57-61. The Virginia General Assemby in Acts dated October 3, 1779 and October 5, 1780, promised land bounties to officers and soldiers of Virginia who served until the end of the Revolutionary War -- ranging from 15,000 acres for a Major General to 200 acres for a Private. In October 1783 the Virginia General Assembly, authorizing a survey of the lands granted the Illinois Regiment [i.e. Clark's] and establishment of a town [Clarksville] within said grant. There were 1000 acres in the Clarksville Grant and 149,000 acres in the Main Grant. The entire Grant is incorporated in what is current day Clark County. Harrison County is part of the Indian cessations negotiated by Gov. W.H. Harrison at Vincennes in 1804 & 1805. It was surveyed and land there sold after Clark's Grant. If Thomas HARDESTY secured land in Harrison County, it would been through the Land Office in Cincinnati. Margaret R. Waters published a book on these sometime in the 1940s "Indiana Land Enties, Vol.1" The 1845 Land sale you mention in your post fot Thomas HARDESTY is located in Jackson Township, near where the ASHCRAFT families settled. Steve Stalcup Myers & Stalcup Genealogy http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~stalcup/