Carol, Another comment, a long one, on why our forefathers moved to Ohio from Maryland. This subject has been of great interest to me as well. Much of Maryland, especially around the Frederick area, was, before the Revolutionary War, owned by Proprietors. They were men who were owed favors by the Crown and who were given grants of land by the King; they "developed" them, somewhat like modern subdivision developers, except that they rented them instead of selling in many cases. Many of our ancestors came to Maryland and rented their land from these Proprietors. Some bought because they could afford to do so. But others were new in this country, having spent all they had just getting here, and renting was their only way to get land. These Proprietors were not particularly bad guys, not slum landlords or anything! and some were patriots when the time came. They were just entrepreneurs. The tenants of these "Manors" cleared the land, built houses and barns, made all the improvements. And if you have visited the area, you know they also had to clear the rocks! What a lot of exposed rocks! Backbreaking work. They also had lots of kids to help with the work. They invested their lives in these rented lands, hoping, usually ,to purchase when the time was right. But the War came. After the Revoutionary War, two things had happened, and then two more. 1. The tenants, as well as the outright owners who had bought their land, had been there long enough to raise way too many children to share their land with. So new land was greatly in demand. And there were two directions to go, west into Ohio and South into West Virginia and then Kentucky. Western PA took some of the overflow, but it was having a lot of westward flow of its own, and the land was so mountainous there. 2. The land belonging to the Proprietors was granted by the King. The King had been thrown out. So the new governments, in need of land with which to pay their soldiers of the Continental Army , confiscated all Crown lands. Guess what happened with the tenants of these Manors? They were dispossessed. This took place in about 1789, and it probably created a major jam-up of families living with family, homelessness, and attempts to settle on inferior land, etc. Even before Ohio became a state in 1805, the western "dam" was leaking and then, with statehood, the dam burst. One of my ancestors, Peter Hedges, and a neighbor and close family friend, the widow Susannah Springer (widow of a Revolutionary War soldier who died in that war) both owned their land on the east side of the Monocacy River north of Frederick, MD. But, deed or no deed, they lost land in the postwar shuffle as well. Mistakes were made and injustices were surely done. It was a very unsettled time in the new nation. Some of their sons came on to Ohio, settling in the new state and in the greater Fairfield/Hocking County area. Also, it seems pretty obvious to me, from study of the various branches of my family (HEDGES, LANTZ, MORGAN, CREIGLOW, BIGHAM, DERN, CREAGER HENDRICKSON, DELONG, MCLAUGHLIN, LOVE, GUYTON, BOWLAND, RUFFNER, BIBLER, SMUTZ, so far) that family followed kin who went before. For instance, we know that all (or most) of the Hedges who lived in MD were related. When it came time to spead outward and acquire more land, some of the offspring went west to Ohio and others went down across the Potomac into Western Virginia. From there they moved into the new lands in Kentucky. But eastern Kentucky and West Virginia were mountainous, a hard living. Some of the new settlers stayed. But others heard from their kin who went to Fairfield County about how rich the land was there, (people wrote a lot of letters in those days if they could read and write) and they went north to Ohio to join them. Thus in the original Fairfield County area, there are several branches of the Hedges line, related, but not closely. My Hedges ancestor, Caleb Hedges Jr. came as a teenager, along with his twice widowed and twice remarried mother, Mary DERN HEDGES RICE WOLF and her new husband and his Rice and Wolf half brothers and sisters to Ohio about 1805. Two other factors came into play: 1. Ohio became a state. Development was gong on here. Entreprneurs speculated on land to sell to settlers.People were encouraged and actually recruited to move here. And remember that Ohio was due west of MD. (And PA) with a lovely river system to travel on, and an increasingly well established set of trails. Fairfield County and Lancaster were right on the Zane Trace, and Lancaster was one of the tree towns the Zanes established. Most attractive. 2. The Indian question was settled. Before the subduing of Indian hostiles in the area, it really wasn't very safe in central Ohio. The Shawnees of central Ohio were reputedly a fierce and proud people. Many settlers died at their hands and many were captured. But when Tecumseh died in 1812, that threat eased and even more settlers moved west. (It seems sad that this great chief could be viewed as an obstacle but of course he was. It was, after all, conquest. Us against them, and we wanted land.) I hope this helps you to understand the pressures the people of that time underwent. It has always seemed to me that it would have taken great bravery or great necessity to make such a move as so many of our ancestors made, into raw and unbroken land. That old and very romanticized novel about Lancaster, "Forest Rose" (Emerson Bennett, 1959) probably wasn't so far off. And the Conrad Richter series, "The Trees," (1940) "The Fields" (1946) and "The Town" (1950) will give a good, if fictionalized picture of how hard it was. Lynn McLaughlin Scheu Louisville, KY > Has anyone researched why so many came from Maryland to Ohio in >the early part of the 19th century? Mine were too young to have been >veterans of the Revolutionary War - any other ideas? >Carol A. Steele >Sandusky, Erie Co, OH >