Our Family Tree

"The Rocks of Deer Creek are in Harford County, Maryland, distant nine miles north-east of Bel Air, the county seat, and seven miles south of the boundary line between Maryland and Pennsylvania. The waters of Deer Creek, forcing their way at an indefinite time past through Rock Ridge, have left on either side an immense pile of massive rocks, three hundred and eighty-five feet in height, which, with the plunging water of the romantic river which runs at their base and the contiguous scenes, constitute a rare picture of sublimity and beauty."

"Prior to the year 1817, no permanent settlement was made on the Miami bottom by white men. John Ferrill, and his son Henry, had trapped beaver and otter along the river, and many a time had camped temporarily on the bottom, but no actual settlement was made until the year named, when John Cook and family settled about one and a half miles northeast of Miami, being section 33, township 52, range 22.
Soon after, or perhaps not until 1818, came Samuel Perry, Wm. Clemmons, Thomas Clemmons, Henry Ferrill, John McMahan, William McMahan, and Robert Patrick. The first settlers in the bottom were all Kentuckians, and as a consequence, were all hospitable, manly, generous and brave." [page 160].
"In the neighborhood of the town of Miami the settlements were begun in 1817, in which year there came by keel-boat John Cook, Samuel Perry, Martin Waddle, Wm. Adams, and Mat. Maze, all from Kentucky, except Perry, who was from Pennsylvania. This history is given upon the authority of Alfred Wheeler and his wife Ruth, and Mr. J. P. Scott, of Miami. Mrs. Wheeler was born in Cooper's Fort, Howard county, and Mr. W. was raised in the neighborhood, whose history in part he relates. According to their testimony. Perry settled on a part of section 27, town- ship 53, range 21, and the rest near by." [page 438]

"The first shipments or exports of produce from the colony were made in 1822, by Samuel Perry, who bought a flatboat load of pork at from $1 to $1.50 per hundred weight, which he marketed at a fair profit at Old Franklin and Booneville. The first potatoes and other produce were shipped the next year, by Joseph Clemmons. The shippers made their own boats out of timber hewn in the woods and of plank sawed by hand with the old whip-saw."