A student of the history of the early settlement of Pennsylvania[[6]] furnishes data regarding the two great stems of the pioneer stock, the Quaker and the Scotch-Irish, which were most prominent among the many nationalities that flocked to the kindly kingdom of William Penn, where each man was treated as a man, and where independence in thought and action was the portion each claimed as his own.
“In the first half of the eighteenth century,” says this writer, “many thousands of Scotch-Irish, Germans and Welsh landed at Philadelphia and New Castle, and a large majority of them found homes in Pennsylvania. A number of the former turned to the westward from New Castle and established themselves in Maryland and Virginia. Among them were the ancestors of Meriwether Lewis, whose grandfather was born in Ulster, Ireland; and a number of other noted pathfinders of the West.
“A few isolated settlements were also formed in New Jersey and Delaware, but as before stated, the majority of them found homes in Pennsylvania. They swarmed up the valleys of the Delaware, Schuylkill and Susquehanna and their tributaries, and became at once the vanguard of frontier settlement; and they and their progeny continued to merit this distinction until the descendants of the Atlantic seaboard settlements looked down from the summit of the Rockies on the Pacific slope.
“In the last half of the eighteenth century many hundreds of families migrated from Pennsylvania southward into the valleys of the Shenandoah and the south branch of the Potomac, whence numbers of them continued their journey into North and South Carolina. The records of the Society of Friends in Bucks, Lancaster and Chester counties show that hundreds of certificates of removal were granted their members during this period, to remove to Virginia and the Carolinas; and many of these sturdy Quakers eventually found homes west of the Alleghanies, though not a few of them, like Daniel Boone, the great king of frontiersmen, found the exigencies of life on the frontier incompatible with peace principles, one of the cardinal tenets of their faith, and drifted out of the Society.
“During the same period hordes of people of other religious denominations removed from Pennsylvania over the same route. The counties of Augusta and Rockingham, in Virginia, were settled almost exclusively by Pennsylvanians from Bucks and Berks and the Cumberland valley, many of whom found homes farther west or left their bones to bleach in the savage-tenanted wilderness of the frontier.
“Boone himself was a native of Berks County and removed in 1750, when a lad of sixteen, with his family and a host of others, among whom were the Hankses, Hentons, Lincolns and many others whose names became familiar in the drama of the West, first to Virginia and later to North Carolina. William Stewart, a companion of Boone in Kentucky who was killed at Blue Licks, in 1785, was a native of Bucks County, and, it is claimed by relatives of both Boone and Stewart, was also a schoolmate of Boone’s.
“If this be true, it must have been in Virginia, as Boone never lived in Bucks County, though his father was a resident of New Britain township prior to the birth of Daniel. Soon after the death of Stewart, his sister, Hannah Harris, of Newtown, made an overland trip from Newtown, Bucks County, to Danville, Kentucky, to look after the estate bequeathed by Stewart to his sisters, Mary Hunter and Hannah Harris of Bucks County, and after her return made a report of the cost of the trip, which is on record at Doylestown.
“The power of attorney of Mary Hunter to Hannah Harris to proceed to ‘Kaintuckee’ to collect her share of the Estate of William Stewart is dated May seventh, 1787; and the power of attorney given by Hannah Harris to John Dormer Murray to transact her business in Bucks County, dated July twenty-fifth, 1787, states that she is ‘about setting out for Kaintuckee’ and therefore fixes approximately the date of the beginning of her journey.
“Dr. Hugh Shiells, of Philadelphia, who had married Ann, the daughter of Hannah Harris, May thirtieth, 1782, preceded her to Kentucky and took up his residence near Frankfort. He died in 1785, leaving an infant daughter Kitty, who on arriving at womanhood married Thomas Bodley, one of the trustees of Transylvania University.
“Archibald Finley, who, we believe, was the emigrant ancestor of the John Finley who led an exploring party into southern Kentucky from North Carolina in 1767, died in New Britain township, Bucks County, in March, 1749, leaving at least three sons, Henry, John and Alexander, of whom the two former removed to Virginia and later to Kentucky. They are believed to have been members of a party of a score or more families who left Bucks County about 1760 and journeyed to Loudoun County, Virginia, whence a number of them removed soon after to Orange County, North Carolina. Of this party were Robert Jamison and his family and the Fergusons of Plumstead.