George Newkirk and Margaret Johnson

of Washington, PA, Castleton, IN, Adair Co., MO and Truckee, CA

Maggie Newkirk

Maggie Newkirk was born in September 1852 in Peoria, Illinois.[23] She descended from a family that came to the Hudson River from Holland in the seventeenth century. A large branch of that family migrated into southern New Jersey and became prosperous farmers at Pittsgrove twenty miles southeast of Wilmington, Delaware.

One contingent of that branch continued into Virginia along the Potomac to Berkeley County in the mid 1700s. After the Pontiac Rebellion and the Treaty of Fort Stanwyx, Abraham and Henry Newkirk followed other wealthy Virginia farmers into the wild and beautiful mountains of the Monongahela River. One of those they followed was a surveyor friend of George Washington named William Crawford. Meanwhile Irish and German immigrants filed over the Alleghenies from eastern Pennsylvania into the same region. Both Pennsylvanians and Virginians claimed the land. The territory seethed with conflict, Pennsylvanian against Virginian, and both against the Mingo, Shawnee, Wyandotte and Delaware.

Abraham Newkirk settled on Pigeon Creek and his sons undoubtedly served with the militia on the side of Virginia. In 1774 Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, waged a campaign against the Pennsylvanians for possession of the disputed land and against the Shawnee for possession of the lands in Kentucky and along the Ohio River. Virginians on the Monongahela served with him until the outbreak of the Revolution. Dunmore took the side of the British and the folks on the Monongahela took the side of the Patriots. By the time the British surrendered at Yorktown, the boundary controversy between Virginia and Pennsylvania had been resolved, but the war in the west continued.

The primary foes were British armed Wyandotte, Delaware and Shawnee. Henry Newkirk served under a Captain John Wall during this period but not necessarily on the raid to destroy the Christian Delaware. However his cousin, Isaac, served with William Crawford on the expedition to Sandusky against the Moravian Christians. Crawford perished in flames but Isaac survived. His captain and kinsman, John Hoagland, also perished.[25] Isaac later claimed to have buried Crawford's charred bones and to have returned the following year to retrieve them for the Colonel's widow.[26]

Ten years later in 1792, the Whiskey Rebellion broke out on the Monongahela. The new government levied a tax on spirits which infuriated the western grain growers. It crippled their primary market. The Newkirks of Pigeon Creek found themselves in the middle of the rebellion that erupted. At first the insurrection consisted of clandestine attacks on revenuers. It escalated to vigilante terrorism, threatened hangings and extensive use of tar and feathers. It ended with gunfire, arson and arrival of government troops.[27]

In 1795 Henry Newkirk's son Abraham went with an advance party of neighbors to the Northwest Territory on the Ohio River to survey a claim in the newly established Virginia Military District.[28] By 1800 Henry Newkirk, now nearly sixty, followed with the rest of his family. Two of his daughters married Abraham's surveying partners.[29] They settled on Maple Creek a few miles inland from Neville on the Ohio River.[30]

They probably paid no attention to the predictions of the Shawnee Prophet nor his threats to unleash malevolent forces on the Ohio Valley in 1811. They might have taken notice however when they saw hundreds of thousands of rodents come out of their holes and run into the waters of the Ohio as prophesied. Then the ground began to shake along the Ohio and the Mississippi, banks caved in, trees fell, water washed out of the river and the people ran in terror. The great New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 which devastated the region where the Ohio enters the Mississippi, was very strong at Maple Creek.

Henry's younger son George married a woman named Margaret Johnson. They had a son named Otho. Sometime in the 1830's George died and his wife, Margaret, and children followed other Newkirks into Indiana.[31] They settled near Indianapolis at Castleton on level land full of quagmires and surrounded by hills and streams. Otho, sometimes called Arthur, became a blacksmith and married a woman named Joanna. They settled briefly at Peoria, Illinois but returned to Castleton shortly after Maggie was born.[32] They remained in Indiana nearly twenty years before moving to Adair County Missouri and then to California in the early '70s.[33]

                                Henry Newkirk [24]
				b. ~1740, Berkeley Co., VA
				d. ~1823, Clermont Co. OH
				m.1 Lydia Raredon
				m2. Catherine ____

			George W. Newkirk [24]
			b. 1784, Nottingham Twp., Washington Co. PA
			d. <184031

				Lydia Raredon 


		Arthur/Otho Newkirk [24]   
		b. Feb. 18, 1829, Clermont Co., OH    
		d. >1875 


			Margaret Johnson [24]
			b. 1792, KY 
			d. >1850  



 	Margaret A. Newkirk (Maggie) [32]
	b. August 16, 1852, Peoria, IL   
 	d. June 26, 1921, Calpine, CA 
 	m. Jacob Teeter, Nov. 7, 1875, Truckee, CA [46]


		Joanna [Johnson?] 
		b. 1835, IN   
		d. 1875, Truckee, CA   

Ancestors of Maggie Newkirk

Sources:

23--Birth of Maggie Newkirk from obituary, Plumas National Bulletin, June 30, 1921, p. 3. (Age at death, 68 years and ten months.)

24--"Henry Newkirk 1740 CA, PA, Lineage", Newkirk Notes, No. 18, Sept., 1986, p. 9; see also Newkirk Notes, "Dutch Newkirk Lineage, Part I," p. 22; see also Aileen Miller Whitt, "My Newkirk Ancestry", Clermont County, Ohio 1980, (Batavia, Ohio: Clermont County Genealogical Society, 1984), p. 207; see also Adamson Bentley Newkirk, M.D., Some Descendants of Gerret Cornelisse and Mattheus Cornelisse Van Nieuwkirk, Publications of The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, Special Number (Philadelphia: Hall of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1934), pp. 26-27, 41-43. The first reference states that Henry Newkirk was born at Pigeon Creek in Washington County, PA. That is unlikely inasmuch as settlers did not come into the region until after 1763. The land was not ceded until 1768. Barnet Newkirk of Berkeley Co. VA was father of several Newkirks who came to Western Pennsylvania, one of whom must have been Henry's father, possibly Barnet's son, Henry b. 1721.

25--Pennsylvania Archives, Series 2, Vol. 14., pp. 681-716. See also Adamson Bentley Newkirk. Isaac Newkirk's sister married a Hoagland. Whether she was married to the Captain or someone in his family is not known.

26--Interview, Bill Wagner, President and Founder of the The County Line Historical Society, Wayne-Holmes Counties, Ohio, September, 1996. Mr. Wagner believes Isaac Newkirk may have buried Crawford's remains and returned to retrieve them.
27--Pennsylvania Archives, Ser. 6, Vol. 4, p. 8.

28--"Ohio Lands, A Short History", Thomas E. Ferguson, Auditor of the State, Columbus, OH. In 1800 Federal Land Offices opened in Hamilton Co. permitting land purchase on credit up to 4 years at 6%. The Newirks in the Monongehela region, who had fought for the Virginians, were entitled to land in the Virginia Military District. The first warrants were issued in 1796. Seven year leases were also available to settlers who didn't have the cash for purchase but who would actually make improvement to the land. Henry listed in 1802 census, 1803 election list and 1806 tax list (Clermont County formed 1800). See also History of Clermont County, Ohio (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1880); see also Aileen M. Whitt, CGRS, "Clermont County, OH Pioneers 1798-1812.

29--Aileen Whitt, "Henry Newkirk, b. 1840", Newkirk Notes #18.

30--History of Clermont County, Ohio, p. 364. (William Barkley, Joseph and Samuel Jackson and Abraham Newkirk among pioneers of Washington Township along Maple Creek, 1798-1800. Property owners in 1826: John, George and Catherine Newkirk.)

31--George present in U.S. Federal Census 1830for Ohio, Clermont County, but not present in family of wife, Margaret, in the 1840 Census, Indiana, Marion County, Castleton. Last child of George born in Ohio, 1834 according to 1840 census.

32--Maggie's birthplace from her obituary, Plumas National Bulletin, June 30, 1921, p. 3. See also Aileen M. Whitt. Arthur/Otho was born in 1829 in Ohio and married July 5, 1851.

33--U.S. Federal Census 1870 for Missouri, Adair County, Township 61, Range 15, Troy Mills Post Office, July 12, 1870, p. 4.

46--Nevada Co.California Marriage Index, Bk. 2, p. 428.

The above brief history of this Newkirk Family is taken from Showdown at Truckee by Marilou West Ficklin © 1997.