Letter of Capt. Cuthbertson Small to His Niece, Mrs. Elizabeth Bell

The following data is extracted from David and Margaret Mitchell Genealogy.

Cedarville, O., July lo, 1885.

My Dear Lizzie :

You ask me to give you a little history of my family. M y knowledge respecting father's family is very limited. Grandfather Small I think came from Scotland, and settled on the waters of the Junietta River in Pennsylvania, where the family were all born; James, -Mathew, John and Elizabeth. Three brothers and one sister are all I ever heard father speak of.

Elizabeth married William English, a Revolutionary soldier, who At the close of the war, they all left their father's house; all went to Kentucky. Mathew drifted south; John went back to Pennsylvania; and father came to Ohio.

Father married Margaret Mitchell, daughter of David Mitchell, who, in 1779, sold his property in Pennsylvania, got a trunk full of Continental money, and he and one or two other families got a flat boat, put their families aboard, and floated down the Ohio, to Louisville, Ky., and then through the wilderness to where Lexington now stands. I heard mother say there was not a stick of timber cut from Brownhill, Pa., to Louisville. There was a station or stockade at Lexington for them to go into to keep the red-skins from scalping them. I heard mother say she never tasted bread until they raised the wheat. They had dried venison for bread and bear's ham for meat.

Grandfather was a heroic old fellow; he went out north of Lexington six miles and raised a patch of corn, and the government gave him 1000 acres of land-what was called a "corn right." His continental money all died in his trunk. Father went there a few years afterwards and I think was married in 1788 or 1789. As quick as slavery was adopted they got up and moved to Ohio in 1805.

C. S. SMALL.

The Brownhill referred to in the foregoing letter is, doubtless, the same place as Brown's Mill which, on a map of 1775, is located in Peters township, on the great Conococheague creek, and slightly southwest of Chambersburg, Pa. The mill was likely at the foot of the hill, and both names, probably, were given to the locality. The "Troublesome Jobb" farm was not far from Brownhill.

Source: David and Margaret Mitchell Genealogy

  Go Back