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CHAPTER III.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF THE VALLEY.

In the year 1732, Joist Hite, with his family, and his sons-in-law, viz: George Bowman, Jacob Chrisman and Paul Froman, with their families; Robert McKay, Robert Green, William Duff, Peter Stephens, an several others, amounting in the whole to sixteen families, removed from Pennsylvania, cutting their road from York, and crossing the Cohongoruton about two miles above Harper's Ferry. Hite settled on Opequon, about five miles south of Winchester, on the great highway between Winchester and Staunton, now the residence of the highly respectable widow of the late Richard Peters Barton, Esq., and also the residence of Richard W. Barton, Peter Stephens and several others settled at Stephensburg {typo corrected}, and founded the town; Jacob Chrisman at what is now called Chrisman's Spring, about two miles south of Stephensburg; Bowman on Cedar Creek, about six miles farther south; and Froman on the same Creek, eight or nine miles northwest of Bowman. Robert McKay settled on Crooked Run, eight or nine miles southeast of Stephensburg. The several other families settled in the same neighborhood, wherever they could find wood and water most convenient. From the most authentic information which the author has been able to obtain, Hite and his party were the first immigrants who settled west of the Blue Ridge. They were, however, very soon followed by numerous others.

In 1734,* Benjamin Allen, Riley Moore and William White, removed from Monoccacy, in Maryland, and settled on the North Branch of the Shenandoah, now in the county of Shenandoah, about twelve miles South of Woodstock.

In 1733, Jacob Stover an enterprising German, obtained from the Governor of Virginia, a grant for five thousand acres {typo corrected} of land on the South Fork of the Gerando† River, on what was called Mesinetto Creek.‡