[PRCo] Re: Penn Pilot

[Donald Galt]

On 24 Jun 2008 at 22:16, Fred Schneider wrote:

> I had no idea that you had family in this area.
> 
> The amazing thing about this county is that it was probably about  
> half half English and half German at the time of the revolution.   
> There were a lot of Germans that had land from the Penns.   Most of  
> our Germans didn't come to the United States until they got fed up  
> with wars in the 1850s.
> 

My great*6-grandfather Robert Galt was an Ulster Scot who settled in (then) 
Chester (now) Lancaster County early in the 18th century.

Some 200 years later a story developed some authority in historical circles 
that his arrival had taken place in 1709. The printed source for this was a 
church history written some 50 years earlier, drawing presumably on family lore 
that doesn't seem to survive in any other form.

Now, you will note that 1709 would put him a year earlier than the Mennonites, 
hence the first settler in the county. Problem is, the earliest record of him 
is his signature on a petition from about 1720. And nobody got around to 
patenting any land until Robert's son, son-in-law and grandson a number of 
years later still.

So it is my somewhat reluctant surmise that the Scotch-Irish decided to steal a 
march on the Deutsch on the occasion of the latters' bicentennial, and put 
forth Robert as their champion on essentially no evidence whatever.

Fact remains, our family dates back to before the formation of Lancaster County 
and continued to farm there within my own lifetime. And I've enjoyed a number 
of visits there.

Don
Writing from way out west