A hearty thank you to John Newmark at Transylvanian Dutch, creator of Amanuensis Monday, for the gentle nudge to keep transcribing those family documents.

My great-great-great-grandfather Minor was a cattle drover in southwestern Pennsylvania throughout the 1820s and 1830s.  John Pearson based this business out of his farm in Greene County, near the town of Whitely (later called Gerards Fort) and left dozens of receipts, lists and agreements.  Generations later, the Minor Satchel Collection is mine to separate, annotate and place into acid-free sleeves. Names and places float still disconnected in six three-ring-binders, taunting me to find their meaning.  This receipt, simple in its intent, concise in its content, affirms that a  loan has been repaid; its black ink stands in strong relief against the yellow paper.

April 4th 1823

Received of John P. Minor by John McClelland agent for William McClelland the sum of one hundred and seventy dollars due on an article as note dated the tenth day of April 1822.

William McClelland

 John P. Minor married Hannah McClelland, daughter of Robert McClelland, in 1815. The couple had two sons in short order; and Hannah died shortly after the birth of the second boy in the spring of 1817.  By the fall John had remarried–an Isabella McClelland. Now this note appears to attest that a John and William McClelland also lived in Greene County. 

All these McClellands dangle on separate branches of an old tree that I believe belongs to a Revolutionary War era Robert McClelland. Will further research help me put Hannah, Isabella, William and John on the same branch?  Or will these folks end up on separate McClelland trees?