Margaret Cain was probably the first born daughter of Nicholas and Catherine Cain, and as such, she would have been born about 1737 in Bucks county, Pennsylvania,[1] in the first cabin on Perkiomen near Tohickon Creek, where Nicholas and Catherine first became acquainted with the Custers, Adams and Opden Graf families. She would have been born a year after her father received his warrant for land from the Proprietaries of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and began his family life on a new frontier.
When the family moved to Virginia in the Winter of 1740, Margaret was about three or four years old and then she was a sturdy, young girl of of eight or ten when the settlement in Brock's Gap on the North Branch of the Shenandoah River.
In the years from 1745 to 1752 there was much work for a young girl in a wilderness home. There was always a new baby to care for, in addition to gardening, spinning, weaving and cleaning. While the menfolk cleared the land, planted and tended the crops, hunted and protected the home, Margaret and her mother kept the house and household.
Then, in the early 1750's, several things happened. One of the most important was the wedding of Margaret Cain to John Shaw. The Shaws were a German family living on the North Branch of the Shenandoah River not far from the Cains, Custers and Humbles. John Shaw owned land on the Cowpasture and he and Margaret made their home there for a short time. However, in the Spring of 1755, they left the Brock's Gap area and moved to Albemarle county, Virginia.
Nothing is known further of the family of John and Margaret (Cain) Shaw except that Margaret was living and named as an heir to one-ninth part of the estate of her father, Nicholas Cain, at the writing of his will in 1783.[2]
Note that the information above was all that the authors of this book knew in 1986. Their hope was that the researchers of the Shaw family might recognize this couple and share information in a joint effort to further knowledge of this family. Their data was gleaned from random data taken from "Chronocles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia" by Lyman Chakly and "Virginia Valley Records" by John W. Wayland.
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Margaret is 25 degrees from Herbert Adair, 22 degrees from Richard Adams, 17 degrees from Mel Blanc, 25 degrees from Dick Bruna, 19 degrees from Bunny DeBarge, 32 degrees from Peter Dinklage, 18 degrees from Sam Edwards, 17 degrees from Ginnifer Goodwin, 21 degrees from Marty Krofft, 14 degrees from Junius Matthews, 15 degrees from Rachel Mellon and 18 degrees from Harold Warstler on our single family tree. Login to find your connection.