Ross Nelson on tax list Mason Co VA 1806-1807

Date: 2024 [unknown]
Location: Mason, Virginia, United States

NELSON GROUP REPOSITORY home page https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:NELSON_GROUP_REPOSITORY

Ross Nelson on tax list Mason Co VA 1806-1807

Reference: All that part of the district lying on the Ohio river bottoms above Eighteen-mile Creek, was included in the grant made by Congress to the heirs of General Mercer, who was killed at the battle of Princeton, New Jersey, January 3, 1777, while fighting by the side of Washington; hence the name Mercer Bottom. Who located and surveyed the lands cannot now be learned, but his grandson, Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia, afterward put the lands in market and sold them in quantities to suit purchasers. Thomas Hannan, whose name is preserved in that of the district, was the first actual settler - locating in the year 1790. Andrew Fleming and a Mr. Mercer, two hunters, had previously erected a cabin on the land which he purchased, and this was occupied by him until he could build a better one. Soon Jesse George purchased seventy acres of land at the mouth of Flatfoot Creek ... and became the second actual settler. Then came John Hereford, Robert Hereford, Thomas Powell, Edward S. Menager, John Morris — who discovered the first salt water on Kanawha river — George Withers, Robert Cremeans, James George, Rev. John Canterbury ...

The settlement at Point Pleasant did not receive an official charter until 1794. The first road through what later became Mason County was laid out by Thomas Hannan (1757-1835) in 1798 under contract to the federal government. It traversed the distance from present-day St Albans, (West) Virginia to Chillicothe, Ohio. This road (parts are still known as "Hannan Trace Road") is one of the oldest roads in Ohio. It became a main highway connecting Chillicothe and points east during the time when that settlement served as the capital of the Northwest Territory and the first capital of Ohio.

The Virginia General Assembly officially created Mason County from Kanawha County on January 2, 1804. It was named for George Mason IV (1725–1792), known as the "Father of the United States Bill of Rights" and a Founding Father of the United States. By 1810, the total county population stood at almost two thousand people. Before the American Civil War it developed as a river port (farmers upstream on the Kanawha River could ship their goods to Point Pleasant and from there down the Ohio River and sometimes the Mississippi River to market) as well as coal. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1563 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason_County,_West_Virginia