The Myth of Robert McCaslin

Date: 1905 to 1905
Location: Middlesex Township, Butler, Pennsylvania, United States
Surnames/tags: McCausland McCaslin

[WORK IN PROGRESS; INITIAL DRAFT]

More than a century ago, an assumption was published about the name of the father of Andrew "McCaslin" of Middlesex Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania. The fact that it was an assumption got lost in the retelling, and the only part of the story that most people know is simply: "Robert McCaslin (McCausland), his wife, and three sons, Andrew, James and John, came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1772 from Ireland," as published by Thesta K. Skogland in her Genealogy of McCashland McCaslin/McCausland McCauslin/McCashland. Skogland's source for this info was a book first published in 1905 by William H. Taylor, who was 76 years old at the time, Our Family Records: A Genealogical Record of William Brown and Descendants of America. The critical point that Skoglund failed to relay when she paraphrased from this earlier work was this note from Taylor: "Doctor [William Alfred] McCaslin reasons that the name of the elder McCaslin was Robert, because it was the custom to name the oldest grandson for the grandfather, few records of the first and second generations can be found."

One thing that Dr. McCaslin might not have known was that Andrew's two brothers both named their only sons "James," and he certainly didn't know about the trail of records that Andrew and a man named James McCausland (who appears to have been his father) left in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary period before Andrew moved west to what is now Butler County.

The two records of Andrew's time in Cumberland County that I have seen other researchers cite are those of his September 1779 marriage to Christiana Brown and his militia service during the Revolutionary War. A detail about those two records that I had not seen before I started digging on my own was that both of them occurred in what was then Toboyne Township, Cumberland (now Madison Township, Perry Co., PA). There are deeds recorded for land in Toboyne that prove that Christiana Brown's brother owned land there at the time, and there are tax records that show that a James "McCashlin" was living there on 30 or 40 acres of land in 1779. Andrew didn't appear in the tax list that year, but his wedding was late in the year (September)… In 1780, James was again taxed on the 40 acre tract, and Andrew was listed directly below him in the tax list, owning only a horse and cow—no land. However, in 1781, James was gone from Toboyne, and Andrew was taxed on 40 acres of land—presumably the same 40 acre tract. James appears to have left Andrew with the land in Toboyne to start a family with his new wife, and gone just a few miles through the pass to the neighboring township of Newton, where a John McCausland had been living for about four years. John is my ancestor, and I now believe that he and James were probably brothers. "Big Y" DNA tests of direct male descendants of both men support the theory, showing that they were from a uniquely identifiable branch of the family, that could have begun around the time they were born.