Daniel Rhoads  (1755-1839)

The first of the Rhoads' ancestors to come to America was Heinrich Roesch (Henry
Rhoads).  He and Jacob, probably brothers, were on Capt. Hall's boat,
Restauration, which docked in Philadelphia on October 9, 1747.  When they
landed, an English officer changed their names to Henry and Jacob Rhoads and
made them swear allegiance to King George II and the Province of Pennsylvania.

Henry and his wife, Katharina Rheinhardt, were married in 1738 in the German
Palatinate.  Henry had received some education in the Palatinate, and was in
demand as a surveyor for opening new lands.  He was among the early settlers at
Turkey Foot in Brother's Valley, several miles west of Ft. Bedford, and there
Daniel Rhoads was born on October 5, 1755.

The Germans lived in groups and had their own schoolteacher, churches, religious
feasts, husking bees, swinging frolics and weddings.  The first Henry Rhoads had
a large family.  Four of the sons distinguished themselves either fighting in
the Revolution or by battling against the wilderness in early Kentucky.  Daniel
Rhoads was one of those famous sons.

The role of our ancestor, Daniel Rhoads, in the Revolution was short, but
romantic.  Although only a nineteen-year-old private, he was one of the famous
Minute Men, serving in Capt. Sam Payson's Company, Col. John Groton's Regiment. 
With them, Daniel marched to Boston.

It is a family tradition that the Rhoadses came to Kentucky with Daniel Boone.
However, there is some evidence that some of the older Rhoads may have been in
that region even earlier than Boone.  They did not bring their families to
Kentucky until about 1784.

At the age of twenty-two, Daniel married Eva Foust, who became sixteen one day
after her first child was born.

After Daniel and Eva's fourth child was born, they left Pennsylvania with three
of Daniel's brothers for Kentucky.  Their journey was fraught with toil and
hardship, particularly through the Alleghenies.

When they reached Ft. Pitt, the men built flat boats, placed their large
families and a few possessions on them and floated them several hundred miles
down the Ohio River.

At the mouth of the Salt River, not far from Louisville, they entered Kentucky
at a time when none of its pioneer settlements was really safe from Indian
depredations.  They settled their wives and younger children on some of their
military allotments along the present line between Nelson and Hardin counties. 
They took their older sons and traveled farther west into what now comprises
McLean, Muhlenberg, Christian and Ohio counties, where they surveyed land both
for themselves and others.

Land records of Kentucky show nearly twenty military and other grants to
Rhoadses, most of them men from this family, between 1776 and 1816.  Daniel
received 200 acres on Pond Creek on June 5, 1793.

During these early years in Nelson County, Daniel and Eva added four more
children to their family. Eva Foust Rhoads died at the age of thirty, after
bearing eight children in fifteen years without benefit of a doctor.

Daniel Rhoads remained a widower for a little more than two years with the two
oldest of his daughters, ages eleven and thirteen, as his housekeepers.  When he
was forty, he married on March 15,1794, Elizabeth, the twenty-one year old
daughter of Thomas Newman.

Daniel did not live out his life in Kentucky.  When Indiana and Illinois were
ready for statehood, Daniel's second wife, Elizabeth, learned that her sister,
Mary and Sarah, who married Parker brothers were living in the new region on the
west bank of the Wabash.  They reported that this new country could offer far
better opportunities for young men than Kentucky.  Since Daniel's second family
consisted of seven sons, he was willing to migrate to a state, which gave
promise of becoming a great agricultural region.

In early 1820, Daniel loaded his possessions in the wagons and oxcarts and
headed north to the Ohio River. Slow, painful days of travel brought them to
Vincennes, Indiana.  Daniel Rhoads, now sixty-five years old, settled with his
wife and younger children in Knox County, Indiana, across the Wabash from
Elizabeth's relatives in Illinois.

Daniel's first family was mostly girls, already mothers of households in
Kentucky, but he had with him all of his second family. The oldest son Thomas,
was a married man of twenty-four with one of two children. His other six sons,
Jonathan, Joseph, Isaac, John, Newman and George were not yet married.  Jacob,
one of his two sons of his first marriage, with his family of six or seven, went
with his father also.

Later, Newman settled on a farm in Edgar County, Illinois.  In old age, the
parents left Indiana and went to live in Newman's home.  Daniel died in 1839 and
Elizabeth Newman Rhoads in 1855. They are buried in an old rural cemetery, Ogden
Cemetery, not far from Newman's old farm.

(The Only member of the Jacob Flournoy Chapter who is a descendant of Private
Daniel Rhoads is Mrs. Robert Batts)