BIO:  Col. Thomas Cresap, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Abby Bowman

Copyright 2004.  All rights reserved.
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History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, historical editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
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Page 602-604

COL. THOMAS CRESAP

Col. Cresap was born in Skiptown, Yorkshire, England, in 1702, and came to 
Maryland when fifteen years of age.  In 1732 he gave his occupation as that of a 
carpenter.  He settled at the mouth of the Susquehanna, where he was engaged in 
boat-building.  In 1725 he married Hannah Johnson, of Maryland, whose father, 
Thomas Johnson, March 24, 1725, had surveyed to himself Mount Johnson Island, at 
Peach Bottom Ferry.  Cresap soon after went to Virginia, but he was not long 
there before an attempt was made by a dozen or more persons to drive him away 
while he was engaged in hewing timber for his dwelling.  He defended himself, 
and cleft one of his assailants with a broad-ax; he then returned to Maryland, 
and took out a patent for a ferry over the Susquehanna River at the head of 
tide-water, which must have been at or near the terminus of the voyage of Capt. 
John Smith, of Virginia, up the river in 1608; while located there his restless 
and roving spirit led him to visit the rich valleys thirty miles farther up the 
right bank of the river, now in Hellam and Lower Windsor Townships, and reported 
the state of affairs there to Lord Baltimore, who contemplated as early as 1721 
to extend the northern boundary of his province on the west side of the 
Susquehanna to the northern limits of the fortieth degree of latitude.  
Gradually a few settlers from Maryland moved up to Conojohela (incorrectly 
Conodocholy) Valley.  They were aggressive to Pennsylvania settlers near them.  
It was not the policy of Baltimore or his followers to purchase lands from the 
Indians; they drove them away by force of arms, and hence we find that the 
Maryland settlers treated the Indians on the west side of the river with 
cruelty.  They had no person capable of holding the ground they had taken 
against the Indians or the followers of Penn, who were on the alert to prevent 
Baltimore from getting a foothold upon this disputed land.  Cresap came up to 
Conojohela Valley in March, 1730, and built a block-house upon the banks of the 
river three and one half miles below Wrightsville, near the site of Leber's 
Mill.  In the same year he took out a Maryland patent for several hundred acres 
of land near the river for "Blue Rock Ferry" at same place.  In 1731 Cresap was 
commissioned a justice of the peace for Baltimore County.  After many attempts 
to capture him, he was finally taken on the 25th day of November, 1736, by 
Sheriff Samuel Smith and twenty-four armed men.  His wife stood by him and 
fought at his side.

At this time he had at least two and perhaps three of his children with him, the 
eldest being about nine years of age.  In the meantime his wife and children 
resided with his cousin Daniel Lowe, who drove one of the German settlers from 
his place in Grist Valley (Kreutz Creek), near the Codorus.  Col. Cresap's 
education was limited, but he became a land surveyor, and was of great service 
to Lord Baltimore in extending the western boundary of Maryland from the source 
of the south branch of the Potomac due north, which added at least one third 
more territory to Maryland.  In 1735 he took out a Maryland patent for a group 
of islands at the Blue Rock Ferry, called the "Isles of Promise."  Gen. Jacob 
Dritt afterward became the owner of these islands, which were sold to John B. 
Haldeman.  About 1730 Cresap again moved beyond the frontier and took up about 
2,000 acres of land in Maryland along Antietam Creek where he established a 
store and Indian trading post.  He accumulated a large quantity of furs and 
peltries and shipped them to England, the vessel was captured by the French and 
he lost everything.  He moved farther west to within two miles of Cumberland, 
where he again embarked in the Indian trade until the French and Indian war when 
he raised a company of Rangers.  He had a number of skirmishes with the Indians 
and stood his ground manfully assisted by his sons.  He was elected a 
representative for a number of years from Washington County to the Maryland 
legislature.  When the French and their savage allies attempted to wrest the 
entire territory west of the Alleghany Mountains from the English, he and his 
sons at their own expense raised two companies of volunteer soldiers.  Col. 
Cresap became a very large landholder.  He became totally blind a few years 
before his death.  He married a second time, it is said, when he was eighty 
years of age.  He died in 1790, at his home in Alleghany County, Md., aged 
eighty-eight.

His first wife Hannah Johnson, during "Cresap's war," frequently mounted a horse 
and rode with the mounted militia in battle array, with a sword by her side.  
And when Cresap's stronghold was surrounded by militia from Donegal, she knew 
how to handle a musket, she never manifested any fear, but superintended the 
construction of a house, and the building of some flats, in the absence of her 
husband at John Hendricks', now the upper end of Wrightsville, where forcible 
possession had been taken of Hendricks' plantation by Cresap.  And while there 
she saw a flat filled with armed men crossing the river.  She mounted her horse 
and sounded a bugle, and rode rapidly to Cresap's fort, three miles and a half 
further down the river, and returned at the head of the militia.

Thomas and Hannah Cresap had five children -- three sons and two daughters -- as 
follows:  Daniel, remained in Washington County, Maryland, became a very large 
landholder and a celebrated hunter as well as farmer.  He was about fourteen 
years of age when the family left York County.  By his first wife he had one 
son, Michael, who commanded a company in Dunmore's war in 1774, and was 
afterward colonel of militia.  By a second wife he had seven sons and three 
daughters, to wit:  Daniel, Joseph (James C. Cresap, a descendant of Joseph, is 
now a lieutenant in the United States Navy, and is stationed in Annapolis, Md.  
The Blood of the Cresaps ran through the veins of the late Gen. Ord and the late 
attorney general, Luther Martin), Van, Robert, James, Thomas, Elizabeth, Mary 
and Sarah.  Daniel marched in his uncle's company to Boston in 1775.  James was 
for a number of years in the Maryland legislature.

Thomas, second son of Col. Cresap, was killed by an Indian -- whom he killed at 
the same instant.  He left a widow and one child.  The Brents of Washington come 
from this son.

Michael the youngest son of Col. Cresap was born in Frederick County, Md., June 
29, 1742.  He was the successor to his father in the Indian trade, and owned a 
large trading store at "Old Town," a few miles west of Cumberland.  He was an 
Indian fighter from his youth.  In 1774 he employed several men and descended 
the Ohio River and was engaged in the business of erecting houses and clearing 
lands for the settlers, and while thus engaged he received a circular letter 
from Dr. Connolly the commandant at Fort Pitt, that there was danger of an 
Indian war, and that a number of the Indians were upon the war path.  The 
settlers became greatly alarmed; he and his party hastened up to Fort Wheeling, 
and anticipated an attack upon them by the Indians, by first striking them.  
Some of his party killed several Indians near Wheeling, and afterward they went 
up the river and killed the family of the celebrated Indian chief Logan and 
several others.  Capt. Cresap, it has since been proven, was not with either of 
these parties in person at this time.  It turned out afterward that Connolly was 
entirely mistaken as to the Indians being on the war path, and he was the 
primary cause of the killing of Logan's family.  It did not take Logan and other 
Indian warriors long to put on the war paint after his family was killed.  The 
border settlers suffered fearfully along Cheat River, Dunkard Creek and the 
Monongahela.  Their cruelties were followed by "Dunmore's war."  The Virginians 
fought a great battle at Point Pleasant on the Ohio, which brought about a 
treaty of peace with the Indians.  Col. Connolly attempted to shift the blame of 
inciting the border settlers to destroy the Indians from his own shoulders to 
Capt. Michael Cresap.  (It is possible that Connolly inherited a prejudice 
against Cresap.  He was born on the eastern side of the Susquehanna River 
opposite Col. Cresap's fort; Cresap and his men destroyed a dozen or more houses 
for the Indian trader, James Patterson, who owned a plantation on the east side 
of the Susquehanna, where Cresap lived, and had owned it for a dozen years 
before Cresap came up from Maryland.  Dr. Connolly was the son of Patterson's 
widow by a third husband.)  Col. John Gibson, who reported Chief Logan's famous 
speech, was born in Lancaster.  Capt. Michael Cresap was held in very high 
esteem by his neighbors.  He was the first person in Maryland to raise a company 
of volunteer riflemen.  He marched at their head to Boston in 1775, where he 
fought with great bravery.  He took very sick and was compelled to return to New 
York, where he died.  Michael Cresap left five children -- two sons and three 
daughters, viz.:  Mary, married Luther Martin, Esq., the distinguished advocate 
who defended Aaron Burr; Elizabeth, married Lenox Martin, Esq., brother of 
Luther, who left a large family; Sarah, married Osborn Sprigg, Esq. -- she left 
four sons.