MRS. BYRON PAINTER. Thomas Stockton died at Mercersburg, Penn., May 31, 1795, aged about eighty-six years. He had lived near Chambersburg with his son Robert, and was an elder in the Presbyterian Church. In his will he mentions his children: Thomas, John, David and Robert, Elizabeth Waddell, Isabella Neilson, Mary Bard and Margaret Johnson. Robert Stockton, his son, was born in 1737, and was married in 1761 to Mary Makemie. He was an elder in the Presbyterian Church at Rocky Spring, near Chambersburg, Penn., and served in the Revolutionary war with a company formed from that church, with their pastor, the Rev. John Craighead. After the war, in 1784, he emigrated to Washington, Penn., and in July purchased 340 acres of land of Peter Jolly, named in the survey "Beaver Dam." It is situated in Franklin township, three and one-half miles west of Washington, and still occupied by his descendants. He was one of the four elders of the Presbyterian Church when organized, and the first delegate to the Presbyterian at old Redstone. His children were Thomas, married to Sarah Graham; Margaret, married to Col. John Cotton; Francis, married to Charles Stewart: Jane, married to Rev. John Brice; Col. Robert, married to Miss Gallion; John, married to Margaret McCombs; Rev. Joseph, rnarried to Esther Clark, and Elizabeth, married to Rev. James Cunningham. In colonial times, about the middle of the eighteenth century, when the country about the base of the Kittatinny Mountains was yet a primeval forest, James Clark, from the North of Ireland, took up a tract of 220 acres of Government land, to which he gave the appropriate name of "Clark's Fancy," in accordance with a custom of the times. This tract embraced the land upon which the town of Upper Strasburg was subsequently built. In 1787 he received a patent for his lands from the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, in which it is described under the title already specified. In 1787 the State made a public road over the mountain through "Clark's Gap," and some of the broad stones with which it was built are yet visible below the mountain near Strasburg. Clark sold part of his tract to Dewalt Keefer, by whom the town of Strasburg was laid out in 1789. James Clark came to America with his brother Thomas, who settled in one of the Southern States (probably Georgia), and Mrs. Myra Clark Gaines was a descendant of Thomas. James Clark purchased a large tract of land near where the city of Harrisburg now stands, after he arrived in this country. Here he settled and married a Miss Nancy Reed, of Lancaster, Penn. Afterward he settled at "Clark's Fancy," then purchased a large tract of valuable land lying south of the town of Mercersburg, where he died. He was buried in the Slate Hill cemetery, located about a mile east of Mercersburg, a short distance from the turnpike. In 1789 this pioneer visited Washington, Penn., and purchased a 400-acre tract styled the "Big Level," a 300-acre tract at Candor, and in Canton township and Clark's Mills, for his children. David married Hannah Baird; Thomas married Jane Caldwell; John married Miss McDowell, and all settled in Washington county. James married Mary Murray, and remained on the home farm at Mercersburg.

Text taken from page 444 of: Beers, J. H. and Co., Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1893). Transcribed January 1997 by Neil and Marilyn Morton of Oswego, IL as part of the Beers Project. Published January 1997 on the Washington County, PA USGenWeb pages at http://www.chartiers.com/.

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