The Hughes - Boone Relationship 

            In 1742, John Hughes married Hannah Boone, George Boone's 
daughter, and they had two children before Hannah died at age 27.  One 
of those children, George, who undoubtedly was named after his grandfather, 
George Boone, is the next Hughes in our ancestral line. George also 
married a Boone, Martha, who was a much younger first cousin of his 
mother, Hannah.  In fact, three of John's children (the three that I know 
about) married Boones, including George (Martha), his sister Jane 
(Samuel), and his half sister, Eleanor (another Samuel). 

            One of George Boone's brothers, Squire Boone, was the father of 
Daniel Boone, the famed Kentucky woodsman who led the first westward 
wave of American settlers from Virginia through Cumberland Gap to the 
Bluegrass Region of north-central Kentucky.  Therefore, both Hannah Boone 
(John's wife) and Martha Boone (George's wife) were Daniel's first cousins.  
Daniel Boone was born in Oley, Berks County, Pennsylvania on September 
22, 1734 to Squire and Sarah (Morgan) Boone.  Daniel was their fourth son, 
sixth child.
Squire Boone's Homestead, as Preserved by the Pennsylvania 
Historical and Museum Commission. Daniel Boone was born here, when it was 
a log house.


             Catawissa 

            Members of our Hughes family, but not in our direct line, were 
responsible for establishing Catawissa.  Ellis Hughes, who may have been 
a son of John's next younger brother, William, was a public surveyor 
(known as a surveyor general).  Ellis married a woman named Hannah 
Yarnall, (14) and their son, Jeremiah, wrote in the family bible that his father 
"...associated with capitalists from Philadelphia"  who put up the money 
and "perfected" the titles on about 25,000 acres surveyed by Ellis in eastern 
Pennsylvania, in return for two thirds' ownership.

            This Ellis Hughes was among the first settlers in the Catawissa area, 
having traveled overland from the Oley Valley area and Reading to the 
Susquehanna River at what was then Harris Ferry.(15)  From there, Ellis 
and other Quaker settlers paddled up the Susquehanna, arriving at the 
mouth of Catawissa Creek in about 1774.

            William Hughes (16) laid out "Hughesburg," later called Catawissa, 
in 1786.  He had purchased 92 and one quarter acres in 1778 from Ellis, 
who in turn had received this land as part of a 282 and one quarter acre 
purchase from Philadelphia speculators (17) -- probably the "capitalists from 
Philadelphia" mentioned by Jeremiah in his bible.  The community, 
including many Hughes cousins, grown sons, and nephews from the 
Exeter area, spread southward along Roaring Creek, and a second 
meeting house was built in 1796 on Roaring Creek about ten miles 
from Catawissa.  Other Friends meetings in the area included Muncy, 
Loyalsock (later Pine Grove), and Fishing Creek.

Hughesburg/Catawissa Town Plan and Meeting House LotMap of Hughesburg.




Historical sign credits William Hughes as Catawissa founder. 
William was distantly related to us, but not in our direct family blood line. 
(The 1775 date in the sign is probably incorrect. See footnote 18.)


             George: Generation Four, Pennsylvania:  George was 
born in September 1743, and married Martha Boone in October 1765.  
They had eight children.  I can only speculate that George moved from 
the Oley Valley, where he was born, to Catawissa in order to take 
advantage of his family relationship to the town's founders.  Perhaps 
he was part of the party of Quakers that arrived there in 1774, having 
traveled via Harris ferry.  His marriage to one of his mother's younger 
first cousins, Martha Boone, insured continued good standing in the 
Society of Friends, which forbade marriage outside the church.
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 Initial shots of the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington, 
Massachusetts in April 1775, the Declaration of Independence was 
signed on July 4, 1776, and Britain's Cornwallis surrendered at 
Yorktown in October 1781.
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            In September 1787, George and Martha, together with the 
town's founder, William, and his wife, Mary, were instrumental in 
establishing the Catawissa Friends Meeting House and Burial Ground. 
Each family provided three-quarters of an acre in adjoining lots to a 
group of town Trustees, who established what became known as the 
"Meeting House lot."  The log Friends Meeting House that still stands 
at Catawissa was built on the lot about 1789. (18)


Many Hugheses are buried in the Catawissa and Roaring 
Creek Burial Grounds. Positive identification of George and Martha's 
graves could not be made although they are probably buried in the 
Catawissa Friends Meeting burial ground.


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 As a matter of historical coincidence, the George and William Hughes 
families officially granted the Meeting House lot to the Catawissa trustees 
just two days before the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 
Philadelphia signed the Constitution of the United States of America on 
September 17, 1787.
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            George died in 1795, and he and Martha probably are buried in the 
Catawissa Friends Meeting burial ground.  They may also be at Roaring Creek.  
Many Hughes' are laid to rest in both burial grounds, but both also have 
substantial numbers of graves that are either unmarked or have headstones 
on which the inscriptions are illegible.  I unearthed an old map that lists 
many of the names in the Roaring Creek Burial Ground, but a large part of 
the area is shown simply as the "Old Original Yard," without further detail. 
 An intensive search turned up no similar map for Catawissa.

            Catawissa currently (in 1998) has a population of about 1,700, and 
is situated, as William intended, at the confluence of Catawissa Creek and the 
Susquehanna River.  Like so many Pennsylvania towns in the Appalachian 
Mountains, steep, forested mountain slopes encroach to the town's very 
edges on all but the river side.  The town has the usual gas stations with 
their attached convenience stores, and the like.  The preserved Quaker 
Meeting House is set back a block from the main street, and is quite 
peaceful and neatly kept by the Catawissa Home and Garden Club. 


            Roaring Creek is not now (in 1998) a town, but an area, also 
sometimes called the "Slabtown" area.  The Roaring Creek Friends 
Meeting House, constructed in 1796, and Burial Ground sits in a 
pleasant grove of trees surrounded by corn fields out in the country. 
Like in Catawissa, the log Roaring Creek Meeting House -- two 
centuries old -- is nicely preserved, and has an active congregation 
that meets weekly.

Roaring Creek Meeting, Preserved Log Structure, Constructed in 1796.


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            Catawissa and the Revolutionary War: Impact of the "Wyoming Massacre"

            What became known in U.S. history as the "Wyoming Massacre" 
apparently caused the temporary destruction and evacuation of the Catawissa 
area in 1778.  The Wyoming Massacre came about as the result of British and 
American loyalist exploitation of a bitter rivalry between the Iroquois and 
Delaware Indian tribes for Pennsylvania's Wyoming (20) valley on the Susquehanna 
river north of Catawissa.  The Delaware claimed the valley as a permanent 
home while the Iroquois claimed the right to sell it to white land speculators.  
The Iroquois with British and American loyalist encouragement and complicity 
invaded and defeated the Delaware tribes and white settlers, and the killing 
of 360 men, women, and children at Wyoming Valley's Forty Fort and 
subsequent rout of the remaining defenders was given top atrocity billing in 
U.S. history.

            Jeremiah wrote that the Catawissa settlement "...had already collected many 
comforts around them, erected commodious dwellings, planted orchards, 
constructed a sawmill, gristmill, tannery, etc., and were in the act of going 
forth in the morning to reap an abundant harvest -- as the miserable remnant 
of them that had been made widows and orphans the day before by the 
memorable massacre at Wyoming, flying for their lives -- rushed almost 
famished to partake of the first mouthful they had tasted after the disaster -- 
the bread so hastily prepared by Ellis and Hannah Hughes, time only allowed 
to secure the children on the backs of the horses hastily driven up for the 
purpose, while the strangers snatched their scanty meal, when all joined in 
the rapid flight on which depended their lives."
            "The whole frontier was abandoned to the savage enemy.  Hundreds 
of families destitute of everything were precipitated on the settlements below, 
and terror spread far and wide.  The improvements at Cataweesa were mostly 
reduced to ashes."

.

 Map of where they lived.

 

        (14) Hannah Yarnall's mother was Mary Lincoln of the Exeter Meeting 
family which is in Abraham Lincoln's ancestral line.
        (15) The settlement that grew up around Harris's ferry landing later became 
present day Harrisburg.
        (16) I do not know the exact relationship of this William Hughes to our direct 
descendants.  He was not our third generation ancestor's (John Hughes') brother,
 William, who had died in 1776.  
        (17) Edward Shippin Jr. and Joseph Shippin Jr., who had purchased the land 
sight unseen from the "Proprietaries of Pennsylvania."
        (18) The date on the Pennsylvania state historical sign (in the pictures) 
claiming that the Quaker Meeting House was built about 1775 is probably 
incorrect.  That was the year of the first Quaker meetings there, but these 
were held at Ellis and Hannah Hughes' home, well before the Meeting 
House had been built.
        (19)Note at the map's top the "Old Original Yard ... filled 1856."  I can 
make out eleven Hughes names among the graves listed.  Also, the Hughes' 
were related by marriage to the Lees and Cheringtons.
        (20)The word, "Wyoming," comes from the Delaware Indian word, 
M'cheuwomink.
 Map of where they lived.

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