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Chapter 5: The Swedish Connection

Anna Stalcop (67), the grandmother of David Allen McGinnis and the mother of Polly Hoagland, was born in Virginia in 1776 of Swedish and Finnish stock. In the fall of 1796, she and her husband Cornelius Hoagland (66) left Virginia and started for Kentucky with their entire family, only a few months after their wedding. Together they went ahead of the rest, as Cornelius with his trusty rifle drove the 35 head of cattle and kept the herd with Annie and the horse. Anna rode a three-year-old thoroughbred filly and carried the camp equipment for cooking on the way. Recounts Samantha Beuhring Young in a letter, "A two gallon demijohn would be filled with milk and the jostling on the horse's back would churn it and this supplied them with butter." They followed a trail through Clarksburg to Williamstown and Parkersburg, WV on the Ohio River.

Cornelius's father John Hoagland (132) was not the only pioneer in his family. While guarding the western settlements from Indians, John's brother had been scalped twice and finally burned at the stake at a tribal gathering in Indiana. By 1796 four of John's many children had married and gone west to Ohio and Kentucky. John had moved from Vienna VA, now a suburb of Washington DC, to settle in Hampshire County WV, on the south fork of the Potomac River. But now he was itching to go farther.

While Cornelius and Anna went ahead on foot, John Hoagland and the rest of the family started for the Mononghela River where they would journey by boat to Pittsburgh and then along the Ohio River to Williamstown. There they were to meet Cornelius and Anna with the cattle. Traveling with John were his wife, his daughter and son-in-law Tom McGuire and their two children, his youngest son John, and some daughters. At Pittsburgh some of the family became sick, which detained them several days. By November, winter set in and ice closed the river until the first of April.

While John Hoagland was stuck in Pennsylvania, Cornelius and Anna had already arrived safely at Williamstown. When their family didn't come in time, Cornelius chose to move seven miles from the river to a place that has been known as Hoagland's Run ever since. There he built a camp where he and Anna, the filly, and 35 head of cattle spent the winter. By feeding the cattle on pea vines which grew abundantly in that virgin forest, and on corn he packed on the filly from Blennerhasset Island, Cornelius got the herd all safely through the winter.

A century later but only a few miles away in Parkersburg, Samantha Beuhring Young writes, "Now cousin admit (I do) that our Great grandmother [Anna] was a wonderful woman whose courage would of been a surprise to the ladies of today. Think of it, living in a camp 7 miles from a house, staying many days alone. The forest stocked up with bears, wolves, panthers, wild cats, deer and turkeys. While here she learned to use the rifle, the wild game coming close to the camp cost them their lives. She was a fine shot. She shot a large hawk in a tall oak tree, in the top of the tree, that had come for a chicken."

When the family came down the Ohio River in the spring, they decided not to go on to Kentucky but to settle on 1,400 acres in Wood County, WV. The daughter of Cornelius and Anna, Polly Hoagland, was born near Williamstown, WV on June 23, 1797. When John Hoagland died, he was buried at Williamstown. After his death his widow went back to the south branch of the Potomac with her son John and one daughter, where she married an old friend and neighbor.

In the spring of 1801, Cornelius Hoagland, Anna Stalcop, their two daughters Polly and Margaret, and Thomas McGuire and family traded their land in Wood County for 6,000 acres across the Ohio River at Barlow, Washington County, Ohio. At first they built cabins. Later Cornelius opened up the first tavern on the road from Marietta and Athens and on to Chillicothe. He was elected the first justice of the peace, a position he filled the rest of his life. Though he had slaves, educated and mostly Methodist, he set them free long before the Civil War. In the spring of 1818, a tree fell on Cornelius while he was building the first brick house in Barlow. He lived only 24 hours more. After his death, his personal property was appraised at $8,488 -- a considerable sum for that day. Anna continued building the house but not as large as Cornelius had contemplated. One hundred years later, in 1926, the house was still standing. Anna died April 29, 1824 in Marietta, Washington Co., OH, the mother of five children.

Johan Anderson Stalcop (1072), a 17th century ancestor of Anna Stalcop and Polly Hoagland, came to America from Sweden at about age 17. In those days, Sweden, England and the Netherlands were all struggling to establish colonies in the Middle Atlantic region. Johan's ship Charitas landed at the "Rocks" in April 1641, accompanied by the larger ship Kalmar Nyckle, on a mission to bring colonists to New Sweden.

Johan was hired as a farm hand to grow tobacco on the Upland Plantation, but by 1646, when Sweden had not sent enough troops to defend the Scandinavian colony, Johann became a soldier. Surnames such as Anderson might change every generation in those days -- Johan's last name simply meant that he was the son of Anders. But soon he was nicknamed Stalcop instead, which means "Steel Coat" in Swedish. About 1654, the new govenor Johan Rising promoted Johan to the rank of Gunner. Johan was stationed at Fort Trinity, in the present-day town of New Castle, DE. When the Dutch later captured the fort, Johan convinced them that he was actually a fellow Dutchman, who had taken the name Stalcop for the greasy hat he wore while cooking during the voyage to New Sweden. So the Dutch let him claim the abandoned property of his fellow Swedes around Fort Christina (present day Wilmington) north of the Christina and west of the Brandywine.

The British later took control of the Dutch possessions, and in 1669 they convicted Johan of treason in the Long Finn Rebellion tax revolt against them. To pay his fine of 1500 guilders, Johan sold half his property on April 16, 1675 to two fellow conspirators, Lars Cornelisen and Samuel Peterson (1074), his son Peter's father-in-law. Two years later, hard feelings gone, the British granted Johan 600 acres of land on Red Clay Creek, where he may have built a sawmill. By then was using the anglicized name of John Anderson, perhaps an attempt to demonstrate a new-found loyalty to the English -- or else to get more land. His Finnish widow Christina Carlsdotter (1073) regained a fourth of his original estate after his death about 1684. Their great-grandson John Stalcop (134) and Jane Snicker (135) were married at Old Swedes Church, Wilmington, Delaware on March 10, 1761, and moved about 1770 to Virginia, where their daughter Anna Stalcop was born.

Research shows that Samuel McGinnis' wife Margaret Henshaw (65) (or Hancher) was not descended from Joshua Henshaw, whose Puritan father was killed in the Cromwellian Revolution when Joshua was a baby. Joshua was sent to live with Richard Mather in New England and later fought in King Phillip's War under Capt. Thomas Brattle. Instead, Margaret was the granddaughter of Nicholas Henshaw (260), one of the convicted felons who were taken from the English prisons in 1720 and transported to America. So Margaret was perhaps not descended from some of the same medieval British and European royalty as are the Garretts, making C.D. McGinnis and Eloise McGinnis simply husband and wife, not 15th half-cousins twice removed.

Otherwise, Dave and Eloise's closest common ancestor would be Sir (266406), who was knighted by King Henry IV on May 19, 1426. He remained loyal to the Yorkist king against the attacks of the Earl of Warwick, sailing to Calais, France in 1459 for battle. Captured by surprise along with his eldest son and his wife, a Luxemburgoise princess, Wydeville was released six months later. In May 1464, the king married his daughter Jacquetta. After that, Wydeville became Treasurer of England and was given the title Earl of Rivers in 1466. When the Yorkists lost the battle of Edgecote Narthen in 1469, Richard and his son were captured and beheaded on orders of the Earl of Warwick. The name is now spelled Woodville. Dave and Eloise McGinnis are also supposedly descended from the following people: Charlemagne (311853388), Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Charles the Bald, Godrey the Bearded, Old King Coel, King Duncan of Scotland, King Fernando III, Lady Godiva, Eystein Glumra, Constantine the Great, St. Agatha of Hungary, Hunneric of the Vandals, Archduke Jaroslav I of Kiev, Louis the Stammerer, Henry III, Pippin the Short, Ragnar Sigurdsson, Emperor Valentinian III, etc. etc.

James Caudy (262), grandfather of Margaret Henshaw, was an Indian fighter who helped pioneer western Frederick and eastern Hampshire counties, where he owned hundreds of acres of land. At Caudy's Castle, a magnificent rock formation in Hampshire County, WV, he singlehandedly fought a band of Indians, throwing them off one by one, 50 feet above a 450 foot cliff overlooking the North Mountain and Capon Rivers. In 1748, with Joseph Edwards, he surveyed 400 acres and 358 acres on Great Cacapehon and Dillings Run. He also owned other land on McCoy's Ridge and Timber Ridge. In 1755 he hosted George Washington and his party as they returned from an expedition to Ohio. On September 22, 1756, Lord Fairfax granted him 103 acres in Frederick County, which Caudy sold to James McGinnis in 1779 for 500 pounds. His 1783 will, witnessed by his son-in-law John Henshaw (130), left all his remaining land to the widow of his son John Caudy. His daughter Sarah Caudy (131) was the grandmother of Samuel McGinnis.

Abraham Cline (70) first settled at "Dry Ridge," near Pleasants County, but about 1822 he moved to Highlands, on the north fork of the Hughes River in Ritchie County. He probably married Mary Harris (71) about 1805 and had many children, including Mary Ann Cline, who married Enoch Marsh. Like some of the McGinnises, Abraham ran a "house of public entertainment." Nobody knows much more about him. Most sources say that his father is Conrad Cline (140). Conrad arrived from Germany on the ship "Edinburg," under Capt. James Russell. He came to Bedford (now Fulton) County, PA and is buried in Kline Cemetery, Licking Creek Township. Some of his children were born in New Jersey and his son Abraham was born in Maryland. After Abraham was born, Conrad married Anna Barbara Seib, from Germany. On the other hand, the History of Ritchie County implies that Abraham's father is William Cline, Sr., of German extraction, who was the first settler of what is now Smithville, WV, on the South Hughes River, but later moved futher west to Gallipolis, OH. William Cline Jr. married Enoch Marsh's sister Epha and settled in Tollgate near her family.

The parents of James Marsh (68), though their family originated in Hamburg, Germany, came via England to Maryland, where James was born. He married Eleanor Hurst (69), a "beautiful English maiden" according to the History of Ritchie County, educated and high-born. They left Baltimore early in the 19th century to buy a farm from Richard Dotson one half mile east of Tollgate, WV. The couple had five girls and five boys, seven of whose names begin with E, including Enoch Marsh. Enoch split over the Civil War with his brother Eli, a strong secessionist who freed his slaves and lost all his money in Confederate bonds.

Enoch Marsh (34), the namesake of his grandson, was born in 1804 in Tollgate, WV, at the north fork of the Hughes River, south of Mole Hill. In March 1836, a few years after his marriage to Mary Ann Cline (35), they left the old family homestead (though they are buried there), and moved to a farm slightly up river, which later belonged to Ben Wilson. A cabin built from timbers from his cabin still stands not far from David Allen McGinnis's home. Parmenas M. McGinnis says some of this family, several generations removed from the old country, could still speak German. Enoch's children include Sarah Jane Marsh, the wife of David Allen McGinnis.

MAPS
- Back to Top -
Marietta, OH/Williamstown, WV
Barlow, OH
Mole Hill/Mountain, WV
"Fort Christina"/Wilmington, Delaware
Caudy's Castle, Hampshire County, WV
Tollgate, Ritchie County, WV

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