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| | The movement of George and Elizabeth Nicholson Baker's family to the
frontier took place in 1772 to 1774. They traveled down the Ohio river
and made camp one evening on the "North Side" of the river at
the mouth of the Big Beaver. They soon found they were not welcome, as
Indians in the bluff overlooking the camp shot arrows into the air, as
warnings that they were intruding. It seems that a recent treaty had
opened the land on the "South Side" of the river to white
settlers but the land to the "North" was STILL Indian
territory. At daybreak the travelers broke camp and started South.
Within a few miles they were at the mouth of a sizable stream. Current
times (1997) know this "stream" as Raccoon Creek. They entered
the stream and traveled some 4 miles from the Ohio, to a point where a
small rivulet was tumbling down the hill. Investigating, they found a
good spring for their water supply and a spot for building a cabin. the
spot was strategically located with the creek on one side and a trail,
known today as "Brodhead Road", on the other. This land was
described by historian Rev. Joseph H. Bausman in 1904 as being then
known as the Michael Mateer Farm, situated on a ridge on the east side
of the Raccoon Creek. The location of the Mateer Farm is given in
Caldwell's Historical Atlas of Beaver County dated 1876. |
