First Arriver: Samuel John Greer

The title page of the Greer family history book

Several of our destinations on this ancestral adventure are inspired by the Greers, a branch of my family I grew up knowing little about, beyond the name. Last year, while researching my matrilineal line in Louisiana, James Frances Greer entered the picture when he married my 2^nd great-grandmother, Virginia “Jennie” Lestrappes Lee.

As a young educator fresh out of college, James left his family home in Bloomfield, Kentucky to teach at Keachi Women’s College in Keachi, Louisiana. How he decided on Keachi, I have no clue, but while there, he met Jennie. It appears that Jennie truly was the teacher’s pet because she ended up marrying him… Granted, James was less than two years her senior.

As I am interested in the stories of my “First Arrivers” – those of my family tree branches who first stepped foot on this continent – I researched the Greer line back to James’ great-grandfather, Samuel John Greer, a Scotch-Irish immigrant.

Displacement, Disenfranchisement & Departure

The Greers were a family from Scotland who were part of the “Plantation of Ulster” – when  Great Britain colonized Northern Ireland in the 1600s – before and simultaneous to the colonization of North America. By the 1700s, the Scotch-Irish – who were generally Presbyterian – were the target of increasing economic and political discrimination based on religious affiliation (anyone outside of the Church of Ireland – Anglican suffered). From 1717 to 1775 an estimated 150,000 Scotch-Irish immigrated to North America.

Samuel John Greer (my 5^th great-grandfather), born 1757 in Ulster, Ireland, was a part of this mass migration. A few years after the death of his father in 1774, a young Samuel made the voyage to Philadelphia during the US Revolution. As the son of a single mother whose prospects were limited to none, he took his chances and sailed to a colonial war zone.

He appeared to take up arms very soon after arrival. The first evidence of his presence in North America is at age 21 in 1778 serving as a Ranger on the frontier in John Kyle’s Company. Then, in the 1779 tax roll of Derry Township, Cumberland County some 160 miles northwest of Philadelphia in the Appalachians. He paid $165 tax on 2 horses and 1 cow, but no other property or real estate. The Greer family history book supposes he labored on someone else’s farm in Derry Township. From about 1780-82, he served in the Derry Township (Cumberland County) Militia in the Revolutionary War.

Lewiston, Derry Township, today (2025). None of these buildings were here when Samuel Greer and Rebecca Howard lived in the area. The statue is commemorating the Union soldiers of the Civil War. How things change...a house just one block away was flying a Confederate flag.

There is no way to tell from the tax rolls where Samuel lived. Family historians speculate he may have worked on the Howard farm since he eventually married Rebecca Howard. I have no info about the location of a Howard farm, so as I gazed out the car window at the farms and small hamlets sprinkled amongst the forests, I imagined Samuel working his horse on some distant hillside.

Derry Township hills and fields.

Beckoned even further west…

By 1782 at age 25, Samuel had married Rebecca Howard and they, along with her mother Elizabeth, joined another burgeoning migration – from Pennsylvania down the Ohio River to Kentucky. According to the Greer Family History, they made the trip with several other families, traveling the first leg overland to Pittsburgh (about 160 miles) by wagon. They then built (or had built) one or more flatboats that would take them to the land of Kentucky – not yet a state, but the western-most part of colonial Virginia.

This building is all that is left of the original Fort Pitt. It would have been here when the Greers departed on the flatboat just yards away.

At that time, Pittsburgh was primarily Fort Pitt surrounded by some houses at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers as they joined to create the Ohio River – known as The Point. The first documented flatboat trip (a commercial trip to sell flour down the river) was in 1782. According to the family history, the Greers’ were evidently one of the very first families to make the flatboat journey from Pittsburgh to Kentucky, as they also departed in 1782.

Interior of the Fort Pitt blockhouse.

The flatboat – similar to today’s houseboat -- was built for one single trip downriver. The family loaded all their possessions on the boat, including any livestock, and floated downriver with only long oars and a rudder to guide them. Kentucky-bound immigrants disembarked at either Maysville (southeast of Cincinnati) or Louisville, before The Falls of the Ohio River -- waterfalls that required portage. The flatboat was then deconstructed and the lumber was either sold or kept for building the homestead house and/or furniture.

A flatboat.

As I sat on a park bench at The Point (now Point State Park) admiring the confluence of the mighty rivers, I tried to imagine the scene of the Greer departure – building the flatboat, dragging the boat down the muddy banks into the flow of the Monongahela River, and loading every possession on to the boat. Then, the people – Samuel, Rebecca and Elizabeth, who trusted the reports from scant others of the long river trip that only a few had attempted, hoping beyond hope to arrive at their destination, but with absolutely no guarantees.

At the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers as they become the Ohio River, which is flowing under the bridge in the distance.

NOT a flatboat!

The Greers made it to Kentucky and settled southeast of Louisville in Nelson County, which will be our next stop on the Greer ancestor adventure!