Washington Co., MDGenWeb Archives

This paper discusses landholdings of the author's ancestor Samuel Rohrer (c1728-1788) and his son John Rohrer (1761-1826) in Washington County, Maryland between the years 1758 and 1835.

Richard W. Davis[1] in his book on early Mennonite Families in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia presents strong evidence that Samuel Rohrer was the son of the Frederick Rohrer (c1700-c1762) who emigrated with Samuel on the ship Restauration, arriving at Philadelphia in 1747. Though not included on the ship list, Davis believes that the rest of Frederick’s family accompanied him, including his wife, younger sons Martin[2] and John[3] and possibly some daughters. Frederick purchased his first property[4], two tracts totaling 250 acres named Jacob’s Welfare and Defiance, in Washington County in 1752 from his brother Jacob Rohrer[5] (1703-c1757) who had emigrated in 1731.

Davis’s extensive and conclusive research contradicts the widely held opinion[6] that Samuel and Martin Rohrer were the sons of either Hans Michael Rohrer Sr. (1661-17??) of Marrkirch in Alsace (now Ste. Marie aux Mines), or possibly Hans Michael’s son, Hans Michael Jr. Davis also doubts another widely held opinion that Samuel and his brothers were closely related to John Rohrer (1696-1771) of Lampeter Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania., who married Maria Souder. However this John Rohrer did purchase property adjacent to some of Samuel Rohrer’s property in 1763, so it does appear that there is probably some connection

The current paper identifies all of Samuel’s land transactions in Washington County including the transaction that links John Rohrer of Lampeter and Samuel Rohrer. It then traces the subdivision of Samuel’s property via his will to his sons Frederick, Jacob, Martin and John, and includes the subsequent purchases and disposition of the property of Samuel’s son John in detail.

Finally, it shows how the author's great-great-great grandfather Jacob, son of John and grandson of Samuel, acquired his “Old Homestead” property via purchase from his father John’s estate, thus connecting the author’s ancestry to Samuel’s line.

Samuel Rohrer's first land purchase in Washington County (then Frederick County)[8] was on June 20, 1758. He purchased two adjoining tracts of land totaling 250 acres from Michael Funk[9] for 150 “Pounds Current Money of Maryland”. The deeds identify Samuel as a Distiller. The two tracts were Funks Run (50 acres) and a part of Resurvey on Discontent (200acres). Discontent was one of the very early tracts of land in Washington County. It was resurveyed at least twice and many land transactions are referenced to this survey.

1760 - Samuel Rohrer's Purchase of More Parts of the Resurvey on Discontent[10]

Samuel next purchased two more parts of the Resurvey on Discontent adjoining his earlier 1758 purchases on the north on March 3, 1760, one parcel from James Walling Sr. and one from James Walling Jr. The parcels comprised 378 acres and the total consideration was 110 “Pounds Current Money of Maryland”. No names were given to these tracts. The shapes of the 1758 and 1760 purchases as determined from the metes and bounds are as shown in Fig. 1.

The exact location of the tracts was determined through research done in the 1950's by Dr. Arthur G. Tracy[11] of Washington County. Fig. 2 contains a portion of one of Dr. Tracy's map sheets showing Funk’s Run (identified as “Samuel Rorer’s Land”) and adjoining tracts. On the Tracy grid, the tracts are located in coordinates (N-O, 40-41). The roughly diagonal wagon road is present day US Rt. 40. The reference point marked with a red dot is the Beaver Creak Waggon Road Ford. The southwestern corner of Samuel’s property is one mile southeast of this point.

These tracts are located at the western base of South Mountain east of Maryland Rt. 66, west of Mt. Lena Road and north of US Route 40, near the area known as Mt. Aetna. Samuel’s properties in this area will be referred to as his “Mt. Aetna property” within this paper. The somewhat odd shapes correspond with various hills and/or streams in the area. I believe the major portion of the Jos. Walling Sr. property actually occupies the hill known as Mt. Aetna. Present-day Bagtown was near the eastern edge of the property.

On October 7, 1761, Samuel sold the parts of the Resurvey on Discontent he had purchased from the Wallings, Sr. and Jr. back to James Walling Jr. for 150 “Pounds Current Money of Maryland”. It would appear that he made 40 Pounds on the deal. At this point Samuel still owned Funk’s Run and the part of Resurvey on Discontent he had purchased from Michael Funk in 1758.

On September 25, 1762, Samuel purchased three adjacent tracts of land totaling 228 acres from William Bowers[14] for "350 Pounds Current Money of the Province of Pennsylvania." The three tracts were John & William (120 acres), Frywell (58 acres) and Manacan (50 acres). The shapes of the tracts[15] as given by the metes and bounds in the Deed are as shown in Fig. 3.

Six months after Samuel's original purchase, on March 16, 1763, John Rohrer of Lampeter Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (c1696-1771) purchased a 320 acre tract called Piney Hills Enlarged from John Swearingen for "450 Pounds Current Money of Pennsylvania". John Rohrer of Lancaster later willed the Piney Hills Enlarged property to his son Martin in 1771.

The tract is described in the Deed as lying on the "East side of the Elk Ridge Mountain and in the Draught of Waters of the Little Antiatum," and is shaped as shown in Fig 4. Various researchers[17] have indicated that Samuel's property was adjacent to Piney Hills. This was tested, and the northern border of Piney Hills was found to be a perfect match, as shown in Fig. 4.

While Samuel’s Rohrersville tracts were not specifically identified by name in the previously cited Tracy microfilms, Piney Hills was. This enabled us to pinpoint the exact location of Samuel’s property. Fig. 5 contains a portion of one of Dr. Tracy's map sheets showing the Piney Hill tract. Samuel Rohrer's original properties clearly fit within the mosaic formed by the other tracts, as sketched in by the author.

Given a general location (V-W, 37-39) based on the master coordinate grid laid out by Dr Tracy, the properties were found to be bounded roughly by Elk Ridge Mountain on the west, Marble Quarry Road on the north, Rohrersville Road (Md. Route 67) on the east and Millbrook Road on the south. The location was pinpointed by inspection of the USGS 1:24000 topographic map for the Keedysville, Md. quadrangle. Many of the fence lines on that map still coincide with the original property boundary lines, allowing precise positioning. These three tracts and the other properties Samuel purchased in this area will be referred to as Samuel’s “Rohrersville property” within this paper.

On July 1 and July 5, 1767, Samuel executed two back to back transactions on his Mt. Aetna property, in which he sold the part of Resurvey on Discontent originally purchased from Michael Funk to Matthew Clark, and then purchased it back immediately with some minor adjustments to three courses in the metes and bounds. Matthew Clark was a well-known landowner in the area, originally owning much of the western slope of South Mountain. There was a nominal amount of 5 Pounds Sterling on each contract. Perhaps this adjustment to the boundaries was in preparation for the upcoming September 5 transaction Samuel was apparently planning or to correct an error in the original survey or both. In the repurchase deed, the property was renamed ”Long Looked For” and is shown in Fig. 6.

On September 5, 1767, Samuel swapped part of his newly named Long Looked For property for a tract belonging to Joseph Prigmore named Exchange that was part of Nancy’s Fancy. The swapped portion of Long Looked For was called Friendship. The Exchange property completely surrounded the Funk’s Run tract that Samuel already owned and was adjacent to the eastern part of Long Looked For, which he retained. This transaction resulted in a nice consolidation of Samuel’s Mt. Aetna property. The eastern boundary of Exchange generally follows present day Mt. Lena Road. Samuel received 50 Pounds of Maryland money for his part and paid 10 to Mr. Prigmore, apparently netting a profit of 40 Pounds. Fig. 7 shows the configuration of the Mt. Aetna property after this transaction.

On August 26, 1767, Samuel purchased a 122.5 acre tract from Andrew Grim for 5 Pounds Sterling. It was adjacent to Samuel’s Rohrersville property. The parcel was named Rohrer's Luck, and was Part of the Resurvey on Part of Park Hall. Park Hall was the oldest of the original surveys in Washington County, occupying several thousand acres generally located between Rohrersville Road (Maryland Rt. 67) and South Mountain. The present day area is still known as Park Hall.

On December 15, 1770, Samuel expanded his Rohrersville area holdings further by purchasing a portion of the tract known as Woodstock Forest from John Owens. The deed is very careful to explain that Robert Owens, having died, had left the entire Woodstock Forest property to his three sons, John, James and Owen, and that the parcel being purchased by Samuel was that portion willed to the son John. Apparently this was necessary, because John Owens had no formal deed, only his father's will. Woodstock Forest can also be seen on the Tracy Map shown in Fig. 5.

The tract contained 56 acres and was located just north of Rohrer's Luck, comprising the westernmost tip of the full Woodstock Forest tract. Both tracts are shown in Fig.8. This was the last tract Samuel purchased during his lifetime.

In 1785 Samuel sold all of his Mt. Aetna property, including Funk’s Run, part of Long Looked For and Exchange to John Gray. This explains why it was not included in his will. We currently have no information on who had been living there or whether it was being leased. Perhaps he wanted to convert his assets to cash to simplify his estate. He made his will a year later in 1786.

Samuel Rohrer died in 1788, naming his brother Martin Rohrer Sr. as co-executor of his will. In the will, he divided his real estate among four of his sons, Frederick, Martin, Jacob and John, instructing them in turn to compensate the remaining children in order to equalize the shares of the estate. The will establishes the shapes of the dividing lines, but only the dividing line between Frederick and Jacob is exactly positioned. The locations of the other two lines were deduced based on their general location and the sizes of the portions given to the other sons. The resulting division lines are shown in Fig. 9.

The line dividing Frederick and Jacob's land begins at "the end of the fifth line of Pennyhill" (i.e. Piney Hill), and proceeds in a generally west-northwest direction, slicing off the entire southern portion of the property, described by Samuel as "the plantation on which I now live." This was the oldest part of Samuel's property and his house was probably the original house on the Manacan tract.

Samuel specified that a portion of the property cut off by Frederick's line was to be reserved for Martin, being a "part of John & William cut off by a line from John & William N 64 W 89p, and land to the south of said line to be the 25 acres." Although no explicit starting point is given, the length and direction of the line and the fact that it cut off 25 acres to the south would indicate that it started at or near the beginning point of the John & William tract, as shown in Fig. 9.

The dividing line between John and Jacob is more problematic. Given the initial direction of the line and the fact that Jacob's portion totaled 116 acres, it appears that the first two courses of the line probably ran with Marble Quarry Road as then laid out. Following the rest of the courses, however, leads to an endpoint apparently not related to any of Samuel's land.

The author suspects that one or more errors were probably made transcribing the will from the original handwritten copy. Perhaps a "north" was misread as "south" or a "twenty" as "seventy". The second and third courses were slightly adjusted by the author to agree with property boundaries shown on later maps[24] and to force the line to end on the 79^th line of Hills Dales and the Vineyard, as stated in the will. With these changes, the general location and direction of the line appears more reasonable. Later land transactions are consistent with John having owned the northernmost portions of John &William, Frywell, Rohrer's Luck and Woodstock Forest.

Apparently John and Jacob already occupied homes in the areas they inherited. Samuel's will refers to each of their tracts as "the plantation whereon he now lives". There is an existing farmhouse with barns south of Marble Quarry Road that may have been Jacob's home, probably the original location of the home on the Frywell property. Further north on Marble Quarry Road, there is at least one old house where John may have lived. As previously mentioned, John also owned and operated a Fulling mill[25], now said to have been destroyed.

In addition to the subdivisions of the main property described above, Samuel also divided his land located in "parte of the Resurvey on parte of Parke Hall" between Frederick and Jacob. This land is the lower portion of Rohrer's Luck lying on the east side of Rohrersville Road. Frederick received 37.5 acres and Jacob 47 acres, "the whole agreeable as it is now laid off." No explicit division line is given, but the combined sizes are consistent with the overall size of the tract.

On December 12, 1791, two virtually identical "Deeds of Gift" were recorded, in which a Martin Rohrer and a Christian Rohrer each gave all their land and property to John Rohrer "in consideration of the natural love and affection which I have and do bear unto my beloved brother." However the deeds were only to be valid in the event that Martin and/or Christian did not return from "the present expedition that the United States are about to carry into the indian country (as I have enlisted in Captain Lewis's company of the Maryland Battalion…)". The expedition probably referred to the Indian wars in the Midwest that that were being carried out at that time. The expedition referred to the Indian wars in the Midwest that were being carried out at that time. Thomas J. C. Williams In his "History of Washington County Maryland" discusses Captain Lewis and these Indian Wars in some detail.

The deed from Martin specifically identifies him as a son of Samuel Rohrer, perhaps to distinguish him from the other Martins in the area. Hence the John Rohrer in these deeds is John Rohrer, son of Samuel. John’s brothers Martin and Christian had recently inherited shares of their father's estate.

Further research might help to determine whether Martin and/or Christian did return from the expedition. As will be seen later, John's executors did not dispose of any properties that might earlier have belonged to Martin or Christian. However, during his lifetime various John Rohrers did buy and sell many parcels not specifically researched in this paper. One or more of these could refer to Martin or Christian's lands.

1800 - John Rohrer's Sale of Parts of Rohrer's Luck and Woodstock Forest[27]

On April 26, 1800, John sold the 57.5 acres comprising parts of the Rohrer's Luck and Woodstock Forest tracts to David Furry for 300 Pounds current money of Maryland. The southern boundary of this property generally corresponds to the dividing line between John and Jacob defined in Samuel's will, though some minor adjustments were needed. The property sold is shown in Fig. 10

On March 29, 1811, John purchased approximately 142 acres from James Chapline for $4 per acre. The property is a part of the Resurvey on Hills, Dales and the Vineyard. The metes and bounds in the deed duplicate lines 66 through 80 of that "elder" survey, and in fact, overlap parts of the John & William, Frywell, Woodstock Forest and Resurvey on Roots Hills tracts. The deed goes on to specify that the land being conveyed comprises only the 142 acres within the Hills, Dales and the Vineyard bounds which "lay clear" of those other tracts. Apparently this was a shortcut method taken to avoid the expense of a complete resurvey.

As shown in Fig. 11, this purchase makes the outline of John's property generally consistent with present day property lines, obliterating the northern boundaries of John & William and Frywell.

In 1814, John purchased a triangle of land three quarters of an acre in size from Valentine Thomas for $30. The tract was called Make Convenient. The beginning point of the tract is given as "about one and one half perches from the brook which runs past John Rohrer's dwelling house and about three perches to the east of the waggon road leading from John Rohrer's house to Frederick Rohrer's." Two of the courses match the exact angles of the bend in the road where Marble Quarry Road takes a sharp turn to the north to follow the creek, with the parcel itself lying just to the north and east of the road. The land is also specified as being part of John & William and Frywell, consistent with the location of the bend in the road. The deed conveys not only the land, but also "all houses, buildings, chainways [?], waters, water courses, profits, commodities here detailed and appurtenances whatsoever of the said premises." The author speculates that this land and its buildings may have corresponded to John Rohrer's Fulling Mill, located as shown in Fig. 12.

John Rohrer died in 1826. In his will he bequeathed to his wife "Eve Rohrer during her natural life the house and land adjoining thereto wherein Christian Hastletine did live in which land is to be laid off by my Executors named hereafter so as not to inger the rest of my Real Estate as little as possible and after her death then my executors to sell the aforesaid land within one year of her decease to the best advantage they can, and the money arising from the sale to be equally divided among my children or their heirs, the aforesaid land to be laid off to my wife to give her sufficient wood for her use during her life … and to sell the whole of my real estate within two years after my decease to the best advantage they can."

Christian Hastletine was the husband of Eve Rohrer, one of John’s daughters. The proceeds from the sales were to be divided equally among the surviving children, after adjusting for portions that John had already advanced to each during his lifetime, and after setting aside $1,000 to be invested, the interest on which was to be paid to John's wife Eve during her lifetime. After she died, the $1,000 was to be divided among the children.

John named as Executors his nephew David Rohrer[31] (son of his brother Frederick) and John Rohrer, his own son. The transactions described below detail the sales of John's real estate by the Executors.

During his life, John had sold a small 11.5-acre wedge of land (the part of Hills, Dales and the Vineyard just north of the Woodstock Forest tract) to David Furry, who had previously purchased part of Woodstock Forest from John back in 1800. John died before actually executing a deed for the 11.5 acre tract to Mr. Furry, who meanwhile had sold the tract to John Blecker. Mr. Blecker requested John's Executors to issue him a substitute deed and they agreed, specifying a nominal transfer amount of 10 Pounds.

Blecker subsequently purchased for $3,262.50 another 100 acres, 65.25 acres comprising the portion of John's land adjacent to Woodstock Forest. The remaining 34.75 acres was a plot called Mount Atlas. John had purchased this tract in 1813 from John Booth and Jonas Hagmire[34]. It was a roughly square plot beginning at the end of the twenty-fifth line of Strife, still another of the very early surveys in Washington County, located near Park Hall on the western slope of South Mountain. The exact location of the Mount Atlas tract was not determined for this paper. However, Dr. Tracy’s map shows Strife to be adjacent to both Woodstock Forest and Park Hall, so we assume that the land was in that vicinity

Six weeks prior to selling the 65.25-acre parcel to John Blecker, the Executors had sold a 52.25acre parcel to Christian Rohrer for $1,112.50. This property lay to the west of the property Blecker purchased and to the east of the tract willed to John's widow Eve Rohrer during her lifetime. It’s not certain which Christian this is, but it could be Frederick’s Son Christian, b. 1790. Later that same year, Christian sold the parcel to a John Rohrer[36], possibly Jacob's brother. On the 1859 map (Appendix D), it was shown belonging to "J. Rohrer". John Rohrer was listed as Jacob’s neighbor per the records of the 1860 Census. The outline of this tract, now subdivided, can still be seen on present day tax maps. See Fig. 15 below.

On September 22, 1835, after the widow Eve Rohrer had died, John's son Jacob Rohrer purchased the 25 acre property bequeathed by John to Eve from John's Executors for $328. This was the last piece of John Rohrer's real estate to be sold and is in fact the “Old Homestead” property of the author’s great-great-great grandfather, Jacob. Fig. 13 shows the final transactions. The deed to Jacob contains no metes and bounds, rather it simply refers to the land bequeathed by John to his widow. The boundaries of that land must therefore be that part of John’s land that hadn’t been otherwise disposed of by the executors, i.e. the shaded area in Fig. 13.

The impetus for the present research was primarily to determine the location of Jacob Rohrer’s[38] Old Homestead property and to use that information to help confirm Jacob’s ancestry. When we started, all we knew was that Jacob had owned property in the Pleasant Valley area of Washington County. An article published October 1, 1887 in the "Antietam Wavelet", then the local paper of Keedysville, Maryland, tells of "The Rohrer Family Reunion" (Appendix A). The article includes both a general location and a detailed physical description of the "Old Homestead" where Jacob had raised his large family.

The land is described in the Wavelet article as having steep rocky cliffs on both sides where the Little Antietam Creek has cut through the mountain, as well as tree lined meadows along the banks of the stream. The tract was said to be about 2 miles south of Keedysville on the way to Rohrersville. The author and his father found an area generally matching that description along the present day Marble Quarry Road.

While Jacob’s 1835 deed contained no metes and bounds, the Deed[39] by which the children of Jacob Rohrer sold the Old Homestead to Ann Kefeauver in 1872 reveals that the property contained twenty acres and was then shaped as shown in Fig. 14. This is a bit smaller than the boundaries estimated for the 1835 purchase. It is unclear what became of the rest of that property.

The property was described as being "Part of the Resurvey on Hills, Dales and the Vineyard," one of the very early surveys in Washington County, long since subdivided into numerous smaller parts, one of which John had purchased in 1811. The beginning point of the survey was referenced to a stone planted on or near the summit of the ridge southwest of what was called John Rohrer's Fulling Mill -- the same John Rohrer who was Jacob's father.

The location was finally confirmed by checking the modern day tax maps. Map number 77 of the 1999 tax map of Washington County, shows a modern-day tract very close in shape and size to Fig 14, in the same location previously identified from the physical description. The adjacent tract also matches land once owned by John. A portion of the tax map is shown in Fig. 15 below.

The property straddles the backbone of Elk Ridge Mountain. The land is too steep to grow any significant farm crops and is largely covered with trees even today. The meadow area just west of where the creek cuts through the mountain is only a few acres and today contains a house and an old barn. It would have been large enough to support a few farm animals and perhaps a vegetable garden. The property originally had several more acres of meadow area, but these had already been sold by the time of Jacob's death[40].

In his will, John had requested that this property not "inger" his other holdings and have sufficient wood for Eve's needs. The land is covered with trees and is located at the western extreme of his land, leaving the rest of the property available for sale in fairly large parcels. The tract is very steep and otherwise unsuitable for farming, making it the least valuable part of John's property, having sold for only $13 per acre. By comparison, the 52.25 acres purchased by Christian Rohrer sold for $21 per acre, and the 100 acres purchased by John Blecker sold for almost $33 per acre.

This paper has described all the land transactions of Samuel Rohrer and his son John Rohrer and traced the direct relationship between Jacob Rohrer's Old Homestead tract and the landholdings of his father and grandfather. It has also identified a Washington County real estate transaction linking John Rohrer of Lampeter with Samuel Rohrer, thus indicating a possible relationship between these families.

Although the present research focused primarily on the origin of Samuel Rohrer's property and the lands he passed on to his son John, this work can serve as a starting point for those desiring to trace the land holdings of Samuel's other sons.

The work described in this paper would not have been possible without the extensive genealogical research previously done by the author's father, Charles W. Rohrer of Alexandria, Virginia.

Each level of indent indicates a new Rohrer generation. Not all the children are listed, only those referred to in the current paper. Names in bold are direct ancestors of the author.

1. Frederick Rohrer (c1700-c1762) (born Richen or Reihen, near Heidelberg Germany)

[1] Richard W. Davis, P.O. Box 50182, Provo, Utah 84605

[2] See the author’s paper on Landholdings of Martin Rohrer. Samuel’s brother Martin purchased three tracts of land just east of Hagerstown between 1765 and 1773.

[3] There were several John Rohrers buying property in Washington County at the same time and also several John Rohrers in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area. See Davis’s book for more information. Samuel also had a son John, whose landholdings are described in this paper.

[4] Deed recorded 1752, Liber E p. 4 Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland

[5] There were several Jacob Rohrers buying property in Washington County at the same time and also several Jacob Rohrers in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area. See Davis’s book for more information. Samuel also had a son Jacob, who inherited part of his father’s property, discussed in this paper.

[6] For example, see "John Rohrer of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania" by Albert L. Rohrer (born Farmersville, Ohio 1856, died 1951). Maplewood, NJ, 1941. Subtitled "A Paper outlining some of the results of a Research in the Records of Alsace, Switzerland, Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Hagerstown, Maryland". Available from the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[7] Deeds recorded 1758, Liber F p. 472-475 Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland

[8] Washington County was formed from part of Frederick County in 1776. Frederick County in turn was formed from part of Prince George's County in 1748. Land transactions in 1776 or later are recorded in Washington County, while those earlier are in Frederick or Prince George's. Washington County does, however, have records of Patents (Surveys) for many Washington County tracts that were made prior to 1776.

[9] Michael Funk had emigrated on the 1747 Restauration with Samuel’s family. Davis speculates he may have been husband to one of Samuel’s sisters.

[10] Deeds recorded 1760, Liber F p. 930-933, Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland

[11] Dr. Arthur G. Tracy set out to map all of the early tracts in Washington, Frederick and Carroll counties. He devised an elaborate system of index cards for each tract, and keyed their locations to a master grid system made up of squares 1 mile on a side. In 1974, all the index cards and map sheets were placed on two reels of microfilm, kept at the Land Records office in the Washington County Courthouse in Hagerstown. Although this is not an "official" record, the microfilms are maintained there for use by researchers.

[12] Deed recorded 1762, Liber G p. 483, Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland.

[13] Deed recorded 1762, Liber H p. 132, Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland.

[14] Interesting that Samuel Rohrer’s son John married an Eva Bowers years later. From other sources, it appears that there is evidence of a fair amount of intermarriage between these two families.

[15] Surveys for two of these tracts had been previously recorded in the Washington County Register of Land Patents as follows: Manacan (1739) Book 1 p.5-6 and John & William (1755) Book 1 p.71.

[16] Deed recorded 1763, Liber H p. 314, Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland.

[17] Albert Rohrer, op. cit.

[18] Deeds recorded 1767, Liber K p. 1388-1391, Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland.

[19] Deeds recorded 1767, Liber L p. 33-34, Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland.

[20] Deed recorded 1767, Liber L p. 35, Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland.

[21] Deed recorded 1770, Liber N p. 526, Frederick Co. Courthouse, Frederick, Maryland.

[22] Deed recorded 1785, Liber D p. 137, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[23] Will recorded 1786, Liber A p. 169, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[24] An 1859 map showing the property boundaries at that time, and in many cases the names of the owners, is displayed in the Washington County Courthouse in Hagerstown. A copy of the portion of this map where Samuel Rohrer's land was located is included in Appendix D.

[25] A Fulling mill was a factory in which a pressed wool cloth not unlike felt was manufactured. The process requires a great deal of water and heat, so it is likely that John's mill was located along one of the streams passing through the property, near a heavily wooded area, and probably near the road.

[26] Deeds recorded 1791, Liber G p. 570,571, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[27] Deed recorded 1800, Liber N p. 76, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[28] Deed recorded 1811, Liber W p. 466, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[29] Deed recorded 1814, Liber Z p. 630, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[30] Will recorded 1824, Liber C p. 333, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[31] Founder of the town of Rohrersville, Maryland.

[32] Deed recorded 1827, Liber II p. 405, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[33] Deed recorded 1828, Liber II p. 926, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[34] Deed recorded 1813, Liber Y p. 835, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[35] Deed recorded 1828, Liber II p. 838, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[36] Deed recorded 1828, Liber II p. 900, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[37] Deed recorded 1836, Liber RR p. 460, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[38] This Jacob was the second son of Samuel's son John Rohrer. Not to be confused with John's brother Jacob Rohrer Sr. and his son (John's nephew) Jacob Rohrer Jr.

[39] Deed recorded 1875, Liber GBO p.403, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland.

[40] Deed recorded 1843, Liber OHW p.261, Washington Co. Courthouse, Hagerstown, Maryland. This deed describes a small tract of meadow area sold to Jacob Snyder, a neighbor. There may have been other sales of portions of the meadow area as well.

Landholdings of Samuel Rohrer and His Son John in Washington County, Maryland 1758-1835

Landholdings of Samuel Rohrer and His Son John in
Washington County, Maryland 1758-1835