Borden's Grant

Overview[]

Benjamin Borden, a native of new Jersey...obtained from Governor Gooch a patent dated October 3, 1734, for a tract of land in Frederick county, which was called "Borden's Manor." At the same time he was promised 100,000 acres on the waters of James River, west of the Blue Ridge, as soon as he should locate a hundred settlers on the tract....Beverly and Borden were indefatigable in introducing settlers from Europe....Borden's tract was south of Beverley's Manor, and in the present county of Rockbridge. The first settlers on the tract were Ephraim McDowell and his family. His daughter, Mary Greenlee, related in a deposition taken in 1806...the circumstances under which her father went there. Her brother, James McDowell, had come into Beverley's Manor during the spring of 1737, and planted a crop of corn near Wood's Gap; and in the fall her father, her brother John, and her husband and herself, came to occupy the settlement. Before they reached their destination, and after they had arranged their camp on a certain evening, at Linnville Creek, (now Rockingham) Borden arrived and asked permission to spend the night with them, being doubtless on his way to his tract from his home in the lower Valley. He informed them of his grant, and offered them inducements to go there. The next day they came on to the house of John Lewis, and there it was finally arranged that the party should settle in Borden's tract Ephraim McDowell was then a very aged man, and live to be over on hundred years old.When a youth of 16 he was one of the defenders of Londonderry. He and his family located on Timber Ridge, originally called "Timber Grove", being attracted by the forest trees on the ridge, where each were scarce elsewhere in the region. Borden offered a tract of one hundred acres to anyone who should build a cabin on it, with the privilege of purchasing more at fifty shillings per hundred acres. Each cabin secured to him one thousand acres. Among the settlers in "Borden's grant" were William McCauseland, William Sawyer, Robert Campbell, Samuel Woods, John Mathews..., Richard Woods, John Hays and his son, Charles and Samuel Walker. Borden obtained his patent November 8, 1739.

MAP[]

This map shows the relationship of Borden's Grant (tan) to Beverly's Manor (green). The brown line running north to south along the eastern edge of the two areas is "The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road", now approximately Interstate I-81. The purple squares show the location of various early churches (Presbyterian Meeting Houses).

References[]

Historic conditions along the Middlebrook-Brownsburg Corridor