William McGarry
William McGarry was born in County Down, Ireland, in 1757, and emigrated to Virginia in the Spring of 1777. He enlisted the same spring as a private in Captain Wood Jones' Company and served afterward in Captain Benjamin Hoomes' Company, Second Virginia Regiment, commanded by Col. William Febiger, in the Revolutionary War. His enlistment was for a period of three years.
He was in the battles which occurred during the time of his services in New Jersey and about Philadelphia, but a large part of the time his duties consisted in hauling supplies to the army.
He came to Ohio in 1795, directly after the peace of Greenville, and bought two hundred and twenty-five acres of ground on Poplar Ridge, in Tiffin Township. This land is now owned by W. J. and B. Grooms, Caleb Malone and Mr. Deitz. He left the blockhouse at Manchester and located on land in Tiffin Township when there had not been a single tree cut down in the township and none outside of Manchester. He cleared off a patch of ground and built a pole cabin and moved his family into it. There were plenty of wolves, bears, wild turkeys and deer in the forest at that time, and a great many roving Indians.
His daughter has told a lady now living near West Union that she had been at that place many times when all was forest, not a house in the vicinity, and had drank out of the spring where the public well now stands. When he made a clearing, the first thing he did was to plant peach trees and engage in the manufacture of whiskey and brandy.
The squirrels and wild turkeys were so plenty that when he planted his corn, it was necessary to stand gaurd over it until it was grown too high for them to disturb. After it was planted he made paw-paw whistles and had his children march around the corn fields at the edge of the forests during the day, blowing these whistles so that the squirrels and turkeys would not bother the corn.
Some time after building his pole cabin, be built a log house with large fire-places, and he was considered a rich man for his time. He was one of the first members of the Presbyterian Church at West Union. He was not a pensioner of the Revolutionary War, because he owned considerable land and could not obtain a pension.
He married his first wife, Elizabeth Walker, in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and she was the mother of five children.
William McGarry had a second wife, Mary McKee, and she was the mother of three children. He was esteemed as a useful and valuable citizen. He did what could not be done in our day; he was a very pious man and a consistent member of the Presbyterian Church, and raised his family in the same manner as himself, and at the same time made and drank whiskey all the time when it was no disgrace either to make it or drink it. He died in 1845 and was buried on the farm which he cleared and owned.
From "History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time
- by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900