Ancestor - George Beymer

From Pennsylvania to Ohio

THE BEYMERS, GUERNSEY COUNTY’S EARLIST FAMILY

From Newspaper Clipping

          The authentic history of Guernsey County begins with the arrival of the Beymers in 1800.  White folks had been here before that but they were hunters, surveyors, soldiers marching through, or squatter of whom we have only traditions.  The Beymers were the first to locate here permanently and must be considered Guernsey County’s oldest family.  They located here three years before the Beatty-Gomber group and six years before the emigrants from the Isle of Guernsey.

         In 1800, there were seven Beymer brothers living in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, namely George, Simon, William, Henry, Frederick, Peter and Phillip.  George, oldest of the brothers had married a sister of John McIntyre, whose wife was a daughter of Ebenezer Zane, the founder of Wheeling.  It was Ebenezer Zane who, in 1796, took from Wheeling to Limestone (Mayville), Kentucky.  For this work he was to receive from the Federal Government, three sections of land, one where the road crossed the Muskingum, one where it crossed the Hocking, and one where it crossed the Scioto River.  The Act of Congress authorizing the road (known as Zane’s Trace) required that a ferry be established at the crossing of each of the three rivers.  For their assistance in opening Zane’s Trace, and perhaps some other small consideration, Ebenezer Zane gave the section to his brother Johnathan Zane and his son-in-law, John McIntyre.  On this section in 1799, they laid out the town which is now Zanesville, and provided for a ferry.

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