Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Joseph Richards CONNELL
Joseph Richard Connell, son of William Connell, was also born at Marcus Hook, March 14, 1782, a sea captain at the age of eighteen, employed in the East India trade, when Philadelphia was the Nation's mercantile center. He owned a place called Ryerson Station, Greene County. Pennsylvania, "upon a property of some acreage, he had purchased, containing an old block house, erected for defense against the Indians," whither Captain Connell had gone into retirement, after suffering from the results of a shipwreck.
Howard Leckey's, "The Tenmile Country and Its Pioneer Families":
Some tracts of land not included in the deed to Tilghman were claimed by the sheriff of Greene County and by him sold to Thomas Ryerson on October 1, 1798. They included the site where Christopher Gist had viewed the county and reported it in his journal on March 7, 1752. With these nine tracts Thomas Ryerson perpetrated the hoax reported by L. K. Evans, and which bears repetition. Evans called Ryerson a shrewd and unscupulous land speculator, who after he had possessed himself of these lands, conceived the idea of drafting on paper, his dream of a sylvan paradise, complete with its dwellings and towns. This drawing he took east with him and succeeded in palming it off on an unsuspecting sea captain, said by Evans to have been named Connell. When the sea captain came to inspect his supposedly earthly heaven, all he found was "a few rude huts at the confluence of two wild streams, amid a dense tangle of thickets, and surrounded by rugged hills covered by unbroken forests." The site may easily be recognized as the place now called Ryerson's Station and must not be confused with Ryerson's Fort, which was on Ryerson's original "Vollodolid" tract and now known as Wind Ridge."
The property is now Ryerson State Park. The park name originated from Fort Ryerson that was located nearby and constructed in 1792 at the order of Virginia authorities to be used principally as a place of refuge from Indian raids.
Land was acquired for this park in 1958. The lake was formed in 1960 with the construction of a dam across the North Fork of the Dunkard Fork of Wheeling Creek and later renamed Ronald J. Duke Lake. In 1967, Ryerson Station State Park was opened to the public.
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