| Notes |
- "AMERICAN VAN METRE FAMILY" Smyth (Allen County Public Library, Fort
Wayne, IN) "John Van Metre was the first white man to visit the
country south of the Conhongaru (Potomac) (Cartmell's History of
Frederick County Va., p. 12 et seq.) Mr. John Van Metre of New York
gives an account of his accompanying the New York Delaware Indians on
their raid against the Catawbas--They passed up the South Branch of
the Potomac, and he afterward settled his boys there. (W. VA. Hist.
Mag. III, p. 191, II, p. 17) At the mouth of the Antietam Creek,
then in Prince George's County, MD, between 1730 and 1736, occurred
the famous battle between the Catawbas and the Delawares by which the
Catawbas secured the victory. This took place what is now the
coke-yard of the Antietam Iron Works, three miles from
Sharpsburg--where numerous skeletons and war implements have been
found. (Scharff's "History of Western Maryland," II, p. 1204) John
Van Metre, a Dutchman from the Hudson, was an Indian trader and
pioneer explorer of the Shenandoah Valley, who spied out land about
the time of Governor Spottswood's expedition in 1716. He traveled
with a band of Delaware Indians at his own expense and traveled far
southward and over unknown lands in the Wappatomaka Valley, on the
South Branch River above the 'The Trough' as it was the finest land he
had ever discovered. (MacKenzie's Col. Fam. of the U.S., VI)
"SHEPHERD AND RELATED FAMILIES" by Frank Shepherd (1858-?) pub. 1943
(Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN) "Jooste Janse Van Meter
was known as 'Van Meter the Indian Trader'. He and his father, it
seems, were known to have made many expeditions into the Indian
country for the purpose of barter with the Indians, even going as far
as Central Virginia and over the mountains into the great Valley of
the Shenandoah. It is claimed that he was the first white man to see
this beautiful valley and was delighted with it. On his return told
his sons to go there if they wanted good land, timber grass and well
watered. It is known that John Van Meter passsed thru this valley as
early as 1725 with a tribe of Delaware Indians on their way to the
South Branch to fight the Catawbas. In this fight all the Delawares
were killed except the two Indians who were with Van Meter."
Birth, marriage and death dates taken from Ancestral file
|
The Back Rhodes of Our Genealogy
1652 - 1706 (54 years)
