Shenandoah Settlers
The main immigrant groups into the Valley were, not surprisingly, the same immigrant groups found in Philadelphia: the Germans and the Scots-Irish. As early as 1726 or 1727, it has been recorded that a small group of German settlers were squatting in land in the Valley near Massanutten, and they waited patiently on their land until 1733 for the government to determine who rightfully owned the land so that they could buy it and obtain clear title. In 1732, Joist Hite settled on land obtained from the Van Meter brothers with his son-in-laws George Bowman, Jacob Chrisman and Paul Froman. By 1734, Hite had issued patents to about 40 other German families that had settled near his home. (Patents were issued on proof that a required number of families had been brought in to settle the land. This was often accomplished by fraudulent means, such as naming the livestock on the farm.) Several Scots-Irish families accompanied Hite into the Shenandoah Valley but continued South to the Staunton area.
Aside from Hite and Jacob Stover (who was granted the Massanutten tract), the majority of German settlers owned between 100 - 500 acres, preferring to tend a small, well-run farms. Most German immigrants settled in the lower Shenandoah Valley and were kept out of present day Clarke County by English settlement and out of the area near Winchester by the land dispute between Joist Hite and Lord Fairfax. The present day counties of Shenandoah, Page and Rockingham counties saw the majority of German settlement. German expansion stopped north of Staunton, which after 1732, became a Scots-Irish stronghold.
John Lewis, born in Donegal, Ulster in 1678, immigrated with his family to Pennsylvania in 1731 and traveled south the Shenandoah Valley in 1732, making most of the journey on foot. His family stopped and settled in what would become Staunton, becoming the first Scots-Irish to settle in the Valley. After the Beverly acquisition of 1736, about 60 Scots-Irish families traveled south and settled in the region. (These families were originally squatters, but later bought their land from Beverly.) Beverly attracted other Scots-Irish settlers to the area around Staunton by circulating flyers in Philadelphia and actively recruiting immigrants in Londonderry and other Northern Irish towns. Soon, the area was so heavily populated by Scots-Irish settlers that it was called the Irish Tract.
Chronology Of Land Grants In The Shenandoah Valley:
1729 - Robert Carter granted 50,000 acres in
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