The following narrative relates to my great-great-great aunts, Mary (Polly) and Frances (Fannah) SAILOR. Mary and Frances were the daughters of Jacob SAILOR (1746-1816) who fought in the Revolutionary War as an Ensign with the 4th Company, 2nd Battalion, Cumberland County (PA) Militia. While living in Washington County, PA, Mary and Frances married two brothers. Mary married David DILLE Jr. (1753-1835) and Frances married Asa DILLE (1755-1842).
David DILLE Jr., his brother Asa DILLE, and a nephew, Samuel DILLE, migrated together to the Cleveland, Ohio area. At the end of the Revolutionary War, when the various colonies claiming western territories ceded their lands to the U.S. Government, Connecticut reserved some land south of Lake Erie called the Western Reserve. After the Treaty of Greenville (1795) , made with the Indians after General Anthony Wayne's campaign, this area became safer for settlers, and in 1796, Moses Cleveland of Connecticut led a band that founded the city of Cleveland. Some of this group were from Pennsylvania, but most were from New England. It was in 1797 that David DILLE Jr. first went to Cleveland to look over the situation. He didn't bring his family until 1803, the year that Ohio was admitted to the Union as a state.
Most of the information regarding David DILLE Jr. and his brother Asa is found in "Pioneer Families of Cleveland, 1796-1840," by Gertrude Van Renssalaer Wickham, Evangelical Publishing House, 1914.
"Ninety years ago there was no family in this locality more familiar than that of DILLE and no other family so numerous. There were three separate branches of the DILLE family in the country headed by two brothers, David and Asa DILLE, and the nephew, Samuel DILLE.
"David DILLE Jr. came from Washington County, Pennsylvania
in 1797 to spy out the land. He was a farmer and was looking
for fertile soil upon which to locate. He did not find what he
wanted in or near the hamlet at the mouth of the Cuyahoga and
finally decided upon a 100 acre tract in Euclid. This decision
would seem to have barred him and his family from Cleveland local
history were it not that they sojourned six weeks in town while
their log cabin in Euclid was being built and that the children
and grandchildren intermarried into Cleveland families; so that
David's descendants today, many of them of much local importance,
are distributed over the length and breadth of the city. His
brother, Asa, settled in East Cleveland on Mayfield Road; the
nephew, Samuel DILLE, on Broadway...DILLE Road, which crosses
Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland, is named for this family.
David DILLE Jr. was the son of David and Mary Wade DILLE of Morris County, NJ. He was a soldier of the Revolution, having served a year as Sergeant, another year as a Lieutenant in the infantry, and two months with the cavalry. Until this last enlistment he was with William Crawford in the ill-fated expedition to northwest Ohio terminating in the burning of Colonel Crawford at the stake by the Indians in the presence of the renegade, Simon Girty. At the age of 78, David DILLE Jr. received a pension for his Revolutionary War services.
It was not until the spring of 1803 that he came west to remain
permanently. He was then 50, had been married two times and the
father of eight children, the oldest of whom was 22 and the youngest
a babe. The family of Asa DILLE, his brother, accompanied him
on the journey. The wives of the two men were sisters. They
rode all the way from the Ohio River near Wheeling, on horseback,
each carrying an infant in her arms, with another child seated
behind her, and holding onto its mother for dear life when the
road was rough. It took 25 days for the wagons that contained
their household effects to traverse the last 25 miles of the journey
because there was
no road, nothing but a bridle path, and trees had to be chopped
down occasionally to make this wide enough for the team to get
through.
The first wife of David DILLE Jr. was Nancy VIERS. They had
five sons and a daughter. The second wife was Mary SAILOR whom
David married in 1797. The log cabin of the DILLE family is said
to have been of generous hospitality and good cheer. In it, 14
more children were added to the family making in all 22, of whom
18 reached maturity. Meanwhile, the older members in it had been
married and some of their children were born before all of David's
second brood had reached its limit. The army record of the David
DILLE family was most unusual. Besides that of the
father in the War of the Revolution was that of his three sons,
Lewis, Luther, and Asa DILLE, who belonged to Captain Murray's
Company, recruited in Cleveland in the War of 1812. David DILLE
Jr. had six sons and 13 grandsons who fought in the Civil War.
The five sons of David and Nancy Viers DILLE remained in this
locality for the remainder of their lives, but many of the grandchildren
removed to the western states as did several of David DILLE Jr.'s
children by this second marriage."
Ref.: "Pioneer Families of Cleveland, 1796-1840," by Gertrude Van Renssalaer Wickham, Evangelical Publishing House, 1914."
Jack R. Saylor
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