Our primary source of information about John and Sarah's forbears is the letter of Elza Martin, written decades after their deaths. The narrative presented there is clearly stated and compelling, yet it poses certain problems.  Chief among these is its lack of specifics, such as dates and places, which could be used to verify and supplement the information it gives.

Elza's letter names Edward Martin as John's father, and that name also appears in Charles M. Walker's History of Athens County, identifying him as one of the earliest inhabitants of Alexander Township.  However, we have not found the name Edward Martin on any property deeds filed either in Athens County or in Washington County (from which Athens Co. was formed), nor does he show up in any censuses of Athens County, and I don't believe any such person is shown in the 1790 census of Pennsylvania (where John was born in 1789*).  The census does show one man in Washington County, PA, whose name might be interpreted as Edward Martin, but I don't accept that interpretation.  I also reject the idea that a certain Edward Martin known to have lived in Hampshire County, [West] Virginia, could have been John's father.  For those who care, I have laid out my reasons below for rejecting these two possible fathers for John.

It seems clear to me that the name Edward is simply a misinterpretation — that John's father was commonly known as “Ed” or “Eddie,” and his friends and even some family members simply assumed that the name was short for Edward.  Listings of adult males in Washington County, Ohio, compiled in 1800 and 1803, show the names Edmund and Edmond Martin, respectively, and it is likely that one of these is the correct name of John's father.  In both cases, the individual named resided in Middletown Township, which was in the part of Washington County that later became Athens County.  Moreover, Edmund Martin appears on a list of voters for an election in Alexander Township in October 1805.

In addition, Rufus Putnam's list of some of the earliest applicants for land in the "south university township" (which later became Alexander Township) shows that Edmond Martin applied for 120 acres in the southeast corner of Section 23 (see page 2 here).  It seems odd, therefore, that W. E. Peters' map of the original settlers of Alexander Township assigns this same land to Moses Hewitt.  This situation is clarified, however, by a document from June 1807 which transfers the lease on this property to Hewitt as an “assignee of Edmund Martin,” retroactive to 1 January 1806.  The document doesn’t specify how Hewitt came to be an “assignee,” but I suspect it was done either because Edmund had died or because he found himself too sick and feeble to work the land, and initiated the reassignment himself before he died.  Either way, I think he had passed on by the time the reassignment was formalized in 1807, as the leasing document includes no statement from him consenting to the arrangement.

Edmond Martin also is listed in the 1790 Federal Census in Union Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania.  His household in that census included three females (ages not stated), two men more than 16 years old, and one male child less than 16 (who could be John).  Edmond or Edmund Martin is further documented in tax lists for Union Township, Fayette County, in 1786, '87, and '88.  Tax lists are lacking for most of the 1790s, but Edmond does not appear in the county's Direct Tax Files for 1798, suggesting that he already had emigrated to Ohio by that time.

In fact, according to the "Descriptions of land granted to settlers in . . . the Ohio Company Donation Tract," Edmund Martin was granted 100 acres of land in northern Washington County, Ohio, in April 1797.  This was not in the part of Washington County that became Athens County, but then Washington County deed records show that Edmund turned around and sold this same land the following September.  By 1800, as noted above, he had moved to the area of the future Athens County.

New information added in 2026:

Elza’s account also makes no mention of John Martin’s mother, perhaps because he knew nothing about her.  He does report, however, that his grandparents John Martin and Sally Stanley were “stepbrother and sister” — a circumstance that came about because, he says, “Mr. Stanley died and my great grandfather married his widow.”  However, as explained in my exploration of Sally’s ancestry, official records from Athens County suggest the opposite to be true, that Sally’s father Isaac Stanley married a widowed lady, Mrs. Elizabeth Martin, in 1815.  Assuming that John and Sally came to be step-siblings as a result of that marriage, it would mean that this Elizabeth was the widow of Edmund Martin and, hence, John Martin’s mother.

Another family researcher, Ben Buckner (a Stanley descendant), brought to my attention in 2026 a property deed filed in Harrison County, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1801 which transfers to one Stephen Powell the ownership of a 200-acre plot of land in that county.  The sellers, “Edmond Martin and Elisabeth his wife Formerly of the County of Fayette and State of Pennsylvania,” appeared before a “Justice of the Peace in and for the County of Washington, North Western Territory” to confirm the sale.  Note:  Before Ohio became a State in 1803, it was simply designated as part of the “North Western Territory,” and Washington County included all of the area that later became Ohio.  Hence, it seems very likely that this Edmond Martin who had come from Fayette County, Pennsylvania and who was in Ohio in 1801 is the same man who subsequently leased land in Alexander Township of Athens County, and that “Elisabeth his wife” was, later, the widow who married Isaac Stanley in Athens County.  In other words, these are John Martin’s parents.

But how did Edmond and Elizabeth happen to have title to 200 acres in Virginia?  Ben Buckner found another document that explains.  In 1794, the Commonwealth of Virginia recognized Elizabeth and her sister Mary Juggins as the “Daughters and Heiresses of John Juggins deceased.”  Accordingly, the Commonwealth granted one moiety (one half) of John Juggins’ land to Mary Juggins and the other moiety to “Edmund Martin and Elizabeth his Wife.”

So now we know that Elizabeth’s maiden name was Juggins, and she was the daughter of John Juggins.  Several books covering the history of the western regions of Virginia (now West Virginia) report on John Juggins, along with his neighbor John Owens, being scalped and killed by Indians near Boothsville in June 1779, and they go into greater detail on a harrowing experience Elizabeth endured a couple of years later.  In March 1781, she was visiting a neighbor’s home when that family was attacked by Indians.  All of them were killed (except for one little boy who was taken prisoner) and their cabin was burned.  Elizabeth successfully hid when the attackers were in the house and managed to escape after the flames started.  One account of Elizabeth’s ordeal is excerpted here.

Boothsville, where Elizabeth lived as a girl and where her father was killed, is now in Marion County, West Virginia.  But the area was part of Harrison County before Marion County was created in 1842, and it was part of Monongalia County before Harrison was created in 1784.  Hence, all three of those counties could be good places to look for further records of Elizabeth and her kin.  Also, if she grew up in that area, it’s possible that Edmund Martin did as well.

It seems likely that Elizabeth is one of the three females listed in Edmond Martin’s household in the 1790 Federal Census in Union Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania.  No name or age is given for her there.  After that, the next available census in which she appears is from 1820, by which time she was married to Isaac Stanley.  She shows up in his household in Alexander Township, Athens County, Ohio, as a female of age 45 or older.  By 1830, Isaac had died, and the census from that year shows Elizabeth, as “Betsy Stanley,” being the head of her own household, and it lists her age range as 50–59.  By 1840, she had deeded her property to her son Hiram, so she is no longer the head of household, but she does show up in his household as a female in the age range of 60–69.

These last three censuses, collectively, place Elizabeth’s birth sometime between 1771 and 1775.  It is surprising, then, that her age is shown as 72 in the 1850 census where, once again, she is listed in the household of her son Hiram Stanley.  That age suggests she was born about 1778, and this not only contradicts that age of “45 or older” shown in the 1820 census, but it also calls into question whether she could actually be the mother of John Martin, who was born in 1789 (when Elizabeth would have been 11, according to the 1850 census).  For now, I’m guessing that the age in the 1850 census is simply wrong, and the age ranges in the three earlier censuses are correct.  If so, Elizabeth would have been between 14 and 18 in 1789, certainly old enough to be John’s mother.  (Random thought:  For the 1850 census, could the family have said that she was born in ’72, and the census taker mistook that for her age?)  Still, it would be helpful to have some additional documentation of her birth year, but I have not found her listed in the 1860 census (even though she lived until 1866), no age or birth date is legible on what remains of her tombstone, and I have not found any obituary for her.

One more surprising document turned up by Ben Buckner is an 1840 promissory note in which Hiram Stanley promises to provide care for his mother for the rest of her life and, in the event of her death, to pay any amounts owing to his sisters “Lovisa Cooley and Lorinna Cooley.”  For clarity, I note here that his sisters had the surname of Cooley because they had both married men named Cooley; their maiden name was Stanley.

The discovery of these two sisters leads to an additional revelation.  In the 1900 census, the date of birth given for “Luvise Cooley” is September 1810.  On Lorinna’s Find-a-Grave site, her date of birth is shown as 14 June 1814.  Both of these dates are prior to the official date of Isaac and Elizabeth’s marriage shown in the Athens County records (15 Jan. 1815).  Hence, it appears that they may have been involved in a common-law marriage for several years before they decided to “make it official.”  In this light, it’s feasible that John Martin and Sarah Stanley may have been, essentially, step-siblings by the time they themselves married in 1808.

John Martin's grandfather (Edmond's father?) was another man also named John Martin who, according to Elza's letter, lost his life at the hands of hostile Indians.  Elza also asserts that this John Martin "lived in what is now West Virginia before the Revolutionary War."  Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive census of Virginia from Colonial times, and other written records are spotty.  Rent rolls recorded in 1764 show that a man named John Martin then lived in Frederick County, VA, which is not one of the counties that became part of West Virginia, although it is bordered by the West Virginia counties of Berkeley and Hampshire.  This John Martin easily could have relocated to one of those counties within a few years after 1764.

Following the Revolution, the Commonwealth of Virginia conducted statewide censuses in 1782 and 1784 (which would have been after the elder John Martin's death).  Both of these reported a household headed by one Edmund Martin in Hampshire County (which is now included in West Virginia).  This household included eight "free white persons"; no ages or genders were listed.  If this Edmund had been a minor when his father died "about 1774–1776," he could have been 20 or so by 1782.  It seems questionable whether someone so young could have been the "head" of a household of eight, but he might have been counted as such if he were the only male or the oldest male in the family.  If he is the person identified as "Edward" in Elza's letter, he reportedly had two older sisters, and his widowed mother was probably in his household.  These would account for four people in the household; add a child or two and perhaps a hired hand or two, and this could have been a household of eight.

Hence, it is feasible that our John Martin's grandfather — the elder John Martin — was in Frederick County, VA, in 1764; that he subsequently moved a few miles west, into Hampshire County; that he was killed there about 1774–76; and that his son Edmond grew to manhood there before moving to Fayette County, PA, about 1785.  The documentary record, though, is distressingly thin.

So far, I have found no historical accounts of a John Martin killed by Indians in the mid-1770s in Hampshire County or anywhere else in western Virginia.  Surprisingly, there is a well-documented account of an Indian trader by that name killed in 1773, in the area that would later become Athens County, OH.  However, the circumstances are completely different from those described in Elza's letter and, besides, that John Martin was known to be a young man, married less than a year, who left no children.  It is clear, however, that there were many skirmishes between the Indians and white settlers all along the western frontier in 1774 and '75, during the conflict known as "Dunmore's War," and that British agents actually paid Indians to murder and scalp American frontiersmen in that area during the Revolutionary War.  I'm sure that many such deaths were never recorded and/or that records have been lost over the intervening years.

Obviously, I am still seeking further information about Edmund/Edmond Martin and the earlier John Martin. If you can provide any further details about these men, their wives, parents, or other family members, please contact me at the address shown in the image below:

Thanks,      
     —Pete Martin

Return to John Martin Family home page.

*In the 1880 census, five of John's surviving children listed Pennsylvania as the place where their father had been born.

Rejected Theories About John Martin's Father

The 1790 census shows an individual in Washington County, PA, whose name has been variously interpreted as Edward Martin or Mortin or Morton.  However, I do not think the name is Martin, for two reasons:  (1) On a copy of the original document, the second and third letters of the second name appear to be written differently from the "ar" in the first name Edward and also differently from the "ar" in the name Sheppard, which appears farther down on the same page.  In fact, they seem essentially identical to the "or" in the name Joseph Morton, which also appears farther down the page.  These three names, as reproduced from the census document, are shown at right.  (2) The name Edward Mortin also appears in a listing of the "Warrantees of Land for Washington County, Pennsylvania, 1733-1858."

We also know of an Edward Martin who lived in Hampshire County, [West] Virginia, based on a will that was filed there in 1796.  Interestingly, this will does name a certain "John Martin" as one of Edward's heirs.  Nowhere, however, does the will identify this John Martin as "my son."  Instead it thrice refers to him as "John Martin Son of Catherine Miller."  Nevertheless, it's tempting to think that this will refers to "our" John Martin and that the man who made it was, indeed, his father Edward.  I find that neither of these interpretations is credible.  First, I note that the will names this same John Martin as one of the executors.  Inasmuch as "our" John was only 7 years old at the time the will was made, no sensible person would have named him as an executor.  Second, I have found another record showing that this Edward Martin purchased some land in Hampshire County in 1773.  This would not have been feasible for a boy whom Elza describes as "a younger son" (i.e., not yet grown) when his father was killed about 1774–76.