Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/126

 Mr. Cressop owns a thousand acres of land here in one body, most of it first rate bottom, his cottage is well furnished, and he has a neat and good garden.

A little lower we passed Woods's fine island, about a mile long, and stopped just beyond it at Biddle's tavern on the left, at the conflux of Fish creek[81] and the Ohio, a mile and a half below Cressop's. Biddle keeps a ferry over Fish creek, which is a fine deep stream, fifty yards wide, running thirty miles through the country, but having no mills on it yet.

Mr. and Mrs. Biddle are kind and hospitable, decent in their manners, and reasonable in their charges. He is a tenant of Mr. Robert Woods, whose house and extensive improvements we had passed at Roland's ferry near Wheeling.

Biddle pays a rent of one hundred dollars per annum, for which he has a right to cultivate and build wherever he pleases on Woods's land, Mr. Woods paying him per valuation for the buildings. The house he now resides in cost him six hundred dollars, {100} which he has been repaid. He has cleared and cultivated the land for some distance round the house, and he has ten acres in corn on the island, which contains fifty acres of the first quality of soil above the highest flood marks, the rest being liable to inundation.

At nine o'clock, we landed on the left at John Wells's, seven miles from Biddle's. It was a fine night. Eight or

War. He was commissioned captain of the local militia (June 10, 1774), and joined McDonald's expedition to the Muskingum towns. The following year Cresap was again in Maryland, and raised a company for the Continental army, dying in New York on his way to join Washington at Cambridge. Of his children the eldest daughter married Luther Martin, the well-known Maryland statesman and jurist. The youngest son, Michael, settled on his father's Ohio lands, and became a wealthy and respected citizen.—]
 * [Footnote: 1774, when he immediately became involved in the troubles leading to Lord Dunmore's