(NOTE- Numbers in parentheses will correspond to the generational I.D. number within the Lineage Charts)
NOTE- Cornelius Barkelow was the first Barkelow to leave Hunterdon Co.,NJ. Based upon the assumed accuracy of the birthplaces given by his children, he settled briefly in Maryland, and then Virginia between 1766 and 1788/89, when he returned to New Jersey. Because he probably spoke both German and English, having been raised in New Jersey communities mostly occupied by Dutch and German families, he would likely have felt more comfortable in similar communities within the Cumberland Gap region. There's strong evidence one of those places was Martinsburgh,Berkeley Co.,VA.(now W.VA.). However, it's possible he tried to settle a little deeper into "The Gap Country", perhaps as far as Morgantown,Monongalia Co.,VA.(now W.VA.).
His daughter, Phoebe eventually married William Beam, who was born in Waynesburg,Greene Co.,PA., as far west as settlers could live without being in Transylvania, a disputed "state" which eventually became the panhandle of West Virginia. Going on the known pattern and assumption most settlers did not retreat much once they began heading westward, the connection between Phoebe Bartlow and William Beam between 1785-1790 did not take place in Martinsburgh, or back in Hunterdon Co.,NJ., but probably closer to where William Beam was born and raised. Had the Cornelius Barkelow family been living in the Morgantown area instead of Martinsburgh when Cornelius decided to take his nagging 2nd wife back to New Jersey, it could be more easily understood why most of his children chose not to accompany their father back to New Jersey, having no recollections of New Jersey and having spent their entire lives where there was more open space, affordable land, cleaner water and plentiful game.
Being in the Cumberland Gap Regon at that time must have been like living alongside the main road out-of-town, where pioneering families were constantly passing through, sharing bits of news about cheap, plentiful land for homesteading. In 1787, with the opening of lands in the newly surveyed Northwest Territory, almost anyone watching the parade of settlers heading through "The Gap" and down the Ohio River would have been caught up in the excitement and frenzied hope of getting some good cheap land while it was still available, and before land speculators made it a little less affordable.
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