The Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia borders Maryland and Virginia. The first European settlers started arriving about 1730.
The Society of Friends (Quakers) began in England in the 1650s, when they broke away from the Puritans. Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, as a safe place for Friends to live and practice their faith.
Martha Stroud was born about 1696/1697 in Europe
She married Morgan Bryan in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Morgan was born in 1671 in Denmark.
Joseph Bryan (1720, married Hester Simpson and Alice Linville),
Samuel Bryan (1721, married Masmilla Simpson),
James Bryan (1723, married Rebecca Enochs(on),
Mary Bryan (1725, married Thomas Curtis and George Forbes),
Morgan Bryan, Jr. (1729, married Cassandra Miller),
John Bryan (1730, married Elizabeth Frances Battle),
Elinor Bryan (1729, married William Linville),
William Bryan (1734, married Mary Boone),
Thomas Bryan (1735), and
Martha Bryan (1742, married Stephen Gano).
In 1724 they moved to the west into Pequea Creek district (present-day Lancaster, Pennsylvania).
In 1730 he and Alexander Ross, another Quaker from New Garden, purchased one hundred thousand acres on the waters of Opequon Creek.
Elston quotes an article from the Virginia Historical Magazine that
Alexander Ross and Morgan Bryan founded upon this grant a colony of Friends, which flourished for many years in Frederick County
In 1734, Morgan purchased a tract in present day Berkeley County, West Virginia and settled there.
In 1748 they moved to North Carolina where he made his home near the south bank of Deep Creek.
Opequon Creek is tributary of the Potomac River. It joins the Potomac northeast of Martinsburg and its source is at the foot of Great North Mountain. It is part of the boundary between Frederick and Clarke counties in Virginia and between Berkeley and Jefferson counties in West Virginia.
