Husband Col. James Agnew 1 2 3 4
Born: 31 Jul 1769 - Adams Co, PA 3
Christened:
Died: 9 Sep 1855 - McConnellsburg, Fulton Co, PA 3
Buried:
Father: Lt.-Col. James Agnew, Jr. (1742-1799) 3 5 6
Mother: Martha Ramsey ( - ) 5
Marriage:
Other Spouse: Elizabeth Finley ( - ) 7
Wife Rebecca Patterson 1 2
Born: 25 Sep 1768 - Lancaster Co, PA 2
Christened:
Died: 28 Jan 1827 - McConnellsburg, Fulton Co, PA 2
Buried:
Father: Lt. James Patterson (1731-1789) 1 5 8 9
Mother: Margaret Agnew (1745- ) 1 5 6 8 9 10
Other Spouse: James Scott (Abt 1760-1806) 11 12 - 1790 2
Children
General Notes: Husband - Col. James Agnew
He was born in 1743 and married Mary Erwin in 1772. [JAHR, 6] This does not fit with other dates given in this family and the same information is given for his uncle David.
He was a type of the hardy Scotch-Irish pioneers that conquered the wilderness of western Pennsylvania. After obtaining an education sufficient to fit him for business, he went to live with his maternal uncle, James Ramsey. In Ramsey's service he acquired the business habits that made him eminently successful in later years. At that time emigration to the western counties passed through the Cove Gap, along the Packer's Path, and an active trade was carried on between Pittsburgh and the Cumberland Valley by means of pack horses. On this Path, where the town of McConnellsburg was later located, seven miles west of Stony Batter, Mr. Agnew established a trading post at the age of twenty. To his business as a merchant he afterward added a farm and tannery, and in a few years he amassed a considerable fortune. His skill and foresight as a merchant were unusual, and to these his success was chiefly owing. When the Conestoga wagon took the place of the packhorse, his store was favorably situated for an extensive trade with the wild wagoners of the Alleghenies, and he found it very profitable, but he was such a consistent advocate of temperance that, although all the stores at that time sold liquor, he banished it from his own. When he went to the Big Cove it was a wilderness. He lived to see great changes, and was active in promoting public improvements. The Packer's Path gave way to the great State Road, and the State Road to the macadamized turnpike; and before his death McConnellsburg ceased to be on the line of traffic, the State Canals and the Pennsylvania Railroad superseding the Conestoga wagons. Before his demise the new county of Fulton had been detached from Bedford, with McConnellsburg as the county seat. He built the stone mansion in which he lived as early as 1793. Colonel Agnew was originally a member of the Associate Reformed Congregation at McConnellsburg, but when that body united with the General Assembly, in 1825, he came cordially into the Union. At the time of the separation, in 1838, he took strong ground with the Old School. He was for manv years a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church at McConnellsburg, and because of the hospitality with which clergymen of all denominations were received and entertained by him, his house became known as the "Ministers' Hotel." His place in the church and prayer meeting was never vacant until the illness that ended his life.