Jeffery Larsh
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)[In 1972 when I was a boy, my father took me to a family reunion in Xenia, Ohio. There, a historian, Harvey Larsh, handed out a one-page printed narrative, describing “the first Larsh in America,” a man by the name of Paul Larsh, a fur trader from Canada who lived among the Indians. A small portion of Harvey Larsh’s document I present here in its original text:
To continue the adventures of Paul Larsh, it so happened that the Shawnee Indians had made a raid on a settlement near Fort Dinwiddie in Pennsylvania in September 1756. The home of George Kincaid was one of the homes that was raided. George was killed, and the wife Elizabeth was brought back to their camp. Paul abandoning his goods rescued Elizabeth by carrying her on his back the two miles to his boat. He then paddled down the little Miami and the Ohio Rivers and up the Mississippi to the French settlement of Kaskaskia. On June 19, 1759, they were married in the Church of St. Ann at Fort Chartres. They resided there several years, and a son Charles was born.
Paul Larsh died in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in 1794, and below I have copied one line of his will that pertains to this article:
I bequeath to my son Charles Larsh, the one-third of said plantation, my wearing apparel, a large house Bible, and a Rifle given to him and his heirs forever.
My oldest uncle, Edwin Larsh, who had no sons, passed the rifle mentioned in that will to me a few years before he died. Uncle Ed told me as he handed me the rifle, “This has been in our family for over two hundred years and belonged to Paul Larsh.”
(hide spoiler)]
To continue the adventures of Paul Larsh, it so happened that the Shawnee Indians had made a raid on a settlement near Fort Dinwiddie in Pennsylvania in September 1756. The home of George Kincaid was one of the homes that was raided. George was killed, and the wife Elizabeth was brought back to their camp. Paul abandoning his goods rescued Elizabeth by carrying her on his back the two miles to his boat. He then paddled down the little Miami and the Ohio Rivers and up the Mississippi to the French settlement of Kaskaskia. On June 19, 1759, they were married in the Church of St. Ann at Fort Chartres. They resided there several years, and a son Charles was born.
Paul Larsh died in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in 1794, and below I have copied one line of his will that pertains to this article:
I bequeath to my son Charles Larsh, the one-third of said plantation, my wearing apparel, a large house Bible, and a Rifle given to him and his heirs forever.
My oldest uncle, Edwin Larsh, who had no sons, passed the rifle mentioned in that will to me a few years before he died. Uncle Ed told me as he handed me the rifle, “This has been in our family for over two hundred years and belonged to Paul Larsh.”
(hide spoiler)]
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