Elizabeth Ann Sullivan Baker

by Virginia L. Baker Bininger

Elizabeth Ann SULLIVAN was the farm wife of Captain John BAKER the famed founder and defender of "Baker Station" at Cresap, Virginia opposite Powhatan Point, Ohio. They were married in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania circa 1760, some five years after John had emigrated from Bingham on the Rhine, Prussia. His marriage triggered a long but determined westward migration of fifty-five years terminating on a farm in Center township, Monroe County, Ohio.

Elizabeth and John first moved to the beautiful Shenandoah Valley where their twin daughters, Catherine and Margaret, were born in 1761 followed by George, Henry and Mary. These were happy days for she and John in this bountiful land.

Seven years later they moved over the "Warrior Trail" to Greene County, Pennsylvania. At the confluence of Dunkard Creek and the Monongahela River there to remain at this frontier. They lived here for another seven years where Elizabeth and John Jr. were born.

This deserving patriot encountered extensive hardships on her [Elizabeth’s] journey to the Ohio Territory. The friendly Indians were becoming unsettled and restless by the treatment from the government. Lord Dunmore was also instigating Indian removal to the Northwest Territory. This caused a large exodus of settlers to Old Redstone Fort including Elizabeth and her family.

Here life went on and sons Joseph and Jacob were born. Henry joined the First Battalion of Washington County, Pennsylvania Militia with his brothers-in-law, Peter and Henry Yoho.

The next move was to Catfish Camp, now Washington, Pennsylvania, where [Elizabeth’s son] Martin was born. In the Spring of 1781, her son Henry and Henry Yoho, husband of daughter Catherine Baker, were dispatched to Fort Henry, Wheeling, Virginia to warn of an Indian uprising. During an Indian attack, Henry Yoho's horse was shot but managed to get him to the Fort. Henry Baker's horse was shot and killed and he was taken prisoner. The third man by the name of Stainaker was killed.

The Baker Family next moved to Wheeling Creek near Fort Henry where Elizabeth bore her last son, Isaac, in 1782. Shortly afterwards she moved to Round Bottom and on to Cresap a few miles down river where John built a Blockhouse or Fort in 1784. It was not considered a true fort as it was not a full-time garrison.

These were trying times with continuing Indian skirmishes, throughout the Ohio Valley. Household duties took on the added dimensions of looking after the needs of the Indian scouts that visited the blockhouse. The Ohio county census of 1787 show the family owning seven cattle, indicating she was providing food for these boarders.

In 1787 her husband, Captain John Baker, was mortally wounded by Indians at Powhatan Point. Her son John Jr. was killed by Indians in 1794 at the "Battle of Captina Creek."

After the marriage of her youngest son she migrated to Washington Township, Belmont County, Ohio around 1804 with her son Martin.

Elizabeth next moved to Monroe County [Ohio] where Martin had purchased the North West quarter of Section twenty-seven in township Four; Range 5 on September 3, 1813. On September 16, 1815 Martin purchased an adjacent 109 acres in Section Thirty-three; Township 4; Range 5. It is presumed that Elizabeth resided on this acreage as the 1820 census lists her as living in a separate household with one boy and two girls under 16 and one girl over sixteen. It also shows her as foreign, not naturalized, that gives evidence to her being English.

Elizabeth, my fourth great grandmother was bestowed the honor of burial at the highest point on a hillside plot in the center of the "Old Baker" cemetery on the land which she lived. With a pointed hand reaching to the Lord, her tombstone reads, "died May 22, 1836 aged 92 yrs 3 mos and 8 days." She rests next to her son Martin and wife, Sarah Farnsworth in the Stead Cemetery on the "Matz" farm south of Woodsfield [Ohio].

Elizabeth has the "honor of being a Patriot of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the First Families of Ohio and the First Families of Monroe County, Ohio."

Submitted by Virginia L. Baker Bininger

History of Monroe County, Ohio Families, Monroe County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society, page 69, 1992.