The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
Author: James Harrison Frey
The Waddell family’s long association with Ohio County, West Virginia began on May 15, 1795 when John Waddle (1729 – 1812) purchased a parcel of land on Short Creek from Benjamin and Jacob Payette for the sum of $500. John and his wife, Mary Dickey moved to Short Creek with five of their six children after selling their 243 acre homestead in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. A veteran of Indian conflicts, John Waddle rendered service to the cause of American Independence as a private in the militia of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.
In 1739 John Waddle emigrated from County Down, Northern Ireland to Philadelphia with his brothers, Thomas and William. Originally from the border country between England and Scotland, the Waddles (or Waddells) were Covenanter Presbyterians, and a number of the family was taken prisoner at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679. They were imprisoned and later banished to the West Indies as laborers. However, the ship carrying the prisoners wrecked of the coast of the Orkney Islands. Among the 50 survivors was William Waddle who escaped to Northern Ireland and established the family there. The Waddell lineage in Great Britain is traced to the year 1296 and in Normandy to the de Toeney ancestry, an ancient Danish royal line that conquered France and includes the Dukes of Normandy.
John Waddle and his brothers settled in White Clay Creek in southeastern Pennsylvania, near the Delaware State line. His brother Thomas established a family in Virginia and among his sons was the famous Rev. James Waddell, the blind Presbyterian preacher and educator of Augusta County. Nothing is known of the third brother, William. John subsequently moved to the Carlisle, Pennsylvania area by 1762.
At Short Creek, West Virginia, the Waddles operated a water powered grist mill from the early 1800’s. The colonial frame house they built near the mill was cited in Charles J. Milton’s Landmarks of Old Wheeling as “one of the oldest houses in Ohio County.” In the Wheeling Intelligencer’s obituary for Mitchell Waddell (1816 – 1894), the mill was described:
“In the long ago when the fathers and grandfathers, for that matter, of today were youths at Short Creek or vicintage, all of them knew of Waddell’s mill. It was at Mr. Waddell’s house where all the social functions and infares and the celebrated fox hunts of the older times centered…and where hospitality was dispensed with a lavish hand.” The nearby “Waddles Run” is named for the family.
John Waddle’s descendents continued to operate the mill and to farm the Short Creek homestead.
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