When We Were Greers, Part IV

by Glenn N. Holliman

In the early 1700s, our Ancestors Prospered along the Gunpowder River

Much of this article is from Maryland's Early Settlers Book, No. 18 under James Greer.

On Ancestory.com one will find family trees under Greer, Taylor and Day.

By 1688 the marriage of James Greer, first generation Scotsman to Maryland, and Ann Taylor (my generations 8th great grand parents (8th GGP), resulted in the birth of John Greer, Sr (b. between 1682 - 1688). John, Sr. in 1704 married Sarah Day (my generation's 7th great grandparents), the daughter of Nicholas and Sarah Day (my generation's 8th great grandparents) at St. John's Episcopal parish at Joppa, then Baltimore County, now Herford county.

The church was an unpainted log structure, 20 ft by 40 ft that soon, as did most untreated wooden structures, crumbled before the elements. Today, the Edgewood Officer's Club of the famous Aberdeen Proving Ground occupies the site.

Days Cove, named after our Day family line, is a backwater bay of the Gunpowder River near Joppatown, Maryland. Our 8th great grandfather, Nicholas Day, owned land here near Interstate 95 and Highway 40, the Pulaski Highway. Photostaken October 2010 by Glenn N. Holliman along Highway 40, the Pulaski Highway , south of Joppatown.


John and Sarah (7th great grandparents), purchased land near her father's plantation, Nicholas Day, along the Great Falls of the Gunpowder River. John's grandfather John Taylor (10th great grandfather), father of Arthur Taylor (9th great grandfather), lived near the ferry along the south side of the Gunpowder.

The old map belows shows Joppa, the Gunpowder, a ferry and the first roads in what is now Herford County, Maryland. The current major port of Baltimore is west of Joppa, not shown on this map.

We know that in 1687, Arthur Taylor sold 75 acres of land from 'Arthur's Choice on the south side of a branch of the Gunpowder River, called Bird Run to James Greer and daughter, Ann Taylor Greer. Bird Run is now the Bird River which flows through a modern suburban mall in Whitemarch, Maryland, not far from Days Cove. Arthur Taylor was the oldest son of one John Taylor. Arthur had acquired the property in 1683. This land will eventually become the site of Joppa, a major port that later disappears and becomes a classic American ghost town.

Ironically, also along the Gunpowder another family, the Stansberys, had settled. Stansberys live in and around Baltimore to this day. One of the Stansbery families will treck south in the 1700s, and generations later will result in my grandfather, Charles S. Stansbery, Sr. (1893 - 1957). Charles will marry Mayme Osborne, whose grand mother was, yes, one Caroline Greer Wilson (1828 - 1911). My immediate family has deep Maryland roots!