Lake County Ohio GenWeb

Peter Markell 1765-1837

From A Record of the Revolutionary Soldiers buried in Lake County, Ohio, New Connecticut Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution, Painesville, Ohio, 1902.

Typed and submitted by Becky Falin, 1996.

Peter Markell was born March 24,1765. He enlisted from Palatine, Montgomery County, New York, in April 1781, at the age of sixteen, and was discharged in November 1782. He participated in teh battle of Johnstown, N.Y. under Captain Cook and Colonel Clock. He died May 25, 1837, aged seventy-two years and was buried at Kirtland, Lake County, Ohio.

December 9, 1792, he married Elizabeth Koch. Their children were John, Benjamin, James, Margarette, Betsey (Mrs. Banter), Peter, Nicholas, Mary, Fanny and Nancy who married Ezra Morgan of Geneva, Ohio, where their descendants still reside. The children are all dead; the last one, James Markell of Mentor, Ohio, living until April 1900. There are, in Kirtland, two children who are the great, great, great grandchildren of this Revolutionary soldier.

Peter Markell was one of the pioneers of Kirtland, coming with his family in 1816, bringing with him some of the finest horses that had ever been to this part of the country. In his later years he became an invalid, caused by privations and exposure while in the army.

His granddaughter, Mrs. Henry Booth, remembers him as a fine looking man, very kind and gentle with the children. She has in her possession an old-fashioned arm-chair, that he brought to Ohio with him, which she keeps as a souvenir. She remembers stories he used to tell her one of which follows:

"At one time when his people were staying in a fort to be safe from the Indians, he was plowing a field not far away. He had been advised not to leave the Fort as Indians were thought to be near. After plowing for some time, he became aware that there were Indians about the field."

"He dared not stop but kept at his work, though every time he came near the entrance to the field, he would stop and adjust the harness. The third time when he stopped he hastily unhitched from the plow, sprang upon one of the horses, and escaped to the fort, closely pursued by the Indians."

A young boy named Henry, a brother of Peter Markell, at the time of the battle between Americans and British, went to the top of a hill that he might see the battle, and was lost; no trace of him has ever been found. His mother mourned so bitterly for the child, whose fate was clothed in mystery, that she lost her reason. It is said she spoke no word for a year or more. Mrs. Peter Markell lived to receive a widow's pension.