David Reed
Mount Pleasant Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Opposite was the log home of David Reed, leader of the Covenanter squatters on lands owned by George Washington. Here 13 of the Scotch-Irish pioneers met with him on Sept. 20, 1784, defying his effort to remove them.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the 1780s the rolling country of Washington County was disputed ground, and David Reed led a band of Covenanter squatters who had settled on land the tract belonged to none other than George Washington. On September 20, 1784, thirteen of these Scotch-Irish pioneers gathered at Reed's log home to face Washington himself and refuse his demand that they leave. Their defiance captures the raw friction between eastern land titles and the settlers who had already cleared and worked the ground.
Why it matters
The standoff dramatizes a defining tension of the early republic: the collision between speculative land ownership—even by the nation's most famous man—and the frontier families who believed occupancy and labor made a claim.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1780s, the country around Mount Pleasant Township in Washington County was newly won and hotly contested — not by armies, but by rival claims to the land itself. The Revolution had ended, and a flood of settlers was moving into the western Pennsylvania frontier, clearing timber, raising cabins, and planting crops on ground that eastern gentlemen and land companies also claimed on paper.
Many of these settlers were Scotch-Irish, and among them were Covenanters — Presbyterians with a fierce tradition of standing on principle and resisting authority they believed unjust. They were exactly the kind of people to settle land first and argue about the title afterward.
This was the central friction of the early republic on its western edge: the gap between a legal deed held by someone far away and the sweat of a family who had actually cleared and worked the soil. Mount Pleasant Township sat squarely in that gap.
People & events
David Reed was the leader of a band of these Covenanter squatters, and his log home stood opposite this spot. The land they had settled was not unclaimed wilderness in the eyes of the law — it belonged to George Washington, whose western holdings included this tract.
The confrontation came on September 20, 1784. Thirteen of the Scotch-Irish pioneers gathered at Reed's home to meet Washington face to face and refuse his effort to remove them. Picture the scene: the most famous man in America, fresh from leading the Revolution, sitting down in a frontier cabin with a group of stubborn settlers who would not yield the ground they had worked.
That the settlers stood firm, together, in Reed's home tells you how they saw their claim — not as trespass but as a right earned by labor and occupancy. It was a small gathering with a large amount of principle packed into it.
Its place in the American story
The standoff at David Reed's home captures a defining tension of the young United States: who truly owns the land — the person holding the title, or the family who cleared and farmed it? On the western frontier, that question was live and often bitter, and it did not resolve neatly in favor of the powerful.
What makes this episode striking is the identity of the landowner. If even George Washington had to travel west and argue, in person, with settlers on his own tract, then the authority of a distant deed clearly had limits on the frontier. The people who lived on the land had power of their own — the power of presence, labor, and sheer refusal.
This collision between speculative ownership and settler occupancy would echo across American history as the nation pushed westward, shaping land laws, court fights, and the very idea of how one comes to own a piece of America.
If you visit
You are in the gentle, rolling farmland of Washington County in southwestern Pennsylvania, a landscape of low ridges, pastures, and woodlots that has been worked for well over two centuries. It still feels like settled country carved out of forest.
Standing near the marker, remember that the drama here was human and close-quarters: a cluster of neighbors in a log home, holding their ground against a powerful visitor. There is no battlefield to see — just the land itself, which was the whole point of the quarrel. Look at the fields and imagine the labor that made men willing to defy Washington to keep them.
This is a fine stop for travelers who like their history pointed and personal. It sits amid a countryside dotted with early-settlement sites, and it invites you to think about the ordinary families whose stubbornness helped define what land ownership would mean in America.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · David Reed
- · George Washington
Related events
- · Washington's 1784 western land dispute
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cross Creek Church
Cross Creek Township, PA · est. 1950
On the eve of the Revolution, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians pushing into western Pennsylvania first gathered for worship in 1775 at the shelter of Vance's Fort, a mile north. By 1779 they had raised their own church nearby and called their first pastor, planting a durable religious community on a still-contested frontier; the stone building standing today was erected in 1864. It is a portrait of how faith and settlement advanced together across the Alleghenies.
Negley Memorial
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Alexander Negley was among the German-speaking immigrants of Swiss descent who streamed into eastern Pennsylvania in the 1730s and later pushed west toward the Ohio country. After serving in the War for Independence, he brought his family to the forks of the Ohio in 1778 and took up land along the wooded ridges that are now Pittsburgh's Highland Park — frontier ground when the Revolution was still being fought. His homestead helped anchor one of the early European settlements in what was then the western edge of American reach.
George Washington
Mount Pleasant Township, PA · est. 1950
Fresh from winning independence, George Washington rode west in 1784 to inspect and secure his sizable landholdings, including a 2,613-acre tract in Washington County. Near this spot, at David Reed's home, he met on September 20 with thirteen Covenanter squatters living on that land. When the two sides could not agree on terms of purchase, Washington took the settlers to court in Washington to eject them—and eventually prevailed.
Col. George Morgan
North Strabane Township, PA · est. 1947
George Morgan was one of the most experienced Indian traders and agents on the early American frontier, and from 1796 to 1810 he made his home on this ground. It was here that Aaron Burr, the former vice president, came calling with a scheme to raise a private venture in the West. Morgan grew alarmed at what he heard and became one of the first to warn President Thomas Jefferson of Burr's designs.