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.
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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
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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.