William Crooks and Mary Weir 6th great grandparents on RootsMagic tree.

William and Mary were born around 1715 probably in Pennsylvania. Names of their parents and their home country are unknown, they may have been born in America.  They  married on November 18, 1736 in Philadelphia at the First Presbyterian Church. They had 8 children and the family lived on a farm. Mary Weir has only her marriage record, nothing else. William’s records include a list of founders of Springfield Township in 1743, Bucks County, PA “Immigrants came rapidly into the township during the first years of its settlement, for we have the names of over thirty, probably all heads of families, who were living there, 1743, German and English: James Green, Stephen Twining, William Crooks, …”

William has several  ‘Pennsylvania Land Warrants’ showing acres of Pennsylvania land purchased at 15 pounds per acre in the mid 1700s. 15 ponds in 2020 is about $4000.

William wrote his will in December of 1776 at age 61.  He died soon after. His will mentions wife Mary, sons Henry, Thomas and Robert, daughters Rosanne, Jeannette, Mary and Margaret, grandsons William Crooks and James Dagle. Widow Mary and son Henry are overseers of the will. William had called Mr. William Hopkins to come and help write the will. Hopkins got to William’s home and found William ‘sitting up in a chair and smoking his pipe’ and of sound mind and memory.  William died in 1776 or 77, Mary died about 4 years later.

Henry, overseer of the will, had a son Andrew whose daughter Elizabeth Crooks married William Stewart. Elizabeth and William travelled west to Shell Rock, Iowa where their youngest Elizabeth Margaret Stewart married Manford Speedy: dad of Harve, grandpa of Elizabeth Speedy.

Sources

• Marriage, U.S., Presbyterian Church Records, 1701-1970 at Ancestry
• Pennsylvania, Land Warrants and Applications, 1733-1952 at Ancestry
• William’s will, Maryland Register of Wills Records, 1629-1999 at Ancestry
• History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania at HathiTrust
• Church photo, High Street, with the First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia at Presbyterian Historical Society