The following comments on the Rhoads family were provided by Jeanie Woods:
It is quite possible that Henry Rhoads, Sr. who owned land between Brotherton and Roxbury did live prior to coming to Somerset County in Frederick County, Maryland. However, the Henry Rhoads who is a blacksmith in Frederick County is not the above Henry.
Henry Rhoads, Sr. immigrated with his wife Catharina and three children on the ship Samuel in 1733. His name is listed as Roht on the passenger list. Remember the "t" sounds like a "d" in the Pennsylvania German language and the clerks were mainly of English stock, and continued to be so in Frederick County, Maryland.
Rhoads is pinpointed in the Bermudian Settlement in York County which was a heavily Brethren area, although there were Lutherans, Reformed and Presbyterians as well. There was an offshoot group of the Ephrata Cloister to which Henry belonged and George Adam Martin was one of the preachers. Also other members were Paul Traub, Sebastian Shaulis and possibly Philip Kimmel who had been at Ephrata. These were 7th Day German Baptist Brethren, not the German Baptist Brethren or Dunkers, today known as Church of the Brethren.
By 1746, Henry Rhoads (spelled Roht) is listed with land in Monocacy on the Tasker's Chance tract with 323 acres. This is land at the northwest edge of Frederick, Maryland, and Fort Detrick would be on his land today. This is related in the book Pioneers of Old Monocacy by Grace L. Tracey. Rhoads sells this land in 1749 [Liber B, folio 69]. That same year, he bought two other tracts totaling 252 acres, one being for 102 acres that he sells a little over a year later to Jacob Keller. I propose he was flipping land, just as he would do in Somerset County. He is actually listed as a nonresident owner.
Also in Tasker's Chance with 292 acres called Mill Pond was Jacob Steiner (Stoner), another Swiss emigrant who had come from the Emmental area of Canton Bern. His son would inherit the Mill Pond property, and his daughter Elizabeth Stoner (1744-1807) would marry Henry Rhoads, Jr. (1739-1814).
Henry Sr. was known as a Dunker in the Monocacy area as the Reformed Church members complained about the inroads the Brethren were making in converting their parishioners, and Rhoads and another are mentioned by name. Because these predominately German families were being over-taxed by the authorities in control, many sold their property and left the area.
Next Henry is settled in the Antietam area of what became Franklin County. This land shown on your map is not in Antrim township today, but east and north of Waynesboro near Quincy in Washington township, which was not established until 1779. The creeks shown on the map are the Antietam and a tributary thereof. Note that the Rhoads land is not only adjacent to the Brethren leader, George Adam Martin, but more importantly is next to the Snowberger family, who were 7th Day German Baptist Brethren and later involved in founding the Snow Hill Cloister, a branch of the Ephrata Cloister. It was still used by the 7th Day Brethren into the 1990s. However, the furniture and decorative objects were sold at a big sale at Horst Auction in Lancaster in 1997, and the property later sold. Today it is apartments and the stone Brethren meeting house has been added to and turned into a house.
Also in this area was Johannes Steiner (Stoner), a brother of Jacob Stoner who lived in Frederick County. Both were sons of Johannes Steiner (1673-1758), who was a bishop of the Mennonite denomination before his son Johannes became a Brethren leader on the Antietam, as was Martin. Many Mennonites were converted to the Brethren, 7th Day Brethren, and later the River Brethren. This Johannes Steiner was quite wealthy and had fine furniture and owned land along the Antietam where he had a prosperous mill. He would eventually own thousands of acres both in Pennsylvania and Maryland along the Antietam. His family is documented in the book, Stoner Brethren. The area was settled early by Mennonite and Brethren families. The next generation of the Stoner family married into the Funk family, who also had mills further south along the Antietam in Maryland. Jacob Funk founded the town of Funkstown along the Antietam and six of the stone Funk houses are dotted around the Hagerstown region. In Waynesboro, the Renfrew Museum was owned by Daniel Royer and his wife Catherine Stoner and their stone house is open to the public.
The next move for Henry Rhoads was to Somerset County and other Brethren also moved to the county including Paul Traub, Sebastian Shaulis, Philip Kimmel and others. These early settlers seemed to have dropped their 7th Day German Baptist Brethren orientation once they were so far from Ephrata and other members. However, Henry was instrumental in establishing the Church of the Brethren that stands today on Route 31.
Henry died in 1774 and his land northwest of Roxbury was divided among some of his sons. His son Henry Rhoads, Jr. owned a tract near Berlin bordering Sebastain Shaulis, whom he would have known in York County's Bermudian settlement. You have this map pictured and note that Michael Beeghley and Paul Traub also border Shaulis and they were Brethren. Coleman and Palm were not and their records appear in the Pine Hill Church. Henry Rhoads, Jr. and his wife Elizabeth Stoner would eventually reside in Kentucky.
