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| My best estimation of the 147 acres of Sugar Loaf Hill Farm |
Loaf Hill Farm. We followed its story through the Nivin family (although starting out as Evans) and saw how it was acquired, then sold out of the family after William Nivins' death. It was owned for a while by John Dickinson, then sold in 1812 by Dickinson's son-in-law Albanus Logan to Joseph Johnson. It was Johnson who made some significant changes to the farm, mostly by breaking it apart.
First, in 1813, he sold 46 acres to Thomas Graves, which I think was all on the south side of Lancaster Pike, just west of today's Hercules Road. Then he sold 62 acres adjoining those to John Gray (no, not that one, Outlander fans). That got rid of most of the northern portion of the Nivin tracts. In 1814, Johnson made two sales on the same date to a pair of brothers. To John Mendenhall he sold 85 acres, which I believe was essentially all of his land between Newport Gap Pike and McKennans Church Road. Then he sold 147 acres, basically the central portion of the property, to Abraham Mendenhall. It appears that Abraham paid half of the $6000 cost upfront and mortgaged the other half from Johnson (he paid it off in October 1817). John and Abraham were sons of Aaron Mendenhall, patriarch of the Mendenhalls in MCH, and first of his family to operate their mill on Mill Creek.
While John sold his portion of the old Nivin farm just four years later (a property we can follow another day), Abraham's acquisition remained in the family a good bit longer. In fact, Abraham held it until his death in 1833. Most of his ten living children at the time were still in the area, although, notably, son William would later migrate west with the Mormons, as mentioned in a previous post about his cousin Ellis Sanders. William would become an important builder among the early Later Day Saints, and would be among the first of them to make it to Utah, arriving in Salt Lake City in 1852.
