MY ANCESTORS 1708-1962
CHRISTIAN FALL SR 1730-1820
MAGDALENA FINN
Christian Fall Sr was the eldest son of Johann Dietrich Fahl and Anna MaGretha and was born on the Hesse Castle estate, Germany in 1730. He accompanied his parents when they came to Pennsylvania in 1743 and settled with them in Berks County. As a young man he farmed and practiced the trade of blacksmithing. New land was plentifully available to the north, west and south. However since there was bloody warfare along the northern and western Pennsylvania frontier where the French were stirring up the Indians against the settlers, and the Quaker dominated assembly offered little help to the settlers in defending the frontier, Christian decided to move south in the quest for land. He accompanied the Squire Boone family which migrated from Pennsylvania to the Yadkin River area of the North Carolina Piedmont. Squire Boone had become a persona non-grata among the Quakers in Pennsylvania since he always carried his rifle and had allowed one of his children to marry outside the church. Settling in Carolina Christian became a neighbor of the Boone family. The famous frontiersman, Daniel Boone, was the sixth son of Squire Boone, and Daniel's brother Andrew married one of Christian's daughters. In this region trouble with the Indians was not to break out until many years later. However there was soon to be trouble in Carolina where a tyranical British governor Tryon greatly favored the large land holding tide water planters and imposed confiscatory taxation on the Piedmont free holders. The taxation was so unjust that a force of two thousand poorly armed but highly aroused free holders, called regulators, met a force of twelve hundred of the governor's well armed militia in a pitched battle known as the battle of Alliance in May of 1771. This battle was so intense there were over a hundred casualties on each side, but the governor's militia prevailed and brutal reprisals were taken against the free holders. Some of the regulators were hung; many cabins and crops were burned; and hundreds of settlers fled across the mountains into Tennessee. This was actually the first major battle igniting the American Revolution although it has not receive the publicity and historical acclaim that later came to Lexington and Concord. Archives of the Daughters of the American Revolution show that Christian Fall was a member of the regulators, and he was awarded a voucher for eighty dollars for his military service in the war. After independence was won in 1783, the new American government was unable to redeem these vouchers, but they could be discounted to speculators for about 10% face value or they could be applied toward acquiring western land. Although the war had ended and forgiveness was the official order of the day, there were still many hard feelings between the regulators and the loyalists who had taken part in the bloody frontier war, and Christian apparently thought it better to move westward. Christian was married three times and fathered twenty one children. The wives were sisters named Juliana, Magdalena and Katharine Finn whom he apparently married in turn. Christian's first two wives died in North Carolina before he left for the
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