...Barnabas Hughes ... was born in Donegal, Ireland, where he married Elizabeth Waters, about the
year 1745 or '46. In 1748 they settled in the borough of Lancaster, where he bought some lots, and
three years later rented the Black Bear tavern and farm of two hundred and thirty acres, on Conoy
Creek, where the Paxtang and Conestoga road crossed, from Lazarus Lowry, the Indian trader.
The tavern was built in 1732 by Captain Thomas Harris, who removed to Harford County, Mary land, and
was purchased by Mr. Lowry in June of 1751. On June 30, 1753, Mr. Hughes became the owner, and
established an Indian trading-post, which became the starting-point of many Indian traders of
Donegal and vicinity, with their pack- trains for the Indian country. The mer- chants of
Philadelphia who supplied the traders with supplies for- warded them to the Black Bear for
distribution among the consignees. Mr. Hughes also became an Indian trader, and made frequent trips
to the Ohio country. During the French and Indian war, the tavern was the first stopping-place after
Lancaster, made by the military, as the journals of Colonel Burd, Wilkins, and Chaplain Charles
Clinton Beatty attest. In 1753 Mr. Hughes laid out a town, which, in honor of his wife, he named
Elizabethtown.
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