from Dale Fiers: twentieth century disciple
p 3 - Dale's lineage is traced to John Fiers, the second son of William and Lucy. John was born in Sussex County, Virginia, in 1762. Some twenty years later when his parents and siblings trekked southeastward to Southampton, John remained in Sussex and was listed on the tax roles as head of a household of three - himself, his wife Frances, and their daughter Sarah. He and Frances would soon have six more offspring, and one can suppose the narrowness of his circumstances prompted the 1805 move westward to the new and promising two-year-old state of Ohio.
John was the first of his lineage to break away from the original seaboard states, journeying hundreds of miles into the Ohio Appalachian Plateau to establish a new home for his family. They probably traveled six or seven weeks in Conestoga wagons, carrying their household goods and tools through the Blue Ridge and the Applachian mountains. such a move over such a distance into a demanding environment was epic in scale. It required personal daring and more than a small amount of hardnosed Hollander determination. Ohio, in 1805, was still heavily populated by Indians, including the Shawnee, Ottawa, Miami, Delaware, and Wyandot. It had been scarcely more than a decade since the famous battle of Fallen Timbers, near present-day Toledo, and it would be six more years before General Harrison's encounter with the Shawnee medicine man, The Prophet, at Tippecanoe in adjuacent Indiana Territory. But John Fiers' decision was firm as granite, and the family settled in Greene County near the community of Xenia. There he farmed for several years, and it is believed practised the trade of a cooper (barrel maker).
