Due to the fact that the Fair Play territory was outside the Provincial limits until after the purchase of Fort Stanwix in 1784, the assessment lists give only those persons residing within Northumberland County. As a result, there were only six to twelve settlers who associated with the Fair Play men who were included in the lists for 1773-1778. Chart 4 indicates the names, national origins, and years listed for those settlers.
Fair Play Settlers on the Tax Rolls 1773-1778.[23]
Name National Origin 1773 1774 1776 1778 ============================================================== James Alexander Scotch-Irish x x George Calhoune Scotch-Irish x x x x Cleary Campbell Scotch-Irish x William Campbell, Jr. Scotch-Irish x x x x William Campbell, Jr. Scotch-Irish x x John Clark English x Thomas Forster English x x x x James Irwin Scotch-Irish x x x x John Jamison English x Isaiah Jones Welsh x Robert King German x x x John Price Welsh x x --- --- --- --- Totals 6 8 7 7 --------------------------------------------------------------
From these limited data one obviously concludes that the Scotch-Irish were not only the most numerous but also the most persistent of these frontiersmen. Also, nine of these men, that is all except Clark, Jones, and King, appear on the tax lists for Northumberland County for the year 1785.[24] Interestingly enough, six of these nine were Scotch-Irish; and although our sample is limited, it is readily apparent that the stalwart Scots had a way of "hanging on." It would be presumptuous to conclude that seventy-five per cent of the residents before 1778 returned by 1785; but it is fact that some forty families had made improvements in the area by 1773 when William Cooke was sent out by the Land Office to "Warn the People of[f] the unpurchased Land."[25] Furthermore, as indicated earlier, some fifty families appear on the assessments for 1786, more than half of whom had been in the region before.
Any effort to analyze the population in terms of stability and mobility runs head-on into the creation of new townships in the 1780's, the inability to establish death rates for this frontier, and the inadequacy of probate records. The result is that the data are intuitively rather than statistically sound. Chart 5 offers a comparison of tax lists over a period of nine years as the basis for some conclusions regarding the stability and mobility of the Fair Play settlers.