John Friend Jr. lived at a time when Western Maryland would have been a forbidding wilderness, in which only the most determine were to survive. John Friend Jr. was the great great grandson of Nils Larrson Friend, a Swede who immigrated to America in 1648 . John Friend Jr. was probably born near Paw Paw, WV about 1764 and was the third son of John Friend Sr. , the first American colonist to establish a permanent homestead in Western Maryland. John Friend Jr. married Elizabeth Ward on February 14, 1795 and with their thirteen children settled on to a tract of land called “Friend’s Delight” in Sang Run, MD. John Friend Jr. had obtained “Friend’s Delight” from his John Friend Sr. in 1808. John Friend Jr. and his descendents would dominant this area for well over a hundred years. John Friend Jr. passed away on March 23, 1849 and was buried in the Sang Run Cemetery, which rests on the hill that overlooks his home at “Friend’s Delight”.
John Friend Jr. left no dairies or personal papers, which could be used to define the man and his time. There are no photographs or descriptions of John Friend Jr. or his wife Elizabeth Ward. This book attempts to chronicle the lives of John Friend Jr. and Elizabeth Ward as well as thousands of their descendents through US Census records, family bibles, land deeds, wills, photographs, personal histories and death certificates. Luckily, these types of information about John Friend Jr. and his family are currently available. Due to the enormous volume of information, two of John’s sons (Cornelius Ward Friend and Elijah Friend) will be featured in greater detail in two sequential books. The histories of both sons are briefly presented to maintain the continuity of the book.
This book is a continuation of the work started with Patty (Friend) Thompson’s “John Friend Sr. of Friendsville, MD” (2007). My interest in John Friend Jr. is purely personal, for John was my 4x great grandfather. The goal of this book is an attempt to correlate and more importantly, preserve the available information about John Friend Jr. and his family before it is lost for all time.