Colonel Zackquill Morgan was the son of Welsh-born Colonel Morgan Morgan and Catherine Garretson, the first known white settlers in what would become the U.S. state of West Virginia. He was born in Orange [now Berkeley] County, [West] Virginia, in 1735. Zackquill Morgan founded Morgantown, West Virginia in Monongalia County, where he died at sixty years old on New Year's Day in 1795 and was buried in the cemetery at Prickett's Fort. The grave was "marked by rough native sandstone slab, on which was crudely chiseled the simple lettering, Z. M. Jan. 1, 1795." Zackquill Morgan's unusual name is spelled many different ways in old Christian records. For example: Zacuil, Zackwell, Zackquell and Zackil, but rarely as Zackquill, which according to the old Episcopal Church record book at Bunker Hill, West Virginia, is the way Colonel Morgan Morgan spelled his son's name. Biography Early life According to family tradition, Zackquill and his brother David served with Virginia forces in Braddock's ill-fated expedition (1755) and in the more successful expedition by General Forbes in 1758. In 1761 Zackquill received from his father one thousand acres (4 km²) of land in Berkeley County which had been patented in November 1735. Most historians believe that David Morgan and his younger brother Zackquill Morgan were the next Europeans to attempt a permanent settlement in Monongalia County. About 1765 or '66, he migrated, with David, to Georges Creek, Pennsylvania. They left Delaware and reached present-day Morgantown in 1766 or '67. A family tradition attributes the settlement of Zackquill Morgan, in 1768, but at that time he appears to have been still living in what was later Fayette County. According to a deed on file at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Zackquill was living at Great Meadows, Bedford [now Fayette] County, Pennsylvania, on August 28, 1771, when he sold his farm there. Zackquill may have been living near his brother David at Pleasantville until 1779 or '80. Despite the accounts of various historians, we still do not know when Zackquill Morgan settled on the site of Morgantown, nor indeed, who made the first settlement on that site. Regardless of when Zackquill moved to the site of the city to bear his name, we find a surveyor's record indicating that the land was surveyed for him on April 29, 1781. Nicholas Decker, the first settler to establish a settlement in the vicinity of what is now Morgantown, on 29 April