THIRD GENERATION

3. Joseph STEELE was born about 1736 in New London, Chester, Pennsylvania. Joseph Steel was a fuller and built the first cloth-fulling mill in present-day Catawba county. He was also the owner of the first retail establishment in the county.

Joseph Steele was an early settler on Elk Shoals Creek as a 1768 tax list shows Joseph Steel and Thomas Murphey living in the same household. He is on the tax list of 1772 and William Sharpe's map of 1773 as livng on Elk Shoals Creek He must have been the first Justice of the Peace who lived in Alexander Co. He was appointed Magistrate of Rowan Co. on August 6, 1777 and served on the Court of Pleas and Quarters in Rowan County in 1777 and 1778.

He had a 640-acre land entry on Elk Shoals Creek as of September 25, 1778 where he lived. He either sold or dropped this entry as nothing was found in the records of a survey. Also, his name was not in the Rowan County records after 1778.

It appears Joseph moved to Burke Co. in 1779 as records show he had several tracts of land near present day Newton. He was a magistrate in Burke Co and very active in the trial of the Tories in Burke Co in 1782. In 1802 he bought a tract of land from Gabriel and Allen Alexander on Elk Shoals Creek He was the executor of Allen Alexanders will in 1805. This seems to indicate he moved back to Elk Shoals Creek. He sold his land in 1810 and probably moved, as his name doesn't appear in records after that date. A Samuel Steel's Revolutionary War record states he served under Captain Robert Holmes of Burke County and moved to Giles County, Tennessee in 1810.

Joseph Steel was a fuller by trade and built the first cloth-fulling mill in present-day Catawba county. He was also the owner of the first retail establishment in the county.

Joseph STEELE and Martha ALEXANDER had the following children:

+4 i. Rosanah STEELE.
+5 ii. Ann STEELE.