Dear Jeannine,

Your query struck my eye, as I have recently been preparing information on Hanover Township for a survey of all historic sites in Washington County, and was in Hanover a week or two ago. Donaldson was one of only two or three surnames that have remained in place in Hanover Township since the 1870s. (Most of the township consists of reclaimed strip mines, some of which are state gamelands, so there aren't a whole lot of old, handed down family farms here). A James Donaldson (perhaps a son or grandson of the James you are looking for) lived along Raccoon Creek just north of Bavington in the southeastern corner of Hanover Twp. in 1876, as per the township map in Caldwell's Atlas of Washington County. This particular farm is still listed under the name Donaldson in the Farm Plat Map Atlas for the county (the maps sold by 4-H Clubs). In 1876, there were several other Donaldson families scattered across the township.
There's a good bit on several families of Donaldsons who all appear (at first glance) to be inter-related, in Crumrine's History of Washington County, which you can read on line at "digital.library.pitt.edu" (click on "Full Text Collection" and then do a search). Crumrine's says they first settled in Robinson Twp. (also sometimes spelled Robeson Twp.) just across Raccoon Creek. And in fact, in the Caldwell's Atlas map of Robinson and the business directory of the same twp., they appear to be the most numerous family in this sparsely-settled area.
There are many references to Donaldsons in Crumrine's in several different twps., & there appears to be a thread of information connecting most of them. Some of them mention association with United Presbyterian Churches. I don't know if you know much about Presbyterian history, but this may be a helpful clue: the church that was called United Presbyterian in the 19th century is not the same as the modern mainline denomination. The old U.P. Church was an effort to merge the two most conservative, dissenting branches of 18th century Presbyterianism. The larger of the two groups (at least in Washington County) was the "Associate Presbytery" (or "Seceders"). They were called Seceders because the Presbytery was formed when a group of ministers, unhappy with state interference in church affairs in Scotland seceded from the church of state and formed their own stand-out denomination. In 1858 (I believe in Pittsburgh) a national convention was held of both the Seceders and the smaller, even more conservative group known as the "Covenanters" (or Reformed Presbyterians). The Covenanter split had occurred in Scotland earlier than the Seceder split, and as a result, I believe (partly on hypothesis and hunch) that most of the Covenanters came here from Northern Ireland while the Seceders tended to be a denomination of recent immigrants coming directly to Pennsylvania from Scotland. The merger formed the United Presbyterian Church in 1858, though it reflects the old joke "our town used to have two churches, but then they merged, and now we have three." So you will find Seeders and Covenanters continuing in their old form side-by-side with the U.P. Church as well as the mainline Presbyterians and others, at least into the twentieth century. In fact, a similar effort at blending the Presbyterians of this county occurred earlier in the 19th century in northwestern Washington County, through very different circumstances, not far from where the Donaldsons lived, when a Seceder pastor was censured for serving communion to non-Seceder Presbyterians, in this sparsely-settled, frontier area. The pastor (Rev. Thomas Campbell, and his son Rev. Alexander Campbell) took the congregation and switched to Baptist. After a few years, finding themselves also at odds with the Baptists, they decided to say they were just "Christians." This event, along with numerous other interwoven episodes, led to the creation of the Disciples of Christ denomination (usually known in each town as the "First Christian Church") and to the Churches of Christ. The point here, though, is that northwestern Washington County, at the time, was made up almost entirely of Presbyterians of Scottish and/or Scotch-Irish descent, who found themselves divided increasingly into small, fractionalized groups. And that information may help you piece the Donaldsons back together, since Crumrine's connects them in more than one place to a particular sub-group that I think was more purely "Scottish" and certainly more conservative than most.
The Cecil County, Maryland connection may also be a significant clue to keep in context. A large enough group of early settlers in Washington County came from Cecil County that the township east of Robinson was named "Cecil" in honor of these settlers. However, the Cecil County people scattered all over the county in areas that became culturally heterogeneous, unlike the settlers from some other areas who formed concentrated enclaves in southern and eastern Washington County. Read what Crumrine has to say about judge Henry Taylor. He uses the case of this important early settler as an illustration as he describes a variety of scenarios about early settlement here. Taylor's story, therefore, is scattered across a number of important pages in Crumrine's with important explanations that you might not find while tracing other family names in isolation.
Let me know if this is helpful. I am an architect who works mainly in historic preservation. I've been trying to piece back together the cultural geography patterns of the county to trace how these patterns affected architectural trends here.
I would be particularly interested in knowing if and when you might make contact with the presentday Donaldsons, about whether they are interested in local history and preservation or not. They have a very typical five-bay frame house (that is, five windows wide--center hall flanked with a room on each side), but I only got a glimpse of the other farm buildings which look like they could be a noteworthy historic farmstead.

Terry A. Necciai