Michael McGuire was born 06 Dec 1717 in Taneytown, Carroll County, Maryland to Michael McGuire, Sr. and Mary Burke.

The first settler in Northern Cambria, was Captain Michael McGuire, who, in 1788, brought his family from Taneytown, Maryland, where they had resided. During the Revolution, Captain McGuire had served in a Maryland company (Enlisted 01 Apr 1777, Discharged 01 Sep 1782), but his first visit to Cambria county had been made on a hunting trip in 1768, when he established his camp near the borough of Chest Springs, which appears on a map of 1793; and is designated “Captain McGuire’s Camp.” With his nearest neighbors at Blair’s Hills on the eastern slope of the mountains, about twelve miles distant, he located the “McGuire Settlement” in the valley east of the borough of Loretto, now Allegheny township, in this county, but at that time in Frankstown township, Huntingdon county. He died on his farm, November 17, 1793, in his seventy-sixth year, and was the first person interred in the Loretto Cemetery.

Captain McGuire was a devout Catholic and donated a very large tract of land for the use of the church and its schools to Bishop John Carroll, of Baltimore, a cousin of Charles Carroll, of Carrolltown, who was the last survivor of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. This fact was the moving cause which influenced Prince Gallitzin to locate at Loretto and establish a Catholic colony on the western slope of the mountains. The following letter from Bishop Carroll

to Prince Gallitzin is pertinent:

                                                                        “Washington City, March 1, 1799.
“Rev. and Dear Sir:

     “I fear you have been disappointed in not receiving an earlier answer to your letter, which covered a list of subscribers in Clearfield, Frankstown and Sinking Valley. I had come hither on immediately before the arrival of yours at Baltimore.
     “Your request is granted. I readily consent to your proposal to take charge of the congregations detailed in yours, and hope that you will have a house built on the land granted by Mr. (Michael) McGuire and already settled or cleared, or if more convenient, on your own, if you intend to keep it. * * * Imeant to have offered you with your present congregations that of Emmitsburg and the mountain (Mount St. Mary’s) united in one.
            “JOHN, Bishop of Baltimore.” (1)

Sources

(1) Storey, H. W. (1907) History of Cambria County. Lewis Publishing Co. New York.