Harman’s sister Katherine married Captain Robert Agnew, Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Man. They had a daughter Margaret who, on reaching her teens, was sent to school in England. While Harman was on a visit to the Agnews he was entrusted with the pleasant mission of crossing to the mainland to bring his niece home. Harman at this time was 31 years old and Margaret 18. In the course of the trip he became completely infatuated with her and proposed marriage. No doubt dazzled by this man of the world thirteen years her senior, Margaret accepted him. When the newly married uncle and niece arrived on the Isle of Man and Harman introduced Margaret to her parents as his wife the Agnews were furious. In their anger and humiliation they disinherited Margaret and repudiated Harman. In fact the Agnews and their friends made the situation so unpleasant that the Blennerhassetts concluded their only recourse was to leave home and seek asylum in the United States. Blennerhassett sold his estates, which brought him $100,000, a tidy sum in those days, and he and Margaret sailed for New York where they arrived in 1796. As though this were not enough to rid them of the curse that had descended on their romantic adventure, they did not linger long in the East but set out to look for a permanent home on the frontier. Reaching Pittsburgh in the fall of the year, they bought a keelboat and dropped down the Ohio River. The valley of the Ohio was then a wilderness save for a few small settlements at favorable spots along the stream. One of these was Marietta where the Blennerhassetts found a society of refined and cultivated people who received them cordially. There they remained throughout the winter while they reconnoitered the neighborhood for a suitable site for an estate. At last they found what pleased them on an island in the river two miles below the present Parkersburg, West Virginia, at the mouth of the Little Kanawha. This island they purchased. It consisted of 170 acres, which lay in Wood County, Virginia, a significant circumstance in the light of later developments. There the Blennerhassetts spent $30,000 erecting a spacious two-story dwelling with wings and numerous appurtenances. In keeping with the custom of the time, they also purchased slaves to serve the household and work the land. In this American wilderness they brought into being an establishment such as might have been found in England or on the continent of Europe. The spacious mansion was painted white and the fields surrounding it were neatly inclosed in white post fences. Attached to the house was a formal garden with shrubbery and hedges in the English style and espaliers of peach, apricot, quince, and pear. With stables, barns, overseers’ houses, and quarters for the slaves the settlement made an impressive sight indeed.