Several years before other European settlers arrived, Frederick Staring (Starns) led a small band of fellow countrymen from German Flatts in the Mohawk Valley of NY to settle in the Juniata Valley in 1741. A later account said that about 1740 or 1741 Frederick Star (Starns), a German, with two or three of his countrymen, made settlements on Big Juniata about twenty-five miles from its mouth and about ten miles north of the Blue Hills, an area much valued by Indians as hunting grounds. The Delawares at Shamokin discovered the settlers and in 1742 complained to Governor Thomas in Philadelphia through the Six Nation Council deputies, alleging that the settlement violated the 1682 treaty with William Penn and later confirming treaties. In June 1743, Richard Peters, secretary to the proprietors, acting under a proclamation from the governor and the proprietors' directions, had the Germans driven out. After this eviction, Frederick Starns, with his wife, daughter, and five of his six sons, reached Southwest VA in the spring of 1744 and took up land on the New River, becoming the progenitor of the large old Southern Starns or Starnes families of German descent. His eldest son, Valentine Staring (Starns), remained in Pennsylvania with his wife Jean's Conyngham kin and later claimed his father's settlement land, surveyed as 535 acres. Valentine died there on Feb. 15, 1761, and in his will named his father Frederick and brothers Frederick and Leonard; to his nephew John he left one hundred acres of his land upon Juniate. John Starns of Mecklenburg County, NC, sold those one hundred acres on June 19 1776 to Thomas Rankin of Cumberland County, PA, for one hundred and eighty pounds. Capt. John Starns of the Mecklenburg County, NC, militia was killed on Aug. 16, 1780, in the Revolutionary War Battle of Camden, SC. Valentine’s widow, Jean Conyngham Starns, sold one hundred acres of land in Fermanagh Township in Mifflin County to John Rankin of Mifflin County on Oct. 5, 1796.