Stories
The Shipwreck Story: Allison and Latta in Chester County, PA
While researching the early Latta immigration into Cecil County, Maryland and Chester County, Pennsylvania around 1738–1739, I searched Rootsweb’s “Immigrants from Ireland to America” list for ships arriving in Maryland or Delaware during that window. One stood out: the WALPOOLE, substituted for the ship COCKERMOUTH of the Whitehaven line after the Cockermouth had been run aground with a load of goods.
An advertisement appeared in the Dublin Journal on April 18, 1738:
“The Ship Cockermouth of Whitehaven (the town in England where the ship was from), Burthen 250 Tons, newly rebuilt, and well fitted, manned and victualed, mounted with great Guns, and a sufficient Quantity of small Arms, Captain James Patton Commander, will be in Dublin the latter end of April, or Beginning of May in order to take in Passengers for Virginia, Maryland, or Pennsylvania: (those for Pennsylvania to be landed at the Head of Chessypeak Bay, either at Bohemia Landing or Elk River.) Whoever is inclinded to go in the said Ship from Dublin, may apply to Mr. Matthew Houghton, Mr. John Hornby, Mr. Campbell Merchants there, or to the said Captain at Mr. Heath’s at the Flag on Temple Bar, or on the Custom House Key, and on the Change at Change House, who will article with them. The said ship, when victualed and fitted, will sail directly from Dublin to Loughswilly in the County of Donnegal. Whoever is inclined to go with her from thence as Passengers, to any of the aforesaid Places, may apply to Mr. Collin Campbell, Mr. John Preston in Derry, Mr. Daniel M’Farland near Burn Cranoughy, or Mr. John Hutchinson of Glenvain, to Mr. Robert Smith of Rathmullen, and to Mr. David Thompson of Rathmalton. Those from Limerick must apply to Mr. Isaac Patton, or to Mr. Charles Linde at Coleraine, and at Monaghan to Mr. William Jeep. Those from the Counties of Tyrone and Armagh may apply to Messrs. James and Thomas Sommervill in Dungannon, who goes with the Ship with their Families. All the aforesaid Gentlemen will enter into Articles with passengers according to Custom; The Ship being five foot one half between Decks, which is very commodious for Passengers, and may assure themselves not to be crowded, but in all respects civilly used. N. B. Any Tradesmen or others that have a Mind to go as Servants, may apply to the Captain or Gentlemen aforesaid.”
At the time of the advertisement, the Cockermouth had already been run aground, and the ship Walpoole was substituted in her place. Captain James Patton was working for a prosperous Irish Presbyterian merchant named Walter Lutwidge, based out of Whitehaven, England and trading in tobacco from Maryland and Virginia; Lutwidge owned both the Cockermouth and the Walpoole. Patton sailed the Walpoole from Whitehaven on March 16, 1738. The ship lay some weeks at Dublin taking on passengers and indentured servants, then sometime after April 28 set sail for Lough Swilly. Lough Swilly was home to the Ewing, Allison, and Latta families — the Ewings at Inch Island, the Lattas around St. Johnstown, the Allisons at Rathmelton near Letterkenny, and Patton’s own family near Rathmullan, just north of Inch Island.
Meanwhile John Preston, Patton’s brother-in-law and agent in Derry, was signing up settlers bound for Virginia — many of whom would disembark there and settle in the Draper’s Meadow area (modern Blacksburg). It is probably here, in the heartland of the Patton and Preston families, that most of the immigrants came aboard. The Walpoole reached Virginia between August 23–26, 1738: Peter Burke, an indentured servant aboard, noted in his indenture papers that the ship arrived in Chesapeake Bay on August 23; the Augusta Historical Bulletin records the Walpoole entered at the Custom House at Belle Haven (present-day Alexandria, Virginia) on August 25. Late August was hurricane season along the American coast, and both the Graham and Preston families later recounted a great storm that washed their possessions overboard, leaving them nearly empty-handed on arrival. The Walpoole reportedly carried 65 passengers, about forty of whom left the ship in Virginia — the rest may have continued on to Bohemia Landing on the Elk River in Cecil County, Maryland, where Latta family members likely came ashore.
(Special thanks to Ron Gwinn, whose research on the Patton family and the Walpoole — “The Origins of the Gwinn Family” — the Society has permission to draw on here.)
Bohemia Manor
If the ship did go on to Bohemia Landing, those still aboard could have included Latta family members. Looking into the history of Bohemia Manor in Cecil County, John Thomas Scharf’s History of Maryland records that in 1710 Charles Rumsey, then owner of Bohemia Manor, petitioned to open an ordinary (inn) at his home:
“…shewing that he was a liver at the head of Bohemia River and that he had a wife and several small children to maintain, which to him were very chargeable, and continual passengers coming to his house, travelers from this province for Pennsylvania and from Pennsylvania to this province, and to whom he in modesty gives entertainment and lodgings, victuals, etc. without pay, with in time may amount to considerable sums of money.”
After 1777 the rise of newer ports on the Chesapeake, like Baltimore, and broader changes in trade patterns diminished the importance of the overland route across the peninsula; Bohemia Landing became a purely local landing, no longer the significant link in the mid-Atlantic trade network it had once been (Cultural Resource Survey: Hunter Research, Inc.).
Who Came to America in 1738?
A history of the William Latta and Agnes Rhea family states that their daughter Elizabeth Latta married her first cousin, John McCrabb; the McCrabb family arrived in 1738, settled near Wilmington, DE, and later moved to Holston Co., TN — raising the question of whether the McCrabbs traveled with the Lattas. The family most likely aboard the Walpoole in 1738 was that of Rev. James Latta and his wife Mary Alison Latta, with their children (exact number unknown), William Rhea (Agnes Rhea’s brother, per family history), and the McCrabb family. In 1750 a “Matthew Latta” died in Chester County, PA; his estate was administered by Robert Young, who also administered the estate of his mother, Margaret Young, of East Nottingham — was Matthew also aboard the Walpoole, and how was he related to the rest?
The New London Academy
Francis Alison, brother to Mary Alison (Rev. James Latta’s wife), graduated from the University of Edinburgh in January 1732 and was licensed in June 1735 by the Presbytery of Letterkenny in Donegal, leaving for America soon after. He landed at New Castle, Delaware in 1735 — if his sister’s family took the same route, rather than the Walpoole’s course to Bohemia Landing, it would explain their early presence in the area. By 1736 Alison was affiliated with the Presbytery of New Castle, and by 1737 was pastor of the Presbyterian church at New London in southern Chester County, just north of Bohemia Landing and east of East Nottingham.
In 1743 Francis Alison was granted a land warrant for 15 acres in East Nottingham and New London townships, dated May 29; a Joseph Allison was granted a warrant beside his at the same time, both parcels lying along a branch of the Elk River. A neighbor to the south, tavern keeper Wm. McKean, lost his wife in 1742; his two sons, Thomas and Robert, ages 8 and 10, were taken in by the Alison family.
In the fall of 1743 Francis Alison opened his New London Academy. Its first class included Robert and Thomas McKean, George Read of Delaware, James Smith of Pennsylvania, Hugh Williamson, John Ewing, John Cochran, Charles Thomson, James Latta, Matthew Wilson, and Paul Jackson — possibly the most distinguished class of any school in early America, several of whom became governors, congressmen, and signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If James Latta was born in 1732 in Ireland, he would have been about nine years old when he attended. Tradition holds the first class met in a room above Alison’s spring house; after eight years the school moved from Thunder Hill to the center of the village. Alison taught languages (Latin and Greek, with possibly a bit of Hebrew) and philosophy — practically all the arts and sciences then known — and every morning critically examined his students’ compositions in English and Latin. One student, Charles Thomson, told of walking forty-five miles to Philadelphia to buy a copy of The Spectator; another, John Ewing, later a tutor at the school himself, would ride thirty or forty miles to borrow a book on science or mathematics.
The bond formed in that first class ran deep — Rev. James Latta later named one of his sons “John Ewing Latta” after his old schoolmate. Rev. John Ewing went on to supervise the setting of the stones for the Mason–Dixon Line in the Cecil County area in 1764, as one of Pennsylvania’s commissioners.
Robert Latta and Branch 32
Elsewhere in Cecil County at this time: a Robert Latta appears on the 1766 tax list for North Milford Hundred, but by the 1768 tax list for St. Mary Ann’s Parish, Octorara Hundred, he is recorded as “Robert Latta — run,” meaning he had left the area. Is this the Robert Latta of Branch 32, later of Bart Township, Lancaster County? Branch 32’s own notes record Lieut. Gov. John Latta saying, about 1784:
“The above Ephraim Latta (son of Robert Latta of Branch 32) lived in close proximity to the Latta settlement in Chester Co., Pa., the native place of Rev. James W. Latta, Branch 8. There is a deed at the Court House which tells of Samuel Latta buying land in Bart Tp. of his ‘Uncle James’. If this is the Rev. James Latta, then Robert of Bart Tp. and Rev. James Latta of Drumore, were brothers. Both townships were in the south section of the county, and in the same locality.”
Matthew Latta (probably Branch 8) is listed as a freeman in East Nottingham township on the 1749 Chester County, PA tax list; James Latta, possibly Branch 8’s James, paid taxes in the same area that year. As noted above, Matthew’s estate was settled in Chester County in 1750.
Neighbors: Quakers and the Alexanders
Other Nottingham settlers were Quakers — Rev. James Brown lived in East Nottingham and his brother Rev. William Brown in West Nottingham. Also in Cecil County were members of the Alexander family, related to Rev. James Alexander of the Laggan Presbytery in Ireland, who had come to America in 1681. All these families — Latta, Allison, Ewing, Brown, Alexander — lived together in Cecil County, Maryland and Chester County, Pennsylvania at this time, sharing roots in the same corner of Ireland around Lough Swilly. From here they gradually moved further north into Chester County’s Sadsbury and Nantmeal townships, and then further into Pennsylvania.
Elizabeth Latty and the Bowles Family
Note F records a marriage at the Old Swedes Church in Delaware in December 1745 for Elizabeth Latty and Thomas Bowles. (Church records also list the baptism of two daughters: Mary, born April 1, 1750, baptized May 1; and Sarah, born April 27, 1758, baptized June 27.) Their son, also Thomas Bowles, a Revolutionary War soldier from Orange Co., NC, stated in his pension application that he was “born in Lancaster County, PA, and was taken by his parents, at the age of about eighteen months, to Orange County, NC” — he gave his age as 69 in 1832, placing his birth around 1763 and the family’s move to NC around 1765. The elder Thomas Bowles had patented 200 acres in Lancaster County, PA on June 19, 1744; S. C. Stevenson’s History of Lancaster County places him next to John Taylor, over the Susquehanna, while Franklin Ellis and Samuel Evans’ 1883 History of Lancaster County (p. 974) places him in Martic township, noting that the Muddy Run Presbyterian Church, established there in 1742, saw almost its whole congregation move to South Carolina after Indian attacks. PA Land Warrant map C26–3 shows Thomas Bowles’s land in what became Fawn, now Peach Bottom Township, York County, surveyed in 1838 for James Ramsey.
Thomas Bowles (senior)’s 1789 will in Orange County, NC was witnessed by James Latta, James Latta Jr., and Jane Davis:
“In the name of God, amen, I, Thomas Bowls of Orange County, and State of North Carolina, being at present weak in body but in as reasonable mind and memory blessed be God for his mercy, and calling to mind the mortality of my body do make and ordain this my last will and testament, and first of all I recommend my Soul into the hand of God that gave it and my body to the Earth to be buried in a descent and Christian like manner … First I give to my wife, ELIZABETH BOWLS three cows and one horse or mare, saddle and bridle, one good feather bed and furniture, one trunk and boxes what she pleases to take, one woolen wheel and one linnen wheel, one iron pot of her choice, one iron cettle, and one brass one, a pair fire tongs and pot rack and the half of the pewter. I give and bequeath to my two sons THOMAS BOWLS and WILLIAM BOWLS all that piece or parsel of land whereon I now live situated lying on both sides of the North Fork of Little River containing two hundred and two acres as will appear by grant from JOHN EMBRY, to be equally divided between said THOMAS and WILLIAM BOWLS — my son THOMAS BOWLS to have the part whereon is the dwelling house, notwithstanding it is my intent that my wife ELIZABETH BOWLS have her maintenance from the produce of the improvement during her widowhood. I give and bequeath to my son JOHN BOWLS twenty pounds current money, arising as a moiety out of the above improvement, payable by my son THOMAS BOWLS. I give and bequeath to my daughter ELIZABETH MURDAK twenty pounds current money as a moiety arising out of the part bequeathed to my son WILLIAM BOWLS — these two sums not to be paid until a full year after my decease. I give and bequeath to my daughter SARAH BOWLS ten shillings together with all gifts heretofore given her. I give and bequeath to my grand daughter SARAH CLARK one horse and two cows; after my just debts and funeral charges are paid, the remainder of my estate is to be equally divided between my wife and my sons THOMAS and WILLIAM BOWLS, whom I make and ordain sole executors of this my last will, this thirtieth day of July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine. In the presence of us who were present at the signing and sealing thereof: THOMAS BOWLS (his mark); JAMES LATTA; JANE DAVIS (her mark); JAMES LATTA JUNIOR.”
On May 14, 1751, Jane Latta married Robert Davis. Orange County, NC marriage records show Thomas Bowles Jr. marrying Anne Davis on May 16, 1791, with Robert Davis — possibly her father — standing bondsman.
Migration to North Carolina
Families migrated from Pennsylvania to North Carolina along the Great Wagon Road in this period, driven by rising land prices in Pennsylvania and Maryland and overcrowding on the Pennsylvania–Maryland border. So many left the Nottingham settlement that a corresponding “Nottingham settlement” grew up in North Carolina. In 1749 James Allison and his wife Mary, of Cecil County, MD, were granted 350 acres on the Carolina frontier; on April 3, 1751 James’s brother Andrew, of Colerain twp, Lancaster County, PA, recorded a land warrant for 640 acres in the same area. By 1755 a James Latta appears in the Orange County tax records, alongside a listing for “Thomas Lovelatty” — quite possibly Thomas Love Latty.
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