"The Bourlands In America" Carl & May Read Copyright 1978 PREFACE This book is the culmination of work begun in 1920 by Judge William Stowt Bates of Houston, Mississippi. Retiring from the bench in 1916 at the ripe old age of eighty eight, Judge Bates filled his last years with a variety of activities, but the one best remembered was the creation of a simple document of eight legal-sized pages titled TO MY BOURLAND KINDRED. Drawing upon memory, conversations with other family elders and letters from an Arkansas cousin, Dr. Addison McArthur Bourland, the Judge composed a brief history of the Bourlands as a tribute to his beloved mother, Eliza Elvira Bourland Bates. He wrote in his introductory paragraph:... "now in my ninety first year, I am anxious to perpetuate and preserve the genealogy and traditions of the ancestral line of my mother as a last bequest to the loved ones who are of the kindred line." The Bates Document, as it has come to be known, was completed on 1 March 1921 and is still circulated among the tribe of Abigail and Ebenezer Bourland as a typical expression of the love and respect this family holds for its forebears. Since 1921 the facts contained in the Bates Document have been greatly augmented by a dedicated band of family historians who, working alone or in small groups, have collected an impressive mass of family statistics and legends to aid in preservation of the family genealogy. The first of these researchers to bring to the job a full understanding of the enormity of the task was a former librarian, Mrs. Helen Baker Pearce, of Lexington, Kentucky, who drew into her circle such family historians as Mary Rebecca Bourland Thompson of Wyoming, Helen Mattox Crawford of Mississippi, Inez Christian Doshier of Texas and Ruth Everest Lewis of Idaho. Working via the mails, Mrs. Pearce, with collaboration of two men, Dr. Herschel Murphy and Mr. J. Neil Arrington, both of New Jersey, assembled a mimeographed booklet of data which forms the basis for THE BOURIANDS IN AMERICA. This book is a tribute to Mrs. Pearce, Dr. Murphy and Mr. Arrington, who are not here to see the end product of their labors, and to the rest of the little group who worked with them so long and so lovingy: Mary Thompson, Helen Crawford, Inez Doshier, and Ruth Lewis. These seven were the nucleus of what is now The Bourland Society, which is dedicated to uniting and serving the Bourlands everywhere. Almost everyone who supported the book project by paying in advance for a copy also submitted vital family information to add to the collection. Acknowledgements will be made of these contributions within the text, for space does not allow a full list of the many Bourland descendants who have written to the Society. Some very special people must be singled out, however, and honored for their outstanding efforts: Mrs. Bobbie F. Thorton of Plano, Texas, an enthusiastic supporter from the beginning; Gabriel Bourland of Alton, Illinois, who diligently spread the word in his area; Dr. John Bookhout Bourland and wife, Mabel, of Texas, who encouraged the descendants of Benjamin Bourland to draw up their family charts; Lena Bourland Nelson and Myrtle Bourland Powell of Lowry City, Missouri, who, with no prior training in genealogy,compiled significant new data on the clan of William Tandy Bourland, a son of Slaton and Polly (Reese) Bourland; Marilyn Bourland Mendenhall of Buffalo, Illinois, whose history of Miles Bourland and his descendants is published here for the first time. Last of all, I present two remarkably energetic ladies who serve as living proof of the old adage: "If you want a job done well, give it to somebody who is busy" -- Mrs. Maida Whitten of Overland Park, Kansas and Mrs. Virginia McPhail of Van Buren, Arkansas. Maida submitted well over 200 pages of Bourland-Rutledge history and Virginia did countless interviews and put together an impressive collection of facts on the Arkansas clan of Ebenezer, The Bourland Society salutes you, one and all, for a job well done. It would be ungracious, of course, not to say injudicious and even dangerous to omit from these plaudits my faithful helper, my critic, my boon companion of 37 years, my good wife, Mabert Read, whose unflagging zeal and devotion to the job sometimes amazed me as she burned the midnight oil month after month, collecting, collating, carding, indexing and filing Bourlands for the sheer love of the game. Without her assistance, advice and encouragement the book would never have been completed; therefore I am happy to include May as co-author, co-editor, and research specialist par excellence. 23 November, 1977 James C. Read (Carl) and Mabert Elizabeth Read INTRODUCTION The purpose of this book is to record what is currently known about all the Bourlands in America in 1978 in the hope that present and future generations will be encouraged to join the task of preserving the Bourland history and traditions and continue the search for family origins. The book is not a finished genealogy, but it contains valuable clues about the many Bourlands and their descendants. To have included complete documentation of all births, marriages and deaths would have made the book too large and cumbersome, therefore we present. only basic facts gleaned from family Bibles, county records, old letters and recent correspondence, plus more than a little "word of mouth" legend. If it serves to aid future researchers, then the combined efforts of a multitude of family historians will not have been in vain. Being the work of many hands, it is inevitable that the book will contain errors of fact, spelling and omission. Readers are invited to send all corrections to the Bourland Society so that we may keep our permanent files as accurate as possible. All Bourland descendants are aIso invited to send us their family statistics of births, marriages, deaths to be included in our permanent index. A revised edition of the book will be published at a future date. The Bourland surname is of Scottish origin, from the old word "bordland", meaning "home farm" or that part of a large estate which supported the family table (bord). The name has been spelled many ways over the last ten centuries and somewhere along the way the middle "d" was dropped out, probably because of pronunciation, making it Borland. This form is seen today as well as Boreland, Boland, Bolan, Bolen and Bourland. Some family legends have hinted at French origins because the spelling Bourland has a Gallic look about it, but no sound evidence has been uncovered as proof of that. (Editor's note: my own belief is that the spelling was influenced by the Normans after 1066. English documents of the 12th and 13th centuries reflect a strong French influence in spelling even those basic Anglo-Saxon names that had existed before the Normans arrived. The first written record of the name Bourland is found in a tax list of Devonshire in the 14th century showing Ricardus de atte Bourland as a resident land owner.) While no authentic coat of arms has been found, the Bourland name is nevertheless ancient, distinctive and a name to bear proudly. The Borlands and Bourlands fled Scotland with their Protestant neighbors and settled for a time in Ireland in the 17th century. Hence the term "Scotch-Irish." English authorities, however, soon banned all religions other than the Anglican and the Bourlands once again packed up the few meager possessions they could carry with them and sought asylum in France and in the American colonies. Those hapless migrants who landed in France soon discovered that the leniency won by the Huguenots was of short duration and some of them may have returned to England or come to America. The actual history of those very early Bourlands remains to be explored. Our task rests with the Bourlands in America. With few exceptions, those who today bear the name Bourland are descended from one man, John Bourland, who according to family legend, left his vast estate in Londonderry to escape the wrath of King George II and landed in Virginia, where he married a fair damsel named Catherine Randclph about 1750. Some legends called him "Lord John Bourland" and others hint that he was a descendant of Pocahontas the Indian princess who embraced Christianity. The hard truth, if we are fortunate enough to unearth it, may be far less romantic than these oral legends and traditions. We know nothing of John's Irish lineage, but we can make a few learned guesses: he was not French, for his name was not Jean and he was not Dutch, for his name was not Jan. He is recorded as John Bourland and all his sons bore good English given names: William, Alexander, John, Ebenezer, James, Benjamin, Archibald and Presley. He was able to read and write and he transmitted those advantages to his children. He was a Protestant and raised his family in that faith. Of his daughters we know almcst nothing. Included in this book is one Isabella Bourland, who married Michael Bacon. Isabella was born in Pennsylvania about 1761 and there is no sure sign that she was a daughter of John Bourland. Perhaps a reader will be able to tell us more about the daughters of John. That John Bourland lived in Virginia is unquestioned. His son, William, was born in Virginia and served with other Scotch-Irish soldiers of Augusta County, Virginia, in the Revolutionary War. John Bourland himself was a patriot by reason of his supplying items to the Revolutionary forces and this is established by a pay voucher issued to him in September 1781 by the upper board for the District of Salisbury, North Carolina as reimbursement for "sundry publick claims." The state census of North Carolina for the year 1787 lists John Bourland as a head of household in Wilkes County with four males under age 16 and 2 females in his household. After 1787 no clear record is found of our progenitor and it is likely that he died before 1800. The first federal census, taken in 1790, showed numerous entries in South Carolina for Bolin, Bowlen, Bolen, Bolan, Bowland, Bowling and Bolling. Some of these may have been Bourlands, for the census takers were often only semiliterate and they spelled names phonetically. Indeed, over the years since that first census, the Bourland name has been spelled more than thirty ways in census books, but somehow it has survived. A few families have adopted one or another of those erroneous forms and perpetuated them. One form, Bouland, is seen today in Kentucky, Illinois and various parts of the USA. (Almost all of these are descendants of James Bourland, whose grandson, Isaac, changed the name to Bouland.) The Catherine Randolph legend seems to have been grafted onto the Bourland family tree long after John's death, for not one of his sons carried forward the Randolph name in any form, despite a tradition of baptising at least one son with the maiden name of the mother. It is likely that the Randolph story came about because of the similarity between the names Bourland and Bolling. The Randolph- Bolling connections are fully documented along with the Bolling kinship with Pocahontas. It is not until 1810 that we are on firm ground and some curious researcher could devote years to digging into Bourland history prior to 1810 in the Carolinas and Virginia and even Pennsylvania. The census of 1810 for Hopkins County, Kentucky listed these Bourlands: MALES FEMALES Head of Household A B C D E A B C D E Patsey Bourland 3 1 1 3 1 John Bourland 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 Ebenezer Bourland 4 2 1 1 1 1 1 Benjamin Bourland 2 1 1 4 1 1 (Key) A = under age 10 B = 10-16 yrs C = 16-26 yrs D = 26-45 yrs E = over 45 yrs Patsey may have been a misspelling of Presley, whose son, Miles Bourland, settled in central Illinois. The census record is not proof of kinship, of course, but it is most likely that these were four of the sons of "Immigrant" John Bourland from Northern Ireland. Family ties were strong and brothers tended to migrate together and settle in the same communities. William, the eldest son of John, died in Hopkins County before the census of 1810. The other three sons were found on the 1810 census living in other counties of the western part of Kentucky. It is from the springboard of western Kentucky that the Bourlands jumped off to settle in Illinois, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and California. The migration that began after the winning of American independence was greatly stimulated by the peace settlement after the War of 1812, which opened vast new lands in the south and west and stirred dreams of riches. The Bourlands, like the rest of the new nation, were restless and eager to claim as much land for themselves as tthey could and they traveled by flatboat, by wagon-train and on horseback into the wilderness lands to help build these United States. The record of their progress is written across the length and breadth of this country today, but the story is not finished yet. You and your children are still writing it, day by day.