Author: Rachel

In my first post about the old codger Nathan (a nice gentleman, I’m sure) I discussed the frustrating lack of information regarding his birth, death, or indeed much of his life.  Speculations as to why the bugger seemed to drop off the face of the Earth were also included.

When tracing a family line backwards through time, one is always searching for the next link: an individual’s parents.  I know that Nathan lived and had a wife and a family – and that might be all we will ever know of him.  So my next task must be to find the next link: Nathan’s parents.  The problem here is that it is typically through records of a child’s birth that we find information about his or her parents.  And since Nathan was not kind enough to leave any evidence that he was ever born, his parents also remain a mystery.

So, who were Nathan’s parents?  Below are some possibilities that I have researched.  Two have become dead-ends, whereas the third remains an open possibility.

Theory #1: Nathan’s parents may have been Quaker immigrants to Philadelphia
Likelihood: Not very likely

For many years, my grandfather, Russell Thomas, sold books.  Many of them were antiques or generally valuable.  As a result, we have ended up with a few.  One is a thick volume entitled “The Merion Tract,” which details the migrations of Quakers to Pennsylvania.  Since many Quakers came from the British Isles, and the Thomas’s supposedly came from Wales, and I had this book in my possession, I carefully went through its pages.  Several times.  Any of the very few Thomas’s mentioned either had no children or only had daughters – so the surname of Thomas would not have continued.  And, none of them were named Nathan.

Theory #2: Nathan’s parents may have been British Royalists living in PA during Colonial times
Likelihood: Possible, but difficult to prove

I learned of this British Thomas family from chapter 19 of the book “History of Bucks County” (available via Google Books).  Page 592 of this book briefly discusses Lewis and Evan Thomas who owned large portions of land “in the northwestern part of the township near Rieff’s corner, and eastward from the village of Telford.”  These men, perhaps brothers, were “wealthy and aristocratic” and owned slaves prior to the Revolutionary War.  Though a family cemetery is located “on the Bethlehem turnpike a half-mile above its divergence from the county line,” in which many slaves were also said to be buried, any evidence of the existence of a grave site has been destroyed.  The book goes on to say that one Richard Thomas was the head of the family before the war, and that his sons William and Evan were in the British army.  I have researched all of these names within the time frame of the Revolutionary War, but have not found any sons of the aforementioned men that might have led to a Nathan Thomas.  Regardless, the desecration of their cemetery is appalling, and for simply posterity’s sake and out of respect for the deceased I would like to locate the approximate location of their family cemetery some day.

Theory #3: Nathan’s parents were Welsh immigrants who founded a Baptist Church
Likelihood: Possible, probable, and plausible, but difficult to prove.

Ancestry.com has a neat feature in which you can link individuals in your own tree to identical individuals in another researcher’s tree (we’re all related somehow, I’m starting to think!).  In doing so, you can gather information from the other researcher’s tree that perhaps you did not know.  This is how I came across the possibility that Nathan may be descended from Welsh immigrants.  I have Nathan plugged into my ancestry.com tree.  A little over a year ago, the website alerted me that another researcher potentially had the same Nathan on their tree as well.  I took a look to see if these two Nathan’s shared any similar information.  Indeed, the other researcher’s Nathan had all the same information that my Nathan has… and ALSO listed a father.

At first I jumped for joy and all but poured myself a celebratory glass of bubbly.  A few more clicks of the mouse pad and I learned that the Josiah Thomas (1784-1856) that was listed as Nathan’s (possible) father was the great-grandson of one William Thomas, who immigrated from Monmouthshire, Wales.  A bit more digging on the internet is how I found the book “History of Bucks County” in the first place, and it gave me much more information on the man who could be our link back to the “old country.”  Pages 590 and 591 of the book (linked below) detail his family’s initial misfortune when immigrating to Pennsylvania from Wales, their eventual prosperity in the new world, and William’s founding of the Hilltown Baptist Church.

As fantastic as it would be to finally call the mystery of Nathan solved and closed with the discovery of this Welsh family with possible connection to our Thomas line, there is not yet enough evidence to know for sure whether Josiah was Nathan’s father.  I’ll write more on the evidence I have, and the evidence I still need to find, in another post.  This one is getting long enough.

• No record of his birth, death, or burial has been found to date. 
• Record of his marriage to Hannah Renner on June 28, 1829 at Tohickon Union Church exists in the records of this church. 
• His name appears in the 1850 Census but in no census thereafter. 
• According to this census, Nathan was 42 years old in 1850, making his estimated year of birth 1808. 
• He is also listed as residing in the Milford Township of Bucks County along with his wife and three children: Hannah, Lucinda, and Nathan.  Little is known about these three children. 
• Nathan’s eldest known child, Jeremiah, from whom we are also directly descended, was born in 1831 and, at the age of 19, was likely already living and/or working outside of his parents’ home – hence is absence from the 1850 census.

• Nathan may have been born out of wedlock.  The couple who I have found to possibly be Nathan’s parents were married after Nathan’s estimated birthdate.  Depending on the stringency of the church at the time, a person born prior to his parents’ marriage may not have been permitted to be baptized and thus may not have been permitted to have a proper funeral or be interred in holy ground.  Or, if a “secret” baptism or funeral did take place, it may have gone unrecorded.  I have asked some Lutheran pastors about the possibility of this.  Though they were not sure and said that it would have been awfully strict of a church to deny a child baptism and, later on, burial rights, they did indicate that it could be possible.

• There is a legend of an escaped prisoner in the family.  It is unclear if this gentleman was a prisoner of war or jailed for some other reason.  The story goes that the convicted Thomas gentleman would, each day, challenge a prison guard to a race around a distance tree and back.  Thinking this a harmless activity, the guard obliged.  Harmless and innocent the pastime remained until Mr. Thomas pulled the wool over his guard’s eyes; after weeks of building up his strength and stamina with simple races around a tree, one day Thomas kept on running and was never caught.  The legend continues that his family hid the convict in “Thomas Woods.”  Could “Thomas Woods” be in Tylersport, where Nathan’s sons and grandsons lived and ran an inn?  If Nathan were the escaped convict, it would explain his sudden disappearance from his family unit and the lack of record of his death or burial.  Furthermore, it is unlikely that Nathan would have been a prisoner of war, as his disappearance prior to the 1860 census puts him off the map years before the Civil War.