CURRENT FAMILY ORIGIN

(Credits for the following information come from a fellow researcher by the name of John Ladd. His relationship to the Current Family is unknown.) I cannot validate the accuracy of the following information.

"The Current family were originally Scottish. In the early 1600's they migrated from Scotland to Northern Ireland where they leased a farm near the town of Ballymena in County Antrim. Outside of growing food for the family table, the farm was entirely devoted to raising sheep. They established a mill for the weaving of woolen cloth and this grew into a prosperous industry. They blended with the Irish and soon became what is know as Scotch-Irish.

When James I became King of Scotland in 1603, he transported large numbers of Scottish Presbyterians into Northern Ireland. His purpose in so doing was to use the influence of these stable people to hold down the turbulent Irishmen, with whom he had problems. In Ireland these Scotsmen leased small farms and developed an industry weaving linen and woolen cloth.

In the early 1700's their 100 year leases began to expire and their landlords demanded higher rents. About the same time the English passed legislation that forbid them from exporting their woolens to England. Also they were being taxed to support the Anglican Church which they resented.

These people, who had merged with the Irish and become known as Scots-Irish, began to migrate to America in large numbers. As a race, they had qualities that made them highly suitable for frontier life. They were intelligent, large, angular with jutting chins and forceful personalities. They had strong wills, a sense of practicality, self reliance and physically were hardy with great endurance. Accustomed to fighting in Ireland, they were extremely bold and became excellent Indian fighters. Many of our leading citizens were their descendants, including Presidents Andrew Jackson, James Polk, Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson.

On arrival in America these people, as well as a heavy influx of Germans from the Rhine Valley and Southern Germany, initially settled in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. About 1750 they began a trek southward into the Piedmont of Virginia and the Carolina's. This was due to the fact that the northern colonies were becoming heavily settled and they had to go to the southern interior to find land that was open for settlement.

The earliest settlement of the South was confined to the coastal tidelands, except for a few adventurous souls,. These Colonial Settlers, who were predominantly English, wanted to make America as much like England as possible. They wanted to maintain class distinction and privilege and as a result developed the large plantations on which slavery flourished.

Both the Scotts-Irish and Germans were advocates of Democracy, as we know it today. Because they had been oppressed, they believed in freedom and social and political equality. They hated what the plantation owners stood for and had a strong contempt for the use of slave labor. The use of slaves did not fit their style of diversified farming and they also had large families which provided them with an abundant supply of willing and also ambitious labor. On moral grounds, their churches frowned on slavery.

JAMES CURRENT

James Current, the founder of the Current Family in America, was born in 1730 on the family farm near the town of Ballymena in Northern Ireland. I didn't attempt to research the family beyond James, so do not have his parents or his brothers and sisters names. He did have three older sisters who married in Ireland but have no record as to whether they came to America or stayed in Ireland. He also had two older brothers who, like him, were raised on the farm and in addition to being taught farm work, learned to be millers in the woolen mill his parents owned.

When James' parents passed away in 1750, his oldest brother inherited the family farm and mill. He and his brothers, who were very close, were dissatisfied with life in Ireland, for reasons given in the previous chapter. They decided to sell the family possessions and migrate to America. After the sale was completed, they divided the proceeds and prepared for voyage. They left Ireland in January, 1751 and landed on the Eastern Shore of Maryland late in March. Shortly after landing, they migrated south into Virginia. One brother died, soon after their arrival, and the other became discouraged and returned to Ireland.

When James arrived in Maryland, he had a gray horse which he traded for a deed that gave him 1300 acres of virgin land in Virginia. It was situated where the city of Grafton, West Virginia lies today.

At that time West Virginia was a part of Virginia and did not become a separate state until the Civil War when they parted with Virginia and remained loyal to the Union. They were admitted to the Union as a state in 1863.

The land that James Current had traded for was located in the North Central part of what is today West Virginia, on the Northern shore of Lake Tygert [Tygart]. It was on the Allegheny Plateau and mostly level land, forested, with many meadows and rich soil. It was adaptable for general farming, fruit, tobacco and livestock raising. It was in a temperate climate with a long growing season. It was bisected by many small streams and water was no problem.

When James first saw the land he now owned, he was a highly elated young man. Now he was not only a land owner but also his lands were vast and rich. As a youth in Ireland his dream had been to own land but there was not any possibility of doing so.

His first act was to hire a surveyor from the Eastern part of Virginia to stake his property. This was a young man, 19 years old, who had started surveying for fees at the age of 15. He had previously made a survey of Western Virginia. His name: "George Washington."

Little is recorded of the next 8 years of James' life, excepting that he worked hard and developed a prosperous farm, acquiring more land before it became heavily settled. In 1759 he met, and fell in love with, Margaret Richardson. She, also of Scotch-Irish descent, was born in Virginia in 1737 and at the time they met was 22 years old. Her father had moved from Eastern Virginia to a farm near James.

In preparation for marriage, he built an elaborate new home which he and Margaret furnished with new furniture. He had built a sawmill on his place to make lumber for his own use and for sale, so the house was built with his own milled lumber. The bricks were fired on the site and this leads me to believe he had acquired slaves as the records state that it was done by his plantation hands. While this was being done the normal work of farming a large tract of land had to continue. (Editors note:) I doubt that there were slaves involved as West Virginia broke from Virginia because they were anti-slavery. The Current family was also very anti-slavery.

As an indication of how he had prospered, the majority of their new furniture was purchased in Europe, shipped to America and then transported from the coast by Ox team. On the day of the wedding their new home was ready to move into. About that time they named his plantation "Bluemont."

Their children and their dates of birth are as follows: William, birth date unknown; Hugh, 1763; John A., 1765; Martin, 1768; Molly, 1770; James, 1773; Enoch, 1775.

James died August 15, 1822 at the age of 92 and Margaret in 1830 at the age of 93. Their bodies were interred in the cemetery [cemetery] on their plantation which today is a part of the city of Grafton and known as "Bluemont Cemetery."

When the oldest boy, William, became 18, James started a policy he continued with all his children. He gave them a choice of receiving, on their 18th birthday, one-seventh of his property or the equivalent in money. His oldest boy stayed home and took care of his parents until they passed away. On their death, as the eldest, he inherited the balance of their property.

When John A. became 18, he and his brother, Hugh, took their share in cash and migrated down the Piedmont Plateau to Eastern North Carolina. The only other child of whom there is a record is James Junior who took his share in cash and moved to Indiana. There he founded a large branch of the Current family whose descendants live in Indiana and Nebraska today.

JOHN A. CURRENT

John A. Current, our ancestor and son of James and Margaret, was born on his fathers plantation in West Virginia in 1765. He and his brother, Hugh, decided in 1783 to leave home and make their life in a new area. They each took their share of their fathers estate in cash and joined the Migration Southward on the Piedmont Plateau into North Carolina. Arriving in what is today Iredell County, they found land they liked and purchased farms.

At that time all of Eastern North Carolina was Rowan County and included what is today the State of Tennessee. The County seat of Rowan County was Salisbury which then was the principal frontier trading post of the South. In later years Iredell County was formed and its county seat was Stateville. This was done in 1796 when Tennessee separated from North Carolina and became the 16th state admitted to the Union.

In the early part of the 1700's, Richard Lawson, an explorer, made a thorough survey of this part of North Carolina. He gave a complete description of soil, climate, vegetation and physical characteristics, which was so glowing it was largely responsible for the early settlement of this area. In 1736 and English land holding syndicate obtained rights to 1,000,000 acres of land with the stipulation they settle 3,000 families within a definite period of time. I found no record of whether they fulfilled this part of their agreement but they did influence many to migrate into the area ..."

Updated: 28 March 2009

Return to My Home Page: index.html

E-mail at: chareve@mninter.net