The following was contributed by Linda Wolff
If you believe that you are a descendant of this Alexander Bothwell and Catharine Hagen, please contact Linda Wolff.
The following is taken from:
Based on an Original 33-Page Paper
By JAMES LATIMER BOTHWELL
These assumptions, although supported by the flimsiest of evidence, have
been accepted by his descendants largely on the strength of two family
documents:
1. A statement made by Alexander's grandson, John Thompson Bothwell
(1816 - 1911) to a niece, Maria Elizabeth Foster (1849-1935), and
printed in a 20-page brochure entitled Chronological Record of
Potter-Bothwell Families in 1904.
Maria Elizabeth Foster was the daughter of Catharine Bothwell Foster and
the granddaughter of Alexander's oldest son, James. She lived in
Chillicothe, Ohio, and was visiting her numerous relatives in Clay City,
Illinois, when she compiled this "chronological record." On her return
home she had it set in type and published. Portions of it are reproduced
here on page 8. Her uncle John Thompson Bothwell was 88 years old at the
time and she quoted his recollections as he delivered them from memory:
The following is the information given by Uncle Thompson Bothwell
concerning our great-grandfather and his family.
John Homer Bothwell was a prominent lawyer, state legislator and
financier of Sedalia, Missouri. In the course of his visits to Scotland
he made a special study of Scottish history and Bothwell ancestry. His
letter was preserved by Marion Bothwell, who was born in 1873 and still
living in Fairfield, Illinois at the age of 90 in 1963, and she made
copies available to a number of interested relatives. This was John
Homer's version:
"Through my father, James Kimble Bothwell, and your grandfather, John
Thompson Bothwell, I learned that James Bothwell, their father--my
grandfather--was born in the county of Londonderry, Ireland, and was one
of the children of Alexander Bothwell and his wife, Catharine. The
following statement was made to me and by me written down at my father's
home in the words of my father who spoke with care and deliberation Dec.
29, 1882:
"From my father's statements I learned that in 1792 Alexander and Catharine
Bothwell emigrated from Londonderry, Ireland to the United States of
America, bringing their children--among them, James Bothwell, then seven
years old--and landing at Newport News, Virginia, going thence to
Winchester, Va., for a short time, and thence moving to the town of
(New) Geneva, Pennsylvania."
John Homer went on to cite some of the
historical considerations that may have resulted in bestowing the name
of Bothwell on his ancestors. He wrote:
"While it is certainly true that the Hepburns were not Bothwells, it is
true that there were families of the name of Bothwell in Scotland for
several centuries before the Hepburns were given the Earldom and became
associated with the name of Bothwell.
In spite of John Homer Bothwell's disclaimer, many of the original
Alexander's other descendants did not give up so readily but have
attempted at various times to establish relationships either with the
early Lord of Bothwell at Bothwell Castle in Lanarkshire or with the
later Earls of Bothwell or Hepburns whose ancestral homes were Hailes in
East Lothian near the Firth of Forth or Hermitage in Roxburghshire near
the English border. As indicated in the "Chronology of References to Bothwell and Related Names"
at the end of this section, and confirmed by
a study of the Scottish Ministry of Works' Official Guidebook to Bothwell
Castle, no one by the name of Bothwell ever occupied Bothwell Castle,
and no Earl of Bothwell, as far as the records show, or his descendants
ever took the surname of Bothwell.
Nevertheless, some of John Homer's conclusions have been disputed by relatives.
Elizabeth Felton West (1865-1949), for instance, took issue with him in a letter
she wrote to Judge James Roy Bothwell (1882-1948) on January 9, 1947. She also
supported the theory that Alexander Bothwell I had been born in
Lanarkshire:
"John Homer Bothwell was in Scotland, the letter he writes to Marion
shows. However, I don't think what he writes is conclusive as to who the
blood ancestors were; he may be true in what he says, but even if they
claimed nothing, they may not have been in a position to know the true
facts themselves. Others have been to Scotland also, but I have never
been able to learn any pertinent information so far from any that did
....
Much other family correspondence over the years has related to visit to,
and speculations concerning, Bothwell Castle. John Homer Bothwell's
celebrated mansion outside Sedalia, Missouri, was popularly supposed to
have been inspired by his trips to this allegedly ancestral castle, even
though there is no similarity in their appearance other than their
locations overlooking deep valleys.
Elizabeth Felton West's sister Annis Strong Felton Smedley (1871-1956)
was another descendant to express disappointment over gaining no
"pertinent information" from a visit to the castle. Colonel James
Lawrence Bothwell (1916- ) spent some time in Uddingston, which is the
actual location of the castle, in 1957 and made an excellent series of
color photographs, although he knew in advance that it had never been
occupied by anybody with the name of Bothwell. And in another old letter
dated March 11, 1909, Cidna Maria Jones Rockhold (1851-1909) wrote to
her cousin Alice Delilah Bothwell Lonsdale (1852-1935):
"I went abroad in June, went by the St. Lawrence route, and was not
seasick except for a few hours while crossing the North Sea from England
to Holland. I had a lovely trip through Scotland and England. I saw the
ruins of Bothwell Castle--but I shall not tell you about that until you
come to see me . . ."
Unfortunately, it will never be known what information was exchanged
when these cousins met or even, for that matter, whether they ever did
meet, because Cidna Maria died later in the same year, evidently of
disorders she described later in her letter. These instances are
reported only to show the fascination that Bothwell Castle has held for
successive generation of this particular Alexander Bothwell family and
to indicated the general acceptance of the supposition that their
ancestors, being named Bothwell, must inevitably have originated in
either the town or the parish of Bothwell if not actually in the castle
itself. If the family did originate in or take its name from that
locality, however, it would have been long before the probable period
around 1750 when Alexander was born. In 1960 and again in 1963 John Luse
Scott (1902- ) a great-great-grandson of Alexander's daughter Mary
Bothwell Scott, spent several days searching the Registers of Births and
Baptism at the General Registry Office in Edinburg for the parish of
Bothwell and the twenty other parishes in the county of Lanarkshire
closest to Glasgow. These Registers, which were painstakingly prepared
and are faithfully preserved, not only fail to reveal the birth of an
Alexander Bothwell during that period, but produce no evidence that any
family by the name of Bothwell was living in the entire area at the
time. In fact, some of the Registers dating as far back as 1700 still
show no Bothwell entries. As a last resort this descendant turned to the
telephone directories of Uddingston, Bothwell, Glasgow, Edinburgh and
London in the hope of finding some Bothwell listings which might
provide a clue. There were none for Uddingston or Bothwell, only two for
Glasgow and eight for London. The Edinburgh directory contained just
four Bothwell names--as opposed to more than a thousand Scott names--but
luckily one of them was that of William G. Bothwell, who lives on
Mountcastle Drive South in the Portobello section of Edinburgh and who
has become exceedingly cooperative and sympathetic toward the project of
locating the birthplace and birthdate of the particular Alexander
Bothwell in question. Following John Scott's first visit to Edinburgh
Bill Bothwell relied to his letter in part as follows:
"Quite frankly, until I received your letter I had never given much though to the origin
of the family name. Such thought as I might have had would have led me
to the same conclusion as the one you came by; namely, that it had been
taken by or given to people who originated in the parish of Bothwell
when they turned up so somewhere else. Another resident of Edinburgh, James G. Bothwell, of 19 Cammo Road,
likewise cited Aberdeen as his family's home town: "I regret that I
cannot be of any immediate assistance to you in your quest. My knowledge
of the name I bear is restricted to my own branch of the family and this
is only for two generations. My later father was born in Aberdeen around
1892, one of a family of ten. I do not know if this was the birthplace
of his father." In addition to these two reports from Edinburgh, another involving the
county of Aberdeenshire was received from Harry J. Bothwell, an
architect of Cincinnati, Ohio, who furnished the information that his
great-grandfather John Bothwell had been born in Aberdeenshire March 15,
1828. From this starting point, the search of Alexander Bothwell was
transferred from Lanarkshire to Aberdeenshire. Bill Bothwell and his
daughter Alison revisited the General Register Office and carefully
examined the registers of births, baptism, marriages and deaths for some
44 parishes. In marked contrast to the findings in Lanarkshire, in
Aberdeenshire they located 80 individual Bothwell names, representing at
least 21 families and including eleven who were named Alexander. In so
doing they also located, in the parish of Kintore, Harry J. Bothwell's
great-grandfather John and his six brothers and sisters; they were the
children of John and Jane Caynad Bothwell, born between 1828 and 1839.
To date no definite relationships have been established between any of
these Bothwell families of Aberdeenshire. Any one of three among the eleven Alexander Bothwells thus discovered
could be the ancestor who is sought:
Certain positive dates in the life of the Alexander Bothwell who
emigrated to America in 1792 and settled in New Geneva, Pennsylvania,
are well established by old family records in the handwriting of
Margaret Bothwell Webb (1840-1917), the daughter of Alexander's son,
Alexander II, who recorded not only "My Brother and Sisters Age," and
the ages of her aunts and Uncles, but also "My Grandfather's Marriage"
and "My Grandmother's and -father's death."
Alexander Bothwell and Catharine Hogan were married March 14, 1782
Catharine Bothwell died March 11, 1806 Alexander Bothwell died December 2, 1811
The page from Margaret's record
giving this information is reproduced earlier in this section and shows
that Alexander married Catharine Hogen (Hagen) on March 11, 1782, and
that he died on September 2, 1811. His youngest child, Jane Bothwell
Carothers, was born June 28, 1800. Eight of the eleven Alexander
Bothwells of Aberdeenshire mentioned above were born either before 1735
or after 1770, and are therefore eliminated from consideration because
of age. Of the remaining three, the Alexander of Iverurie at first
sounded like the most logical candidate, but he too was eliminated when
Alison Bothwell discovered that he had a son William who was born in
Inverurie on October 2, 1783. The Alexander of New Geneva also had a son
William, but his birthdate is given in all the family records as January
15, 1790. And it is believed, although not verified, that the family had
moved onto Ireland by 1783, certainly by 1785. The two Alexander
Bothwells born 1743 and 1744 would have been 38 or 39 years old at the
time of marriage, 56 or 67 years old when their youngest child was born,
and 67 or 68 at the time of death. Thus, either of these Alexander
Bothwells may conceivably have been the object of this search. Alison
Bothwell later rechecked the registers of Lanarkshire and also searched
46 parishes in Ayrshire, 17 in Renfrew, 12 in Dunbarton and 24 in
Haddington without finding any other Alexander Bothwells. Almost as difficult as locating a specific Alexander Bothwell in Scotland has been
the matter of unraveling the sequence and birthdates of his children.
There are several differing accounts handed down through the years. In
the same letter quoted previously, John Homer Bothwell had this to say:
"Also I learn from father's statement that he had another uncle, John
Bothwell, who served as a soldier in the American army during the war of
1812 with England, that Arthur and William Bothwell -- brothers of James
Bothwell -- were finally lost sight of by their family who had moved to
Ohio in 1814. John Thompson Bothwell had a slightly different version, as related to
Maria Elizabeth Foster and published in her Chronological Record of
Potter-Bothwell Families: Several discrepancies appear in these two accounts, and some obvious
errors. It is very doubtful that there was a fourth daughter, Catherine,
in the family; probably at some time the mother's name was included
among the children's and John Homer was right in stating that there were
just the three daughters. In that event Mary and Jane were the second
and third rather than the first and second daughters, and neither of
them were born in Scotland. Greenburg is in Pennsylvania rather than
Virginia, and such other questions as whether the family lived in
Londonderry or Downs County are impossible now to answer. Combining these records, however, with the Margaret Bothwell Webb data and a
similar record which Hattie Altana Little Webb copied from the old
family Bible of Alexander II provides certain well documented facts
about Alexander and Catharine Hagen Bothwell and their eight children.
By 1801 at the latest, the family had settled in New Geneva, a little
town in Springhill Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, situated on
the east bank of the Monongahela River just north of the (West) Virginia
border. Both parents died there, Catharine on March 11, 1806 and
Alexander on December 2, 18ll. Their children were:
201. Sarah Bothwell was born September 4, 1782, possibly in
Londonderry County, Ireland but more probably in Scotland. She was
unmarried and nothing further concerning her is found in any of the
family records. 202. James Bothwell, as related, was born in Londonderry County in
1785, married Charlotte Potter in 1810, moved on to Ohio in 1814 and
died in McArthur on December 4, 1863. He was the father of eleven
children, seven of whom grew up to raise families of their own. His many
descendants are enumerated in Section III which follows.
203. Mary Bothwell was born in Ireland February 10, 1788; married
John Scott and moved to Putnam (now Zanesville, Ohio) in 1807, and died
in McConnelsville, Ohio, September 11, 1828. She bore eleven children.
The families of six of them are listed in Section V.
204. William Bothwell was born in Ireland January 15, 190, which is
about all that is known about him.
205. John Bothwell was born December 21, 1792, possibly at sea since
several of the older members of the family recalled hearing that one of
the children was born during the voyage to America, which took place in
1792. The statements of both John Homer and John Thompson Bothwell that
he was a soldier in the War of 1823 are confirmed by entries in
Pennsylvania Archives (Sixth Series, Vol. IX, pages 93, 95 and 237)
which show, by the payroll of Captain John Phillips Company of U.S.
Volunteers, under command of Major John Herkimer, that John Bothwell,
Private, was discharged at Oswego, New York, on August 26, 1813 and
received $20.
206. Alexander Bothwell II was born April 12, 1794, at either
Winchester, Virginia, or Greensburg, Pennsylvania. In 1814 he moved to
Ohio with his brother James, in 1822 he married Hannah Claypool and in
1864 he died in Knox County, Illinois. Section VII contains the family
records of seven of his twelve children.
207. Arthur Bothwell was born November 29, 1798. No further
information is available.
208. Jane Bothwell was born June 28, 1800. Possibly by that time the
family was living in New Geneva. The statements of John Homer and John
Thompson Bothwell represent all that is known about her.
The reasons for the family's various moves from Scotland to Ireland and
from Ireland to America have been the subjects of many rumors and much
speculation among their descendants. In fact, several cloak-and-dagger
episodes have been promulgated by various relatives, including another
by the Elizabeth Felton West whose letter to Judge James Roy Bothwell in
1947 was previously quoted. In an earlier letter to his son, James
Latimer Bothwell, she wrote:
The family name was Douglas, but for some reason when Alex came to the
United States he took the name of Bothwell ... Aunt Catherine B Foster
(Maria's mother) and Maria have told me Aunt Mary Scott told them that
her father (Alex. Sr.) would never tell his family anything, but they
gathered from conversations they overheard that he left Scotland on
account of some political trouble. He had locked chests in the loft the
children never saw until once, when he went away and forgot to lock one,
and the children looked and saw that they afterward realized were jewels
and fine tapestries and materials ... The reason I told Mary Sanders I
thought our Bothwells were the Douglas line---Uncle David Warren Jones
told me had understood that and supposed they took the title for a
surname on account of the circumstances under which they left Scotland.
The fact that Catharine Bothwell was only 13 years old when her Aunt
Mary Scott died in 1828, and that her daughter Maria was not born for
another 20 years, somewhat detracts from the credibility of this
exchange of confidences. No other evidence has been found to support any
part of it, including the assumption of the name of Douglas, and its
only foundation in any event was a distant recollection from childhood
with every likelihood of exaggeration. If "the circumstances under which
they left Scotland" actually did involve "political troubles," it is
interesting now to speculate on which of the many troubles afflicting the
British Isles in the early 1780s might have been responsible.
Following the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October of 1781, the
Tory Government of Lord North, which had been subservient to George III
since 1770, collapsed in March of 1782. The Whigs were finally back in
power, but four different Whig governments, all in varying degrees of
conflict with each other and with the King, followed in rapid
succession. The government of Rockingham lasted only five months, that
of Shelburne for only eight, and the coalition Fox-North government,
which Winston Churchill has called "too much for even the agile
conscience of the age," held on for only nine months before the stable
government of William Pitt the Younger was eventually established in
December, 1785. Regardless therefore, of whether he might have been a
follower of the Tory or the Whig Party, of any particular faction of
either party, sooner or later Alexander Bothwell would have found his
political patrons out of favor with the governing powers. But many other
unsettling forces were operating at the same time. The full effects of
the "industrial revolution" and its accompanying "agrarian revolution"
were just beginning to be felt by 1780. Many dislocations were being
caused by the introduction of machinery into both farming and such
industries as textiles, steel and coal. Many more workers in the
agricultural and industrial areas of England and Scotland were affected
by these economic considerations than by political ones. Even more
disastrous from the standpoint of the average Scottish family were the
periodic famines that befell the country. Janet R. Grover wrote in The
Story of Scotland (Roy Publishers, New York, 1958):
Famine recurred in 1740, 1756, 1778 and, with sharply increased
severity, in 1782. In order to clear large areas for sheep-walks,
landowners forced their tenants to give up their holdings, and the most
popular method at first was the simple one of raising rents (in 1771)
... The higher rents forced some tenants to reduce their plots and to
live almost entirely on potatoes, but many thousands, driven to despair,
sought the more drastic alternative of emigration. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that the
Bothwells and, as will be shown in Section III, the Scotts, left
Scotland during this period in the early 1780s. Neither is it surprising
that the name of Bothwell was so much more prevalent in Aberdeenshire in
the north of Scotland than in Lanarshire in the south during the 18th
Century. The many Bothwell families identified there confirm the claim
of John Homer Bothwell that there were families of the name of Bothwell
in Scotland as early as the 15th and 16th Centuries.
Disregarding the various Lords and Earls of Bothwell, none of whom are
known to have taken the Bothwell surname, a large number of other
Bothwells have been located in various parts of northern Scotland prior
to 1700. Among them were Richard Bothwell, who became Abbott of
Dunfermline in 1449 and provost of Edinburgh in 1460; Francis Bothwell
who married Catherine Ballantyne in Edinburgh in 1530; Adam Bothwell who
became the first Protestant Bishop of Orkney and had at least three
sons--John, Francis and William--and a daughter, Jean; Henry Bothwell
who married Mary Campbell in Argyll County in 1676, and many more. Any
of hem might have been the ancestors of the Bothwell families later
found in the parish registers of Aberdeenshire.
Another episode of intrigue and adventure was related by John Thompson
Bothwell and published in the Chronological Record of Potter-Bothwell
Families:
"When he left Ireland it was in a time of an Irish feud, and our
great-grandfather was on the wrong side--at least he was on the weak
side--and those wild Irish got after the side our great-grandfather was
on and proposed to wipe them off the face of the earth, and to escape
their wrath our great-grandfather hired the captain of a ship to secret
him and his family from the angry officers, and for this service he paid
the captain a handsome sum of money.
Another historic document in the family archives is the printed
Naturalization Certificate granted to Alexander on September 23 1802, and
reproduced in full on the following page. When and under what
circumstances it was set in type and printed in this form is not known. The final report of the
Bothwells in Pennsylvania was found under the heading of "Indiana County
Tax Lists, Armstrong Twp., 1807" in Caldwell's History of Indiana
County. In a list of 93 taxpayers appeared these four names: There was, of course, no "David" in the Alexander
Bothwell family, but in view of the other three Bothwell names on the
list and the fallibility of old records, it seems practically certain
that the fourth member was William. The reason for their presence in
Indiana County at that particular time likewise seems obvious. James,
like his father, was a wheelwright and cabinet maker, and Indiana County
was right in the middle of a building boom. According to an address entitled "Historic Sketch of Indiana County,
Pennsylvania," which was delivered by the Hon. A.W. Taylor during the
Anniversary Celebration of July 4, 1876 ...
"Indiana the county seat, was laid out in 1805 ... The proceeds of the
town lots were applied to the erection of the county buildings, and thus
the old Courthouse (a most creditable building" in its days), and others
were built without taxation and without costing the people a farthing.
The Courthouse was built in 1808-1809 ... The assumption that James and
his younger brothers were there to work on the construction of the
Indiana County Courthouse and other buildings is based on the following
chronology: In 1806, Catharine Hagen Bothwell died, leaving to her
husband and eldest son James the responsibility of looking after the
other children. In 1807, James, then 22, was in Indiana County with
Mary, a young "spinster" at 19; John, 15, and presumably William, 17.
Alexander, Jr., 12; Arthur, 8 and Jane, 7, evidently had stayed behind
with their father in New Geneva. Their older sister, Sarah, may have
been there too if she were still living. In 1807 also, some time after
the tax lists were compiled, Mary married John Scott and went with him
to Putnam, now Zanesville, Ohio, where their eldest son Alexander
Bothwell Scott was born in October of the following year. In 1810, James married Charlotte Potter, possibly having remained in Indiana County
during 1808 and 1809 to continue work on the Courthouse. In 1811, Alexander I died and James and Charlotte, according to her Personal
Reminiscences, had moved to Selbysport, Maryland; Alexander II, who was
17 by that time, may have gone to Selbysport with them, because it is
pretty clearly established that he was the brother who accompanied them
to Ohio in 1814, as related in Section III. In the meantime, William and
John would have become, respectively, 21 and 19 years of age by 1811,
and old enough to look out for themselves. Soon afterwards, in fact,
John enlisted as a soldier in the War of 1812.
2. A long family letter written by Alexander's great grandson John
Homer Bothwell (1849 - 1929) to his cousin, John Thompson's
granddaughter Marion Bothwell on July 2, 1921.
"His name was Alexander Bothwell. He was a thoroughbred Scotchman. Uncle
Thompson does not know what county in Scotland he was born nor at what
time he left Scotland, but when he left he went to Ireland, and settled
in Downs County, Ireland. Uncle does not know whether he had any
brothers or sisters ...
He was married in Scotland, but he does not know
where, but it was no great distance from Bothwell Castle. There were at
least two daughters, and perhaps four daughters born in Scotland. ... By
occupation our great-grandfather was a wheelright and was a first-class
workman ... Our great-grandmother's maiden name was Catharine Hagen."
"My father--James Bothwell--was born unto Alexander Bothwell
and Catharine, his wife, August 20, 1785 in the county of Londonderry,
Ireland, where Alexander Bothwell had migrated from Scotland. His wife,
Catharine had been born in Wales, probably of English parentage.
"As far back as A.D. 1200 there was a barony or lordship of Bothwell, and
the famous old Bothwell Castle on the bank of the River Clyde, near the great
city of Glasgow, was early as that century if not before. The barony or lordship
was a lesser title of rank or nobility than that of earldom, yet the barony or
lordship of Bothwell was one of great dignity and influence in
Lanarkshire, in the southwest of Scotland, and the families of DeMoravia
or Moray and of Murray who early held the lordship and title became
famous and had the earldom created and conferred on them in the 16th
Century.
"I believe it was Andrew Murray, Lord Bothwell, who married
Christian, the sister of King Robert the Bruce, in A.D. 1300. The
earldom was created and bestowed on Patrick Hepburn, the first Earl of
Bothwell, in A.D. 1488. The second Earl of Bothwell was Adam Hepburn,
the third Earl was Patrick Hepburn, and James Hepburn who became the
fourth Earl of Bothwell on Nov. 3, 1556; was married to Queen Mary on
May 15, 1567, and left her at Carberry Hill on June 1, 1567, a month
after their marriage.
"With a castle and lordship named Bothwell, and
with a town that grew adjacent to the castle, it is but true to the
development of the names of families that some of them--either from
kinship or having lived in or about the castle--when removed to other
localities would be given or would assume the name of Bothwell, to
distinguish them from others. In that manner, I presume, some Scottish
families acquired that surname and there are certainly families of that
name in Scotland today. ...
"For myself, I do not believe that there is
the slightest evidence of our connection with any family of the Scottish
nobility, and I do not believe that our parents or grandparents ever
believed or claimed that we were descended from the titled families of
Scotland. I am quite content to know that my parents and grandparents
were honorable and kind and that they lived useful lives and are to be
respected and honored by their descendants, who may feel that they have
done well if they can prove as useful, kind and honorable as their known
ancestors."
Aunt Catharine Bothwell Foster (1815-1892, Alexander's
grand-daughter) told me that Alex Sr., would never tell anything of his
past life or just where he was born; the only thing he ever told me was
that he was born in Scotland near Bothwell Castle."
"I was born in Aberdeen and so
was my father (1877), his father (Alexander, 1840) and my
great-grandfather. I believe my great-great-grandfather lived in
Oldmeldrum, a village in Aberdeenshire.
July 24,
1749
Alexander
son of William Bothwell
in parish of Inverurie
1744
Alexander
son of John Bothwell
in parish of Oldmeldrum
1743
Alexander
son of William Bothwell
of Tillwell, in parish of Tarves My Grandfather's marriage
Grandmother's & father's death
"My grandfather had three sisters. One died unmarried, my
father told me, and the others married M. Scott and Mr. Corruthers or
Corrothers. I have known two or three of the grandsons of
Mary--"Mollie"--Bothwell, two having lived in Athens, Ohio. One lived in
Columbus where he was the president of the Ohio State University, and
John R. Scott is living at Columbia, Missouri, where he was long a
professor at the Missouri University but is now retired.
"My father told me that his Uncle Alexander Bothwell went to Ohio about the same time
that my grandfather went there, and that Alexander married Hannah
Claypool or Claypole and afterwards moved to Northern Illinois where he
settled in Knox County, and there lived to an old age and raised a large
family."
"His name was Alexander Bothwell. He was a
thoroughbred Scotchman. Uncle Thompson does not know what county in
Scotland he was born nor at what time he left Scotland, but when he left
he went to Ireland, and settled in Downs County, Ireland. Uncle does not
know whether he had any brothers or sisters.
Our grandfather, James
Bothwell, was born August 20, 1785 in Ireland. He was 10 years old when
our great-grandfather came to America, and settled in Winchester,
Virginia, but he afterward moved to Greensburg, Virginia.
He was married in Scotland, but he does not know where, but it was no great distance
from Bothwell Castle. There were at least two daughter, and perhaps four
daughters born in Scotland.
He was never married but once, a least Uncle
Thompson never heard of a second marriage.
He had four daughters and five sons.
His first daughter, Mary Bothwell, married John Scott.
His second daughter, Jane, married Thomas Carothers, and when last heard of
lived on the Miami River but the locality is unknown.
Then there were Sarah and Catherine, who never married.
His daughter Mollie lived and died at McConnellsville, Ohio.
His sons were James, who lived and died at McArthur, Ohio.
Alexander also lived and married there. His wife's
maiden name was Hannah Claypool. They had six children when they moved
to Illinois. He started to go to Peoria, but we heard in an indirect way
that he stopped in Perry County, Illinois.
John Bothwell was in
Wheeling, Va., in 1872. Heard of him there, but he moved down the
river--do not know where.
There were two other sons, William and Arthur, but we never knew what became of them."
Johnson was horrified
by the numbers of people preparing to emigrate when he toured the
Hebrides in 1773 ... It is believed that between 1760 and 1808 some
12,000 people left the Highlands for America and at least 30,000 for the
colonies.
"The officers came on board the
ship and searched for them but failed to discover their hiding place and
gave up their quest and return to land and the ship sailed away. After
they were many miles out on the ocean the Bothwells were released from
their place of concealment and allowed the privilege of freedom."
Mary Bothwell, spinster
James Bothwell, laborer
David Bothwell, laborer
John
Bothwell, laborer