SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 1764 — 259 YEARS AGO
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1764, somewhere in Ireland, James Boal, great-grandfather of my great-great-grandmother Nettie Ann Boal, was born.
He became a linen and carpet weaver, a vocation probably learned from his father. James married Elizabeth Welch in 1787. James and Elizabeth left for America in 1790 with their two children, Margaret and George. They left from Londonderry in Northern Ireland, where they had been living.
“The trip was made by the cheapest passage.” It was not a pleasant journey. “The voyage of three months was a stormy one, during which the ship sprang a leak, and much of the cargo, including some of the goods belonging to the Boal family, was thrown overboard.”
They were Presbyterians, indicating that the Boal family likely had come from Scotland at some point and settled in Ireland. James and the family lived in central Pennsylvania, in Centre County, near Boalsburg. His son William, grandfather of Nettie, lived in Solon, Iowa, near Oasis where my great-great-grandfather Jerome Darling married Nettie.
AARON HILL’S NOTEBOOK 