Do you ever feel like your tracing after a bright shiny object to find yourself in the middle of a tangled web? That’s how I felt when I stumbled across the reference to the book History of the House of Olichteree of Ayrshire, Scotland while researching the family of John Finley Seller and his wife, Rebecca Sellers.
While I knew of a link between Rebecca’s Sellers family and my Crawford research, I stumbled across references to the family of James Crawford and his wife, Catherine in the book. While there isn’t much information in the book about this James Crawford, there is information about his daughter, Elizabeth and her LEECH descendants.
It is the biography of Elizabeth’s great-nephew, Bolivar F. Leech that contains information about the family of James and Catherine Crawford.
Bolivar F. Leech; son of Squire John Leech and his wife, Drusilla Tate
Clementine Railey, History of the House of Ochiltree of Ayrshire, Scotland: with the genealogy of the families of whose who came to America, and some of the allied families, 1124-1916 (Sterling, Kansas: Bulletin Printing Company, 1916), page 312-313; digital images, Archive.org, http://www.archive.org viewed online 18 October 2022.
(Finley) Leech, was born Mch. 27, 1837, in Rockbridge County, Virginia, near Old Oxford church; which is one and one half miles below the confluence of North and South Buffalo Creeks. He graduated from Washington College, Lexington; was three times a delegate to the State Legislature. He owned a fine farm of 600 acres on North Buffalo, the original home place of James and Catharine Crawford, which passed, through their son, Michael Crawford, to his sons, James, John, and Addison Crawford, who sold it on their removal to Greene Co., Ohio, in 1826, leaving none of this family, of the name in Rockbridge Co. He also owned 400 acres, one and one-half miles below the 600 acres, and 350 acres of mountain land, five miles west of his home place; 450 ft. more elevation. This tract was known as Smith’s Flat, or Lang’s Entry. He married Margaret Houston, dau. of John Davies and Martha (Wilson) Houston; and grand- daughter of Rev. Samuel Houston, of Rural Valley, the noted divine and educator, and his wife, Margaret Walker; she was the great granddaughter of John and Sarah (Todd) Houston. Sarah Todd was a daughter of Andrew Todd, an early settler on Hays Creek and among the first members of Old Providence church. An interesting sketch of Andrew Todd’s immediate ancestors is found in the National Enc. of Am. Biography, which traces them three generations back to the battle of Bothwell Bridge in Scotland, in 1670. Andrew Todd’s son, Sarah (Todd) Houston’s brother, Samuel Todd, High Sheriff, of Botetourt Co., 1791-92, was the father of Jane Todd, wife of Thomas Crawford, son of James Crawford, of North Buffalo, and brother of Michael Crawford, who married Eleanor Leech. B. F. Leech died Aug., 1907. 9 children.
Since the families in this book seem to follow a similar migration path to my CRAWFORD family, I believe I need to expand by CRAWFORD research to contain another James Crawford – James and his wife Catherine!
