The Bootman Family
The Bootman Family
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The Bootmans were, by family tradition, of English origin. Although we have not determined the first direct ancestral Bootman immigrant to America, there is little reason to doubt the English lineage. A Bootman genealogy website based in England provides the earliest known information on the Bootman name. It was first mentioned in England in the year 1175, rooted in the French name Bouttemont. These ancestors were originally residents of Chateau Bouttemont near Lisieux in Normandy. Perhaps these Normans of Chateau Bouttemont arrived in England during or relatively soon after William the Conqueror’s invasion in 1066. Genealogical research in England has uncovered a Thomas Bootman living in Suffolk in 1225 and then a Nicholas Bootman who married Sibell Wynter in Framlingham, Suffolk, in 1566. The Bootmans were not landed gentry. They were farm laborers. For some, no doubt, the prospects of starting a new life in the American colonies were too great to resist. Early American censuses reveal that Bootmans initially settled in Virginia and New England upon arriving in the colonies. By far, most Bootmans took up Massachusetts and New Hampshire as their new homes, though a few landed in Maryland and Virginia. Benjamin B. Bootman Our earliest confirmed Bootman ancestor was Benjamin B. Bootman. He was born about 1817 in Virginia. It is not known where in Virginia he was born. In censuses, he lists both his mother and father as also born in Virginia. Who his parents were exactly remains a mystery. Interestingly, there was only one Bootman household in Virginia in the 1810 and 1820 censuses, framing the date of Benjamin’s birth. This household was headed by John Bootman and included two boys under the age of ten in 1820, which would match Benjamin’s age at the time. John Bootman lived in Prince William County, Virginia, in 1810 and in the Truro Parish of Fairfax County, Virginia, in 1820. It is not certain whether these two John Bootman’s are one and the same person. Before 1810, all Bootmans listed in the censuses lived in Maine, New Hampshire, or Massachusetts, with one John Bootman living in Talbot, Maryland, in 1800. (The Virginia censuses for 1790 and 1800 were lost or destroyed.) Searches of immigration records have revealed one Bootman immigrant of note from England before 1800, a convict forcibly deported to America, named Stephen Bootman. He arrived in 1773. This time frame would allow Stephen to be John Bootman’s father, though the relationship is only conjecture at this time. Prior to the Revolutionary War, Bootmans in America lived in New England – not in the Maryland and Virginia colonies. A Benjamin Butman lived in Henry, Virginia, in 1830 -- though he lived alone and was only in his thirties. Also of note is a Jonathan Boatman who lived in Lancaster, Virginia, at the time Benjamin Bootman was born. Mr. Boatman would be yet another candidate for Benjamin's father. The earliest record of Benjamin is his marriage record. He married Mary J. Harper on February 7, 1843. The marriage took place in Frederick County, Maryland. Mary was born about 1821 in Maryland. Her ancestry is not known, though both of her parents were born in Maryland as well. The 1840 census contains two candidates for her father, assuming she grew up in Frederick County. Both Lloyd Harper and Thomas Harper headed households in Petersville, Frederick County, Maryland, containing daughters of Mary J. Harper’s age at the time. After marrying, Benjamin and Mary Bootman moved to Hancock, Maryland. By that time, Hancock was a small but booming town hugging the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which had reached Hancock in 1839. In 1860, he was listed as a laborer in the census but apparently was held in high esteem by his fellow citizens. That year Abraham Lincoln was elected President. Almost immediately, southern states, with South Carolina at the helm, began talking seriously of secession and preparing for civil war. The Union entered a severe crisis. Fear of war ran high in Maryland where, because of its position as a border state between strongly Northern and strongly Southern populations, much of the conflict could take place. Public sentiments in Maryland were torn. The state was a slave state and consequently very much Southern in culture. A good number of its citizens, however, were staunchly in support of the Union and vehemently opposed slavery. Overall, however, the population was cautious and ultimately-pro union. Sitting on the cusp of both regions, Maryland was economically tied to both – and simply did not want to see a split. Western Marylanders had a great deal of sympathy for the South while having no intention of seceding from the Union. Above all, they hoped to avert civil war and preserve the Union. With Southern secession and war looming on the horizon, on December 6, 1860, citizens of Washington County’s Fifth Election District, including Benjamin B. Bootman, met at the house of Lloyd H. Barton in Hancock. The meeting was for “taking into consideration the present crisis in public affairs, and to appoint ten delegates to represent the district in the State Convention in Baltimore on the 6th of December.” The meeting unanimously adopted a number of resolutions that adequately expressed the sentiments of Hancock’s citizens at the time. These resolutions regretted the sectionalism pervading the country and denounced the triumph of “Northern sentiment” with the recent election of Lincoln. They declared: ...that notwithstanding some of our fellow citizens of the South profess to look upon the result of our recent election as a justification for a withdrawal from the National Union, and consequently a disruption of our government, we, standing as we do between the two extremes, and after the most mature consideration, cannot look upon the said result in so disastrous a light, but view it only as another evidence of the great truth of the sentiment that ‘The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.’ Resolved, That we believe that under the provisions of our Constitution the legislative and executive departments of our national government possess ample powers to cause the people of the North to do justice to the people of the South in the rendering up of fugitive slaves, and that by a judicious exercise of these powers, and proper appeals to the justice, the sense of right, and the patriotism of the people of the North, all causes of complaint may be easily and speedily removed. A committee of attendees reported the names of the ten delegates who would represent the area at the state convention in Baltimore on the questions of secession and war. Benjamin B. Bootman was one of the chosen delegates. Benjamin therefore approached the question of civil war from a distinctly border-state perspective, i.e., from the perspective of someone whose home is likely to see a good deal of the fighting. Whatever his views on slavery may have been, he clearly favored preserving the Union above all else – and avoiding a war. In his view, as expressed in the above resolution, the South would do well to seek redress of its grievances through democratic and legal means, and the North would do well to provide such redress. If saving the Union and avoiding war meant enforcing fugitive slave laws, then the North should do just that. At the same time, Benjamin had no intention of supporting secession of his own state or any state. From the little canal town where he lived, he could see Virginia and must not have wanted to look across the river one day and see a foreign country. These views he would push in Baltimore the following month. On such fundamental political and moral questions, the men of Hancock had trusted Benjamin Bootman to represent them. The episode obviously says a great deal about the respect he had garnered from the community since making his home there. Efforts of Western Marylanders like Benjamin Bootman to promote a compromise and avoid a war did not prevail. The Civil War raged. But thanks to political maneuvering and a flood of Northern troops into the state on their way to battle the Confederacy in the early months of the war, Maryland remained with the Union. Border states like Maryland provided plenty of battlefields. And the sons of Hancock volunteered for both sides, though there is no record that anyone from Benjamin Bootman’s immediate family served beyond defending their home and town. Benjamin was about 44 years old when the war broke out, and his oldest children were teenagers at the time. Hancock itself came under attack on January 5, 1862, when Confederate General Stonewall Jackson marched his When the war ended, much had changed. Slavery was abolished. Countless Americans had perished. The country had seen its first assassination of a sitting President. And, as Benjamin peered out across the canal and river, he no longer saw Virginia -- but a new state, West Virginia.
Benjamin and Mary Bootman had ten children, all born in Maryland, presumably Hancock. The second eldest was William T. Bootman, born August 12, 1846. He would become our next direct ancestor. Their children were
In 1880, the last census upon which Benjamin is listed, he was working as a clerk in a store at the age of 62. His son John also worked as a clerk in the store. Benjamin B. Bootman, Jr., was living with his parents and working as a miner. This was also the last census listing Benjamin’s wife Mary. Both Benjamin and Mary must have died in the 1880s. William T. Bootman Benjamin’s son William T. Bootman married Mary C. Basford sometime before 1869. About five years his senior, she was born in Virginia in about 1841 to Zebedee Basford and Delilah Carr. William made his living on the C&O Canal in Hancock, working as a lockkeeper on Lock 53. His family lived in the lockkeeper’s house at that site.
Another C&O Canal worker remembered: "There was a special bugle call that meant a boat was coming. It said, ‘Lock ready, lock ready, lock ready ’ and sometimes when you got closer you would holler that too. And the locktender, if it was at night, he would take a lantern and wave it so they’d know he’d heard them. In the daytime, of course, he could see the boat. They’d still blow the bugle, but the locktender would just wave.” William and Mary had four children, all born in Hancock, with at least the last one – our next direct ancestor – born at the lockkeeper’s house at Lock 53. They were
Only the foundations of the Lock 53 house remain today. It was likely built of wood. The lockhouses downstream toward Washington were largely constructed of stone and mortar and still stand today. But because of the lack of available stone upstream – and dwindling finances as the canal’s construction continued up into the Potomac Valley – the C&O Canal company resorted to hastily-constructed wood frame houses on this part of the waterway. Just four months after Thomas Arlington’s birth, his mother Mary died, at the young age of 38, on September 25, 1879. Widowed, William T. Bootman remarried within three years. His second wife, Sarah B. “Sadie” Truxell, born August 7, 1863, in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, was 17 years younger than him. Together, they would have at least two children, Marie Ellen (b. October 30, 1882) and Bessie. At the Hancock cemetery, William and Sadie Bootman are buried next to each other. Thomas Arlington Bootman Thomas Arlington Bootman, nicknamed “Tally,” was at least partially raised by his father’s sister Louisa (later known as L.B. Stine). His family Bible notes say that he was raised by an uncle. Thomas married Clara May Barncord on July 20, 1903, in Cumberland, Maryland. The couple settled in Ridgeley, West Virginia, across the Potomac River from Cumberland.
Thomas and Clara Bootman lived in a house at 10 Wabash Street in Ridgeley, West Virginia. All ten of their children were born there. They were
All of their children lived to adulthood except June Esther, who died of pneumonia at 3 a.m. on November 13, 1924, at the age of 5. Thomas was involved in a severe accident at work. A train dragged him for some distance, mangling both his legs. He spent the better part of a year bedridden in a body cast. Fortunately, he received a settlement from the railroad but was, in any event, forced to retire. For the rest of his life, he was unable to walk without crutches. |
troops north from Winchester, Virginia, to Hancock in order to disrupt Union transportation on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the C&O Canal. Jackson’s brigade bombarded Hancock with artillery from the opposite bank of the Potomac, starting at about 1 p.m. that Sunday afternoon. A Union Brigadier General with a garrison in Hancock refused to surrender. Jackson then rained cannonballs on the town for a second day, while attempting to find a suitable spot to cross the river and mount a full ground attack. The Union garrison, however, refused to budge, receiving reinforcements from Cumberland and Hagerstown, Maryland. Jackson finally withdrew from Hancock and marched on Romney, West Virginia, on January 7. Twenty-five Union and Confederate soldiers died in the Battle of Hancock.
In 1870, he was working as a clerk at the cement mill, along with his son Charles. The cement mill in question was most likely the Round Top Cement Mill. During construction of the C&O Canal, argillaceous magnesium limestone was discovered near Hancock. A mill was constructed on the site in 1838, operating first as Shafer’s Cement Mill and beginning in 1863 as Round Top Hydraulic Cement Company. By the 1860's, the mill was Hancock’s largest employer. The mill’s eight kilns burned limestone into powder for cement, using coal brought in by canal boat. The cement was packed by workers into 300-pound barrels and 50- and 100-pound sacks. As the 19th Century came to a close, this natural cement fell out of use, in favor of slower-setting and stronger Portland cement. The mill closed shop in 1909. Remnants of the mill, its foundations and kilns, can still be seen today from the C&O Canal Towpath.
A canal lockkeeper’s life was a hard one. Operating the locks, which worked as “water elevators” to allow boats to ascend or descend from one level of the canal to the next, required the lockkeeper to be on constant duty. One lockkeeper explained in an oral history that lockkeepers “couldn’t go nowhere. They had to be on the job all the time. But if I wanted to sleep in the daytime, I could lay down and sleep. My wife would hear [the boats] if they come. She could tend lock as well as I could. She’d relieve me and I could go some place, a ball game or something like that. It was tied down though. We didn’t get to go much together, only in the wintertime.”
He was a railroad man and eventually became a conductor for the Western Maryland Railroad. This railroad stretched from Baltimore to Cumberland by 1909 and eventually to
Connellsville, Pennsylvania, by 1912. It was part of a critical network for transporting agricultural products like molasses and grain, raw materials like coal and timber, and industrial goods like chemicals, rubber, steel, and machinery out of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia to the port of Baltimore. It also happened to be the shortest route over the Appalachian Mountains from the Atlantic Seaboard to the American Midwest. Passenger trains also traversed the Western Maryland Railroad for several decades, declining to a trickle by the 1960s.