It is assumed that John Boatner was born prior to 1760. Some students of this family claim 1758 as his birth year.

The only of filial record of John Boatner’s existence is a census listing for John Bottaner in Sumter County in 1790. His household in that year consisted of three males under the age of 16, six females of unstated age (one obviously being his wife), and five slaves. At least one child (Louisa) presumably arrived after that date. (Almost all early Sumter County records have been destroyed, so little searching is possible

John’s wife was Elizabeth Gaulden of Sumter County (1765-1838), whose sister was married to a member of the prominent Richardson family, leaders in the 1810 migration from Sumter to the Mississippi Territory. The Gauldens settled in the High Hills section of Sumter County about 1758, having moved there from Virginia.

John Boatner is said to have died in 1796. This information was provided by his daughter-in-law, Sarah Jelks Boatner Freeman, who wrote in her old age to her grandson William Boatner Reily that her husband’s father had been “a farmer mechanic and a very nice gentleman.” (One of Jacob’s descendants claimed that Ludwig “showed his mechanical genius in rigging sails to his wagon to help to propel it.” Perhaps John had Inherited some of his father’s aptitude.)

Students of John’s line are not in agreement on the members of his household. The known children – taken from family records in Louisiana – are William Jared, born 1788, and Louisa, born c1795. They went with their mother to the Mississippi Territory in 1811, and they are the only two children named in her will.

The identity of John’s  other children cannot be documented. Among the candidates proposed have been a John Jr. and daughters Mattie, Emmille, and Kate. No evidence has been uncovered to support this hypothesis (and the names resemble those of William Jared’s oldest children).

There are some clues in the census and other records, however, to suggest names for two other sons (besides William Jared), but again, there is no unanimity even among those who have considered this possibility.

In the 1800 census for Sumter County, there are two Jacob Boatner’s listed, both names identically Anglicized. One is surely Ludwig’s son Jacob, who married Elizabeth Gerald in 1799 and resided in Sumter County until 1810. The other Jacob Boatner, from the scant evidence available, would certainly seem to be a son of John. In 1800, he was between 16 and 26, which would give him a birth date between 1774 and 1784.

This Jacob Boatner’s household in the 1800 census was listed in proximity to the households of Reuben Long and Francis Richardson. John’s widow, Elizabeth Gaulden Boatner, though not listed in this census is known to have owned land on Long Branch of Black River adjoining Reuben Long.

It is not illogical to conjecture that Elizabeth Boatner’s farm was being manned by her son Jacob and possibly other sons while she was making her home elsewhere with her very small children.

Then in 1802, a Jacob Boatner bought one of the lots which had been newly laid out at the courthouse site a short distance to the east at the village of Sumter. It is certainly unlikely that the other Jacob, Ludwig’s son, would have purchased a town lot, for he was known to be a millwright. (See Jacob’s profile.)

In 1803, Elizabeth Boatner purchased additional land adjoining her farm. To the 150 acres which she already owned (John Boatner’s original farm?) she added another 150 acres, purchased for $500 from Reuben Long. (S.C. Archives, Sumter County Deeds, Vol. B, pp. 9-11, Roll 1.) This suggests that she had returned to the management of the farm and was again in residence.

What happened to the younger Jacob Boatner we do not know. He evidently did not occupy or develop the lot in the new village of Sumter. He may have remained to work the Boatner farm on Long Branch.

By 1810, this Jacob’ household was dissolved. Since he never more appears in the county records, we may conjecture that he died young. There is no proven identity for the three other members of his household, who were of the same  generation as he. We do not even know if they were Boatners. But a case can be made that at least one of them may have been a brother and that the female member of the establishment may have been Jacob’s wife.

In the 1810 census of Newberry County, there is a Lewis Boatner (born c1784) who had married in 1806 a young Newberry widow. Near him, in the eastern part of the county, lived a young woman, presumably a widow, named Eliza (Poll)
Boatner. She had two children, names unknown.

If the young Jacob Boatner had died and the other Boatner households in Sumter County were breaking up, it is quite possible that the young widow followed her brother-in-law to his new home in Newberry County, where there were other Boatner families as well. *****(Lewis will be treated in this section as a possible son of John, but Eliza and her children will be relegated to the ranks of Unidentified Boatners owing to the paucity of subsequent information.)

The Lewis Boatner who first appears in Newberry County records in 1806 as the new husband of Sarah Root Suber has much to recommend him as a candidate for a member of John Boatner’s family, although this theory is not endorsed by some knowledgeable students of the line.

In some versions of the early family history, this Lewis has been mistaken for Ludwig himself. And in some stories, the biographical information on the two men is hopelessly tangled.

Helen Boatner Glasscock (1842-1930), one of Lewis’ granddaughters, believed him to be a son of Ludwig. She also believed that he was half-brother of John Boatner of Newberry. (See George’s line.) It seems impossible that either was the son of Ludwig, for they would both have been minors at the time of his death, much younger than Solomon and Samuel, who were his sole legatees.

No evidence exists to prove that Lewis was a son of George Boatner and older half-brother of John. But if not half-brothers, they were undoubtedly first cousins, and their lives and those of their children, were closely linked.

This Lewis Boatner lived in Newberry County for about 30 years after his marriage to Sarah Root Suber. His wife had at least one son by Jaspar Suber, her first husband. This son, Micajah Suber, remained in South Carolina, but he evidently had affectionate ties to the children of her second marriage.

Together, Lewis and Sarah had three children: Maria, born 1809, John Root, 1812, and William Lewis, 1814. The family lived in relative affluence; in the 1830 census, there were 22 slaves in the household.

About 1835, Lewis and his family departed for the new state of Alabama. His destination was near today’s Huntsville (in Marshall County), some distance from his cousin John’s Newberry contingent, which had preceded him by ten years and settled in Tuscaloosa County. The expanded family now included John Root’s wife, Eliza Taggert of Charleston, and Maria’s husband, Jesse Pratt.

One senses some arrangement between Lewis and his sons. By 1840, both young men had departed to join their Newberry relation, John Boatner, who had relocated in 1835 in northern Mississippi.

Lewis Boatner died about 1846 in Marshall County, Alabama, and very little can be gleaned about the decade that the family lived there. Another mystery is the identity of a young Boatner named Fielding (born c1816 in South Carolina according to the 1850 Alabama census) who remained in Marshall County after Lewis’ family departed. (When he died about 1858, Fielding left part of his estate to an aunt, Sarah Durrett, another link with the Durrett family to be explored.) Also remaining in Marshall County was an unidentified older woman living alone named Elizabeth. (See Unidentified Boatners.)

Lewis’ widow, daughter, and son-in-law followed the earlier path of his sons to northern Mississippi where they settled as neighbors of John Boatner, John Root, and William in Tippah County.

Sarah Root Suber Boatner died in 1855; she is buried with many other Boatners in Amaziah cemetery. A few years later, John Root moved his large family to Arkansas, and still later to Robertson County, Texas, where his offspring added considerably to the Boatner population of that state. Jesse and Maria Pratt remained in Tippah County.

William Lewis Boatner stayed in Tippah County less than a decade. Before 1850, he moved to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. There is some mystery surrounding William’s marriages. It has recently come to light that he had a Newberry bride, Eliza Lyles, by the time he reached Tippah County, Miss., in 1840. (The county tax list of 1845 credits him with a household of five members.)

William Boatner and Eliza Lyles were granted a divorce on July 27, 1847, in Marshall County, A1a. (which may indicate that that was where their marriage had taken place)?

In the 1850 Missouri census, William had an infant daughter, Josephine, born in that state. and a boy who was evidently his oldest son, Thomas, by his wife Eliza Lyles. His new wife was also named Eliza; it remains to be verified whether she is the same wife reported elsewhere as Josephine Morgan.

Eliza Lyles Boatner moved to Chickasaw County, Miss., to reside with her brother Jesse. It was the 1850 census of her husbandless household there that created a mystery for her descendants for so many years. She and her children remained in Mississippi (though Thomas’s children passed down dim recollections of a Missouri connection).

Meanwhile, recent evidence has credited William with still another wife – Mary Bridgeforth, whom he married in Cape Girardeau in May, 1856. (The following year, he married Louisa Gholson, and their line has been well traced.)

The persevering descendants of Eliza Lyles Boatner, who have long sought their place on the family tree, have evidently found it at last. But like the many other descendants of William Lewis and John Root Boatner, their father’s kinship with Ludwig’s son John remains an unproved if likely theory.

If Lewis Boatner of Newberry County was an older son of John Boatner, then perhaps both time and distance severed his ties with the remaining members of his family. (Elizabeth Boatner, John’s widow, and her youngest children departed from South Carolina more than twenty years before Lewis moved to Alabama.) That Lewis named his sons John and William is not necessarily firm evidence that he was a son of John; but by the same token, his exclusion from Elizabeth’s will is not necessarily evidence that he was not.

The known son of John Boatner is William Jared, whose descendants have proliferated for many generations in the state of Louisiana. William and his mother sold the family farm on Long Branch in January, 1811 – as co-conveyors, William having reached the age of 23. (S.C. Archives, Sumter County Deeds, Vol. CC, pp. 424-425, Roll 9.)

They traveled with Louisa in an unknown manner to join with Louisa in an unknown manner to join their Boatner relations Amite County in southwest Mississippi in that same year.  Certainly, their action suggests that they remained close to Jacob Boatner during the fifteen years after the death of the head of their household. Gauldens, too, were early arrivals in southwest Mississippi, but William
Jared’s subsequent activities were additional evidence of his Boatner ties.

By September, 1811, William Jared had acquired his first land, 157 acres in Amite County. (William did not use a middle name on the 1811 deed in South Carolina or later in Louisiana. Some Mississippi and Louisiana records assign him the middle initial “J” or “I,” and a 19th century family Bible uses the middle name ”Jared” in both his birth and death listing. He also chose that name for one of his sons.)

During the War of 1812, William Jared was a sergeant in the Hinds Cavalry of the Mississippi Territory. He saw service at Pensacola and New Orleans. In March, 1814, while he was away, his sister married Membrance Williams. And in early May, his mother married William Hatfield.

Upon his return to civilian life, William resided for a time in Amite County. Reverend William Winans described in an entry in his diary in August, 1815 the young man’s unfortunate illness while he was a visitor at the home of J.G. Richardson. “Mr. W. Boatner was violently attacked with a cramp or colic in the stomach. We bled him, bathed his feet in warm water, and gave him a concoction of snake root and calamust, gave him a dose of camphor and laudanum, and rubbed his hands and stomach with camphor. It was, however, with considerable difficulty   he was at last relieved.”

William made a full recovery, and he must have enjoyed a strong constitution indeed to survive the treatment. Now in his late twenties, he was evidently developing close relationships with the children of Elias, who were his first cousins and con- temporaries in age. Daniel, Elias’ oldest son, married Elizabeth Jelks in 1817; two years later, William, now 31, married her younger sister, Sarah. (Intermarriages of Boatners and Jelks occurred with frequency through several generations.)

The pioneering couple soon moved a few miles south to Kellertown, which is now the village of Norwood in East Feliciana Parish. Here in 1832, they completed the four-year project of building ”Mimosa Grove” at a cost of $8,000, using lumber sawed and hewn from trees growing on or near the site, and brick produced there also. This was, of course, common practice, as was that of undertaking a long range buying expedition for slaves. horses, carriages. and household furnishings.

William and a party of kinsman and friends took a lengthy trip in 1832 – to New Orleans, then up the Mississippi to Cincinnati, and thence 500 miles overland to Baltimore. In his surviving letters, we read of his buying “a pair of splendid Greys” for Sarah, “one of the finest house women in the state,” “a fine coach and harness,” and “a mixed lot of negroes of all sizes. . . .”

Though he obviously had prospered on the Feliciana frontier, William was fated to die young – only a year after finishing ”Mimosa Grove” – leaving Sarah a young widow with ten children. (By a second marriage, to William’ first cousin, Zachariah C. Freeman, Sarah had another two sons and four daughters.)

“Mimosa Grove” is still a Boatner home; and many descendants of William Jared and Sarah Ann Jelks remain in the area. Others, including the prominent and prolific Reily line, abound in Hew Orleans and around Baton Rouge and Monroe.

About William Jared Boatner’s sister Louisa, little is known. She and her husband Membrance sold their plantation on Comite Creek in 1823 to William Jared. By the time of his death in 1833, they had both pre-deceased him. There were four sons from this marriage, all Louisiana residents.

Any student of the descendants of John Boatner in Louisiana, or for that matter, of Elias and Jacob Boatner as well, would find his time profitably spent and his story enriched by tracing some of the other families who came from Sumter County – the Gauldens,  Richardsons, Hatfields, and Geralds – to share the great adventure of the earliest Boatners.

When Ludwig returned to his Edgefield land in 1792, he was relocating near two of his older sons. Elias had married Jane Black of Newberry County and was living a few miles down river from Ludwig’s farm. There were already four children in his household. Ludwig’s son George was living in the southern part of Newberry County.Ludwig’s son John had long since settled in Sumter County some mites to the east. And son Jacob, now 21, had apparently elected to settle near John in Sumter County.

In Ludwig’s Edgefield household, there were his two remaining sons, Solomon and Samuel, and, presumably, his remaining unmarried daughters (who had all departed by the end of the decade).

Ludwig had hardly unpacked his meager belongings in Edgefield when in April. his presence was needed back in Fairfield. Caesar had run away from his new owner, Minor Winn.

On April 27, five weeks after the hasty termination of his affairs, Ludwig returned to Fairfield County. By deed (in which he listed his residence as Ninety Six District), he resold Caesar to Joseph McDonald for £27 pounds “working money.”

A contingency clause was written into the document that “the said negro Ceasar (sic) which is now absent and cannot be delivered by the said Lewis Bortner” be delivered within one year. Failing this, Ludwig was to refund McDonald’s money.  Both McDonald and Minor Winn noted their acquiescence on the margin of the deed, and Thomas Means was one of the witnesses. We can only hope that the combined efforts of Ludwig’s neighbors allowed the old man to go home with a clear conscience.

During the last years of his life, Ludwig apparently had little or no contact with his sons in Sumter County. But he did visit his son George in Newberry County across the river at least once. And he must have had fairly frequent contact with Elias, for that son borrowed a sizeable amount of money from his father, no doubt to finance some of his numerous land acquisitions.

Solomon remained at the Edgefield farm for only a few months. His descendants believe that he was married in 1792 or shortly thereafter; the surname of Mary, his bride. was unfortunately not recorded for posterity. During the closing years of the century, only young Samuel lived in his father’s household.

Something about the events in Fairfield must have continued to rankle the old man. Perhaps he had given up his land against his wishes, after a11. On July 18, 1798, Minor Winn sold the last parcel of his Fairfield   land, the easternmost section, to Walter Poole, a neighboring farmer. Ludwig must have had immediate news of the transaction. Whether he had an aversion to the buyer or was simply stirred by festering memories, we cannot know.

But the following week, he visited his son George in Newberry County, and there he sold 50 acres of his Edgefield river front to Thomas Chappell of Newberry. (Chappell began a ferry in 1802.  Today there is a bridge at the site.) For the land, Ludwig received £10 sterling.

The sale was transacted on July 25 and recorded on the 29th. George no doubt saw to the arrangements; the witnesses were Newberry County men. (The document refers throughout
to Lewis Boatner but is inscribed, not in his handwriting, as Ludwig Bottner.)

It can hardly be a coincidence that George Boatner, on the very next day after the deed was recorded, traveled across the Broad River to Fairfield County where. for just over £11, he repurchased the parcel from Walter Poole – 118 acres which was stipulated in the deed to be part of the land “originally granted to Lewis Boatner on the waters of Rock Creek. . . .”

At his fatherly bidding, apparently, George had redeemed a small portion of the Fairfield land. Ludwig may have rationalized that it was a gift for his son, but it must actually have been some kind of vindication for the old man. There is no record that George ever claimed the land or even sold it. He had pacified Ludwig by executing his wishes at no expense to himself and little inconvenience. Perhaps he was satisfied to let the matter end there.

Soon after this incident, Ludwig must have failed in health. In 1800, the census taker listed Samuel as the family head, while Ludwig was counted as the only other occupant of the sparsely furnished farmhouse on the Saluda.

In 1801, there was a serious flu epidemic and, it is very likely that, this brought on Ludwig’s final illness that winter. He dictated his will on his deathbed in the closing days of the year. The witnesses were Samuel Mayes (Ludwig’s most prominent neighbor and later a brigadier general in the War of 1812), John Lowe, and William Leaney. Ludwig is referred to throughout this document as Lewis Bortner, the customary Edgefield spelling.

His sons Solomon and Samuel carried the will to the Edgefield courthouse to be recorded by the clerk on the first of January, 1802. They were named as the executors of his estate. They were also named the sole heirs in his will. Ludwig specifically cut off “all the rest of my children from having any part of my estate as I have given them what I intended for them heretofore.”

(This enigmatic reference has caused students of the family history unresolved frustration for many decades, and it is likely to keep on doing so, for it has deprived us of knowing once and for all the names of Ludwig’s sons and daughters.)

The meager estate inventory submitted to the court on January 16 had a value of only $100.22 in personal property: a bay mare, saddle. wagon, 40 bushels of corn, “one old bed and furniture,” a wheel and two chairs, one cow, calf, and heifer.

But there were debts owed to Ludwig. Samuel had given his father a note for $12.36. John Buffington and William Towles and John Lowe owed a total of $11.10. Jesse Scurry, his neighbor, had borrowed $4.17. These relatively small debts totaled $29.63.

But “Elijah Bortner” owed notes totaling $700. In the context of the size of the estate, Elias’ debts stand out dramatically. And indeed, they could recount for any money that Ludwig might have realized from the sale of his Fairfield
property.

Many a student of the family’s history has pondered Ludwig’s will and wished fervently that he could read the old man’s mind, or at least know his reasons for deliberately cutting off all but two of his children. What had he given the others that he “wanted them to have”? Had he indeed bestowed gifts – or was he settling scores?

For Elias and George, there is a possible explanation.  Ludwig may have felt that they had been recognized sufficiently – George by a gift of land and Elias by lenient credit which had led to a large debt and possible estrangement.

As for John and Jacob, they had been gone from home the longest, and they had gone the farthest. John had predeceased his father. Had he left his widow and children in straitened circumstances, or did Ludwig even know how they fared?

Perhaps Ludwig had satisfied his conscience by bestowing a material blessing on John and Jacob when they left to set up their own households. But, what of his daughters? Since we do not even know who they were, we can only assume that Ludwig felt that his duty was done by them when he found them husbands.

The traditions of filial respect must have been engrained in the German heritage of these children. Still. one cannot help wondering if there were suspicions among the older brothers that Samuel and Solomon had unduly influenced the dying man.  And one cannot help wondering also whether Ludwig had perhaps become a cantankerous and even irrational individual whose departure might have evoked a sense of relief as well as respectful filial grief.

In any ease, Solomon and Samuel proved to be poor custodians of their patrimony. There are no documents to record the subsequent history of Ludwig’s land; we do not know
when or how they disposed of it.

Though Solomon moved farther west to Pendleton County about 1809, his grandchildren remembered the Saluda River.  This suggests that the land remained in Solomon’s possession until the late 1830’s. when he and his children and grandchildren began their exodus to northern Georgia.
Samuel’s history can hardly be written at all. He served briefly in the militia of Sumter county during the War of 1812. He acquired a small tract there on the west side of Long Branch, which may have placed him in the old neighborhood of his brother John’s widow, Elizabeth. He had to mortgage his property in 1814; and in 1817, it was sold by the sheriff for debts.

Thereafter, Samuel seems to have lived a generally unnoticed and threadbare existence residing sometimes in Sumter and sometimes in Kershaw County. In the censuses his household consisted only of himself and his wife. (The 1830 census and the Sumter County documents both confirm that Samuel used the middle initial “J.”) In 1850, a Mary Boatner, presumably his widow, was listed as a pauper In Sumter County.

And what of the other sons: Elias, John, George, and Jacob? Elias and Jacob Boatner and their families were reunited in 1816 when Elias sold his large landholdings on the Saluda and followed his brother Jacob, who had been a part of the great migration out of Sumter County in 1810 to southwest Mississippi.

Elias Boatner lived out his life in Amite County, but four of his children – Daniel, Mark, Elias Jr., and Mary – traveled southward a few miles to live in Louisiana, as did William Jared, John’s son.

John Boatner of Sumter County died, according to family recollections, about 1796. His widow, Elizabeth Gaulden Boatner, and her son William Jared and daughter Louisa joined their Boatner relations in the Mississippi Territory about 1811.  The identity of his remaining children has been the subject of much inquiry and debate by students of his line.

Gorge Boatner of Newberry County had four sons and two daughters, all of whom moved in the 1820’s to Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, to settle on land newly taken from the
Indians. They may have been accompanied by their aged parents. The leader of the move was George’s oldest son, John, who led a further migration westward a decade later to the red clay hills of northern Mississippi. There he, and a large number of descendants, put down roots that still run deep.

Other descendants of Ludwig were among the early arrivals in Texas in the 1850’s – in particular, Ezekiel Grandberry Boatner, a grandson of Solomon, and John Root Boatner possibly a grandson of John), were among the first members of the Boatner Texas population. By 1880, there were seven Boatner families in Texas; by 1900, there were 24.
Through census records and family documents, it has been possible to accumulate a great deal of information about many of the descendants of Ludwig Boatner and his sons. But there are mysteries.

Several Boatners, most of them living in Alabama in the 1820’s and 1830’s, have not yet been attached to any known branch of the family tree. They are of an age to be Ludwig’s
grandchildren or perhaps great grandchildren – but by what father? How can we account for James, Isham and Fielding Boatner of Alabama – all born (according to census records) in South Carolina between 1806 and 1816? And who was the John Boatner, born in South Carolina c1800 and residing in Alabama in 1850 with sons named Elias, William, and Solomon?

There are today many Boatners who have not been able to find their place on the family tree because they are descended from these men. And so, this history is handed down unfinished.  Was there a son of Ludwig whose existence has not been documented, or do these men belong to Ludwig’s known sons?These questions have not yet yielded to the most diligent students of our family history. 1 hope that they will not give up trying. And I hope that this book will challenge all Boatners to write down their own lineage and to appreciate their heritage.

Born in the spring of 1771, Jacob Boatner was still an infant when his father acquired land on the Broad River. And he must have left the Fairfield County home as a very young man. Perhaps moving directly to Sumter County, for he was not enumerated in the 1790 census.

About 1900, Jacob’s grandson and namesake wrote the following version of early Boatner history:

Lewis Boatner came from Germany when a boy and settled on Broadriver, S.C. He served in the Revolutionary War as a teamster and showed his mechanical genius in rigging sails to his wagon to help propel it. After the war, he owned a merchant water-mill. While helping to keep this mill, his son Jacob learned the mill wright’s trade by which he made his fortune.

Two brothers came over with Lewis Boatner and settled in or near Philadelphia, neither of whom had families so far as we know. . . Mary Martin (Ludwig’s wife) was of French descent.

This fascinating account was written by a man whose ancestors had been gone from South Carolina for almost ninety years. Jacob had been the first to leave home and he had gone a daring distance, undoubtedly, his descendants’ version
acquired some inaccuracies through the years, but there is much that is probably correct.

While there is no known documentation that Ludwig had a wife of French descent, it is not impossible, for there were Huguenots in South Carolina. And while we now do not believe that Ludwig arrived in South Carolina during his boyhood or made his first home on the Broad River, still this was Jacob Boatner’s home from his infancy.

The story of Ludwig’s two brothers differs importantly from the claims of descendants of other branches, principally Solomon’s, whose versions mostly confused the relationships among the South Carolina Boatners.

The version of Jacob’s descendants is the only one which suggests a Pennsylvania connection. And certainly, we know that there were two Pennsylvania Botners – Elias and Joseph – who were younger contemporaries of Ludwig and perhaps orphans of Ludwig Botner of Heidleberg township, Pa. (See Chapter I.)

If Jacob’s version is correct on this point then our Ludwig parted company from his family without joining the Pennsylvania household. And evidently he never regained contact with his brothers. Someday perhaps we will be fortunate enough to have our curiosity satisfied on these questions. What is important here is the close matching of certain points in Jacob’s version with the known history; this suggests that the parts of the story that are most intriguing may also have come from Jacob himself.

In 1799, Jacob Boatner married Elizabeth Rebecca Gerald. If census records can be relied on to define neighborhoods, he and his wife made their first home in the southwest part of Sumter County. In 1800, Jacob’s neighbors included Cains,
Moores and Singletons. There is today a Cain’s Pond on a branch of Cane Savannah Creek called Brunson’s Swamp. And an 1825 map shows a mill site on this branch; it also shows close by the pond site “R Singleton’s Race Turf.” (See map page 112.) This neighborhood was about nine miles south of Elizabeth Boatner, widow of John Boatner, on Long Branch of Black River.

In 1801, Jacob purchased from General John Sumter, the leading citizen of the county, 223 acres on Bluff Head Branch, which was a fork of Long Branch. (S.C. Archives, Sumter County Deeds. Vol. AA, pp. 130-131. Roll 9.)

The county’s residents were mostly second generation colonials, coming from Virginia or from the South Carolina coast. The western area known as the “High Hills of Santee” became, late in the 18th century, a summering place for the low country gentry because of its healthful climate.

Sumter was one of the first South Carolina counties to benefit from the invention of the cotton gin. Cotton was being grown commercially there by 1796. The initial result was prosperity and the beginning of the plantation system, which was to spread throughout the south.

By 1810 (according to census tabulations), the county’s 14,877 inhabitants owned 1,309 spinning wheels and 570 looms. (There were also six distilleries and 2,000 gallons of peach brandy.) But overproduction and the worsening problem of land exhaustion had severely damaged the local economy; and its residents began leaving in large numbers for the newly opening lands to the west and south.

One of the greatest migrations occurred in 1810, under the leadership of John Gaulden Richardson, a descendant of “the worthy sensible gentleman” who had been admired by the Reverend Woodmason half a century earlier. (His mother was Martha Gaulden, no doubt close kin to John Boatner’s widow.)

Young Richardson, under the sponsorship of planters in his neighborhood, traveled on horseback in the closing months of 1808 to a settlement (now called Woodville) in the southwestern corner of the Mississippi Territory. In January, 1809, he staked out 160 acres where he raised profitable crops and returned home with an enthusiastic report of his success.

As a result, more than a thousand people made haste to form a caravan, which departed from Sumter County on the last Monday of November, 1809. A Richardson descendant later wrote. “Family after family fell into line, each with wagons, teams and equipment.” Their journey was an arduous one, covering hundreds of piles and lasting many months.

Jacob and Elizabeth Boatner were not part of this first wave. The county records confirm their presence as late as March 24, 1810, when they were co-sellers, with Elizabeth’s brothers Samuel and Charles and other family members, of land on Hatchet Camp Creek as heirs of Gabriel Gerald. (Sumter Deed Book CC, pp. 209-210.)

But they were preparing to leave even as the caravan departed, for less than a month afterward (December 13, 1809),   Jacob Boatner, mill wright, had sold the 223 acres on Bluffhead branch, the “tract whereon I now live.” (Deed Book CC, pp.137-138.) The inheritance from his father-in-law’s estate, added to the $608 from the sale of his own place, undoubtedly provided the stake which Jacob and Elizabeth Boatner used to launch their great adventure.

Their path lay though the Creek lands which were later to be claimed by Alabama. Passports had to be issued by the governors of Georgia to settlers seeking safe conduct through this Indian territory.

On April 30, 1810, only five weeks after the settlement of   Gabriel Gerald’s estate, passports were issued for the following party: “Jacob Boatner, his wife, two nephews, mother-in-law, and her two sons and a young man of the name of Ginn, and 28 negroes, all from Sumpter (sic) District. South Carolina.”

The 1800-1810 census for Washington County (which was the name that had been given to the 300 square mile area established in 1800 just north of British West Florida) records Jacob’s household in figures that square precisely with those of the passport: “three white males over 21; three white males under 21; two white females over 21, 28 slaves.”

The two nephews (whether Boatner or Gerald) have never been positively identified. (John’s son William Jared, then 22 years old, was still in Sumter County with his mother as late as January, 1811, though it is conceivable that he had made a hasty round trip in the interim.)

Another unexplained fact is that both Jacob and Elias Boatner had land grants reported as issued to them in 1809, a year before Jacob received his passport. It is conceivable that John Richardson was charged with filing requests for other applicants during his year of pioneering. Even if Elias and Jacob were absentee applicants, however, we have evidence that Elias, too, was involved in the plan to migrate from its inception – or at least that Jacob was acting on his behalf.

After his arrival, Jacob acquired land by grant in 1810, 1811, and 1816. His brother Elias joined him in the latter year and acquired still larger holdings. Their adjoining property was of great natural beauty – gently rolling hills heavily wooded in pine and mixed hardwoods. (Although hunting and fishing remain excellent to this day, it is now poor farm land.)

Jacob was one of the largest slave owners of Washington County; by 1830, he had 39 slaves. This seems ample evidence that he, as well as his brother Elias and nephew William Jared, had prospered on their new frontier to a degree that far exceeded anything that Ludwig had ever achieved, or even envisioned.

Jacob’s only son, Lawrence Marion Boatner (1812-1873), married Frances Kell in 1838, a year after Jacob’s death. Lawrence inherited a considerable estate and built on this to become one of the more affluent local citizens. Nothing is known of Jacob’s other child. Lawrence’s younger sister Theodora.

It was probably Lawrence’s son Jacob who wrote down in 1900, at the age of 55, the story of Ludwig’s origins which he had been told by his own father. This great grandson of Ludwig Bottner was evidently something of a chronicler, for he also penned a recollection of his Civil War service, which had mostly been in Mississippi and Alabama. He surrendered at Gaynsville, A1a. on May 13, 1865:

The quartermaster stole the money (intended for our pay) and six fine mules and a fine wagon and went with honors home.
I went home with 22 months military experience, the government owing me for 20 months at $25 per month, $500; 2 horses $300; bounty $25; extra service $50; and I held a claim for corn and beef for which I never got one cent, $500. Total $1.375.

Many of the descendants of the large family of Lawrence and Frances Kell Boatner still live in the region, although few now bear the Boatner name. Jacob’s house survived until World War II when it was demolished about the time that Camp Van Dorn was built on and around the old Boatner homesteads. But according to the Louisiana Genealogical Register (December, 1967, p. 63), Jacob’s vault, Elizabeth’s tombstone, and other early Boatner vaults and markers still remain.