Thomas Holt, First of the line born in America

      I am not absolutely certain as to what day in August of 1733, and where, Thomas Holt Sr. was born. I am certain that he and his parents, Henry and Dorcas, were present in the Episcopal, Christ Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on  27 September, 1733 when he was christened at "one month of age". It is recorded in Christ Church baptismal records. My guess is he was born in Philadelphia.
     As an interesting aside, Benjamin Franklin was also a parishioner at that church at that time and is buried in the church graveyard. Wouldn't it be interesting to know whether he was present at the church when the christening took place.
     It's not certain how long the family remained in Philadelphia. The next recorded occurrence of the family's whereabouts was in 1735 when Dorcas, Thomas's mother, was reprimanded  in court  in newly founded Lancaster, Pennsylvania for beating up on one of her neighbors. It appears he had slapped around one of  her female friends. That Scotch-Irish fire is still alive and well in her descendants today.
     Thomas's father Henry disappeared c1735. It's not known whether he died in Pennsylvania or was lost at sea returning home to England as the inheritor of his deceased father's estate. His mother remarried in 1738 to Arthur Buchanan, another Irish immigrant. She and Arthur had five children.
      On February 3, 1756 in St James Episcopal Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Thomas married eighteen year old Elizabeth Mitchell, daughter of John and Jane Ross Mitchell.  Thomas and Jane soon followed his mother and Arthur Buchanan to the vicinity of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Arthur died there in 1759.  Dorcas and her five Buchanan children and Thomas and his little family moved into the Pennsylvania wilderness where Lewistown is now sited on lands each had purchased from William Penn's sons.
       Thomas and Elizabeth had nine children: William, November,1756; John, 1 February, 1758; Thomas Jr. April 1761; James 1762; Elizabeth 1764; Mary 1766; Jane 1769; Dorcas 13 March 1772; and, Eleanor 22 September 1774.
        Over time, Thomas became influential in the area and was elected to several posts of importance in the local governing body. By mid 1776 the causative political currents that eventually fomented the American Revolutionary War against England were nearing fever pitch and the local Militia was formed. Thomas as a matter of course joined the Militia.  Some time during the summer of 1777 the militia personnel were afield honing their shooting skills. According to George F. Stackpole, a descendant of Thomas, "Thomas was shooting mark with, among others, his half- brother, Robert Buchanan on what is now Dorcas Street, Lewistown, Pa. Thomas was marking shot locations. He was concealed behind the target tree, Robert was shooting and for some reason, possibly a hang fire, he was slow in getting his shot off. Thomas stepped from behind the tree, possibly to determine why his half brother hadn't shot, and was hit in the head and killed."
       Elizabeth lived on in what eventually became Lewistown, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania until her death in 1798. Most of those members of the Holt and Buchanan families of the time are buried in the downtown Lewistown cemetery that is dedicated to Thomas's mother, pioneer woman Dorcas (Armstrong)(Holt) Buchanan.  About fifteen years after Dorcas's death, several admirers erected a  large, homemade,  dark bluish-gray, shale headstone over her grave that is still standing today, 200 years after her death. Thomas and Elizabeth's graves were lost to posterity when the Erie Canal was built through the area during the first half of the 1800's.

Thomas Holt ll & Elizabeth (Humphry?) Walker

Thomas Holt II, third son of Thomas Holt and Elizabeth Mitchell's nine children, was born in April 1761 in Oliver Twp (?), Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. Mifflin County at that time was still very much frontier country and was recovering from the aftermath of the French and Indian War. Thomas was just 16 when his father, Thomas, on the eve of the American Revolution in 1777, was shot and killed during a target practice session of the local militia. It is hard to imagine the trials and tribulations his mother Elizabeth and the family must have gone through over the next ten or fifteen years. Her youngest child was just three years old at the time.

Thomas II was the oldest male in the household after his two older brothers, William and John, joined the local military unit and marched off to war. Even then, he did serve in the home guard or militia completing four short tours, mainly chasing roving bands of Indians. For that service he was granted in 1840 a Revolutionary War pension  #S4400. He was living in Trumbull County, Ohio at the time.

Thomas lived at home untill his mother died in 1798 in Lewistown, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. He was still a batchelor living at home so his syblings permitted him to continue using his mother's iron cooking ware. It's interesting that such a mundane item as the pots and pans would be considered important enough to list in the final settlement papers.  Some time after that he moved to western Pennsylvania and then on to Ohio. Somewhere along the line, either in Mifflin County or Ohio, he met and married a widow?, Elizabeth Walker, b1778, seventeen years his junior. Elizabeth is thought to be the daughter of another Mifflin County couple, William and Jane Humphry.

 In the first week of June, 1806, Elizabeth gave birth to twins, William Humphry and Dorcas. Interestingly, William used the birth date of June 4 and Dorcas used June 2. Elizabeth apparently had a very difficult time giving birth to the twins for she died either during the children's birth or shortly thereafter. I have no information on where they were living when the children were born, the date of her death, nor where she is buried. Her death left forty-four year old Thomas with two newborns on his hands. He had been a bachelor for forty-two of those years and obviously knew absolutely nothing about caring for children let alone infants. So the babies were parceled out, William to his grandparents(?), the Humphrey's in Mifflin County Pennsylvania, and Dorcas to Thomas's sister, Eleanore (Holt) Windle and her husband, Francis, who lived in rural Trumbull County, Ohio.

 As an interesting aside, the Windles had eight children and shown here is a picture of the second of the six Windle daughters, Mary. The Windle children were, Elizabeth, b25 Oct. 1796, Mary, b3Mar 1799, Dorcas,  b7Aug 1801, Eleanore, b15 Jun 1804, William b2 Jan 1808, Rebecca b10 Apr 1810, Francis b6 Apr 1812, Martha Jane bJun 1817.

I'm not certain whether Thomas was living with the Windles or just near them. He lived on in Ohio until his death on the 29th of September, 1848. He was buried in the Eckis Cemetery, Milton Township, Trumbull County, Ohio as were the Windles and several of their children. The cemetery is in a rural area in the southern section of the county and is at the end of a fairly long lane leading in from the highway. As you come up on the cemetery the first thing you notice are four, fairly tall. black slate stones. These stones mark the graves of Thomas and the Windle family members buried there.