Borland, John

THE BORLAND FAMILY.

John Borland was born in 1750 in County Antrim, Ireland, and came to America the first time about 1769. He crossed the ocean five times. He returned to Ireland in 1775, and was prevented by the American Revolution, then just beginning, from returning until 1781, when he brought with him his two brothers, Samuel and Matthew, the former settling on the Manor (now Penn township), and the latter locating in Washington County. John came to Franklin township in 1790, and entered some five hundred acres of land, part of which is the homestead of his son, Maj. Thomas Borland, who was there born in 1805. His neighbors were Charles Wilson (owning the lands now possessed by Judge John W. Riddle) and David Crookshanks. He married in 1791 Margaret, daughter of William Carnes, who lived two miles out on the Manor. His wife’s brother married a daughter of Charles Wilson. John Borland had a very extensive distillery twenty rods below the present Borland homestead, in the hollow. His children were John, William, Rachel (died young), Andrew (became a printer and went to Missouri), James (owned the place where Cornelius E. Berlin resides), Samuel, Thomas, and Margaret (married to William McQuaid). Thomas, the only survivor of these children, married in 1847 Jane, daughter of Robert Wilson, of Salem township. John Borland bought his land of William Ellison, Jr., in 1790, for ten shillings per acre, which had been entered by Ellison at the same time that A.M. Boyd entered his tract. John Borland, Jr., was in the war of 1812, and served at the siege of Fort Meigs under Gen. Harrison. The first school-house in this neighborhood was on the Borland farm. It was built in 1799, and in 1812 was removed to another part of the farm towards the Manor. Samuel Milligan was its teacher for over sixteen years, who received six dollars a year from each scholar by subscription. John Borland died in 1830, aged eighty years, and his wife, Margaret (Carnes), in 1861, aged ninety-seven. His sister, who married Judge Potts, of Johnstown, died shortly afterwards.