In 1610, Thomas Bouldinge arrived in the US aboard a ship from England, The Swan. He and his wife Mary made their way to Elizabeth Cittie in Virginia and began to farm there. Later, their descendents made their way to the Maryland area at the head of the Elk River, north of Chesapeake Bay. Some stayed there, in what is now Elkton and Cecil County, MD, while others bearing the Bouldin or Boulden name worked their way into New Castle, DE, Baltimore, and surrounding areas. We are reasonably certain about the first four generations of Bouldens(Bouldin), but have yet to document a connection with William Louis Boulden, who was born in Cecil County, Maryland in 1792.

(Katharine E. Harbury©, 2006) The Bouldin saga in America likely begins with Thomas Bouldin I, yeoman, who decided to come aboard the Swan early in 1610 as part of Lord De La Warr,s entourage and leave England forever, but absolute proof is still lacking. Thomas was among those willing to risk his life to settle in Virginia under the auspices of The Virginia Company of London. However dangerous the risk, the options to purchase one share of stock at the price of £12 and 10s, and to own a hundred acres for each share after a number of years must have appeared attractive. If one paid his passage to Virginia, he would be exempt from military service and taxes other than Church duties. If the Virginia Company of London paid his passage, he was required to pay annual fees on top of his service and do his share of military duties and taxes. On 8 June 1610, Thomas Bouldin I and other hopefuls were sailing up the James River aboard the Swan when their ship met another ship bound for England with the last of the survivors from Jamestown. This providential encounter helped prevent the abandonment of the Jamestown colony. The rest is history. View the complete article.

William Louis Bouldin, a soldier in the War of 1812, was married to Nancy Ann Patterson. After the War, William and Ann decided to immigrate to Ohio. She and the children came overland, by wagon, while he went by flatboat down the Ohio River and purchased a farm in Miami County, OH, near Piqua in 1817. They settled there on land recently ,liberated, from the Miami Indians by General Mad Anthony Wayne, and began to raise a large family. But something bad happened, and William Louis died in 1830, at the youthful age of only 38, leaving a widow and six small children on what was then the frontier. We don,t know why he died, but I have found his farm and knelt at his grave.

His son, William Henry Boulden, though born in New Castle, DE, was raised on the Ohio frontier. He married a local girl named Dorcas Warner. (Today, her name would be spelled Doris.) They no longer had the family farm, and to earn money for another one, they went north and worked with hundreds of others in digging the Miami Canal and Great Lake St. Mary, the water supply for the canal. Then they returned to Piqua. When their marriage broke down, William Henry told Dorcas she could leave if she wished, but their tiny baby, Joseph Louis Boulden, had to stay. Dorcas left, and William Henry gave little Joseph Louis to his mother, Ann Boulden, to raise him, and later married Elizabeth Daniels, with whom he had two daughters and a son before his early death in 1857.

Joseph Louis Boulden grew up in Ohio, and then emigrated with his aunts and uncles to Iowa during the 1850,s. From there, he made his way west to the Colorado gold rush in about 1858, and was in Georgia Gulch, Colorado, when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Soon he enlisted in the First New Mexico Cavalry, where he served under Kit Carson in what is present-day Arizona and New Mexico. After that conflict, he returned to near Council Bluffs, Iowa, and joined the Union Pacific Railroad as it was being built to Ogden, Utah. He worked his way west on the UP, and when the job was completed in Ogden, married a 15-year old girl there, Matilda Curtis. He and Mattie moved with her parents to settle in the Sanpete County area of central Utah. When Brigham Young, president of the LDS Church, called for Sanpete settlers to colonize the Castle Valley area of Utah, Joe and Mattie were among the first to volunteer and moved there, founding the small towns of Orangeville and Castle Dale. Joseph Louis was my great-grandfather, and I hold him in high esteem. I,d like to write a book about him. He deserves it.

His oldest surviving son, William Barton Boulden, took his young wife, Annetta Jane de Cunha (subsequently americanized to Annetta Cunha), and small children and immigrated from a comfortable, settled life in Castle Valley to the Uintah Basin of eastern Utah to raise his family. More information on these families in included in the sections ahead, and in the genealogical charts that will be appended to this history. But a few things leap out from these examples:

Each of these Bouldens was a working class man, not born into wealth or ease.

Each was a blacksmith, and a family man. With one exception, they married for life and devoted themselves to raising a family.

Each was willing to pull up stakes and move when necessary to provide for a family.

Each maintained close family ties across the distances they traveled, staying close emotionally and financially to the families they left behind.