Ancestors

Isaac Loman

Isaac Loman was born on 9 September 1807. The date comes from the indenture that bound him out as a boy, which in July 1817 made him "of the age of 10 years the 9th day of September next". His parents were William Loman and Sally Golden, who married in Madison County, Kentucky, in 1800, by a family list. Isaac grew up in Madison County. The county history of 1883 calls him a native of North Carolina, which does not sit easily with parents married in Kentucky seven years before he was born.

By the spring of 1817 his father had gone. In May the Madison County court ordered its clerk to summon Sally Loman "to show cause if any why her children in her possessions should not be bound out as the law directs." Kentucky's county courts could bind out the children of a family that could not support them. The child served a master until the age of twenty one, and the master undertook to feed, clothe and lodge the child and teach a trade. That May the court bound Isaac's brother James to William Bently and Company.

In July it was Isaac's turn. The court ordered the clerk to bind out "Isaac Loman and Mourning Loman sons of William Loman who has absconded and failed to provide support for said Isaac and Mourning to William Richardson to learn all the common arts and mysteries of the sigar and mfg. business as the law directs." Isaac was nine. Mourning had turned six on the 6th of that month. On 22 July 1817 the clerk, William Irvine, made the indenture on the boys' behalf. They were to serve Richardson "in all lawful commands until they arrive to the age of 21 years each". He was to "clothe, lodge, feed, and learn them all the common arts and mysteries of the sigar, mfg. tobacco business". The indenture says nothing about schooling.

His sisters went the same way. Lucinda, "dtr of William Loman", was bound to Ignatius R. Simms that July to learn "spinning, weaving, and house business". In January 1818 Susannah, "dtr of Sally Loman", was bound to Samuel P. Harris to learn weaving and household work. In eight months the court had placed five of the children with four masters.

The family remembered what came next. In the account handed down through a later Loman, life with his master "became intolerable and Isaac ran away while still young and spent the rest of his life until he became a man, as a run-away bounder, hunted by every sherriff in the state. He finally reached maturity, became a free man, and married Phoebe Davenport." The family list puts the marriage in 1829, when Isaac was twenty one or twenty two. No record of the escape itself is known.

Isaac and Phoebe stayed in Madison County. Their eldest son, James, was born there on 28 May 1831, and Elias on 15 April 1834. There were seven children in all. Isaac died about 1842, when James was eleven. Phoebe married again, to Leonard F. Coffman, and by 1860 she and her Loman sons were in Jefferson County, Illinois.

In the spring of 1858 James came to Elk Prairie in Jefferson County, leading an old mare named Nellie, with his wife, a three-year-old daughter, a chopping axe, a rifle, an iron skillet, an auger and a hoe. The writer who set down the family's story in 1973 began with him, "for he was the son of a bounder."

If Isaac Loman is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Isaac Loman (1807-1842)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/isaac-loman-1807-1842-da0148.