MySource:Samples 59/Cochran Family of New Castle, Delaware

Cochran Family of New Castle, Delaware

• [Excerpt Pages 999, 1000] Scharf, John Thomas. History of Delaware, 1609-1888.

About the year 1570, John Cochran crossed over from Paisley, in Scotland to the North of Ireland. He was a clansman of the powerful house of Dundonald, and of kin with its noble head. For several generations his descendants were born, tilled the land, married and died in the home of their adoption. Many were of the gentry, most were yeomen, but all led sober, upright, righteous lives, feared God and kept His commandments. The family names were carefully perpetuated. James, the son of John, was succeeded by John, who, in turn, was father of another James. Then came Robert, called “honest,” to distinguish him from others of the same name. His sons were James, Stephen and David, and these latter crossed the sea and settled in Pennsylvania, where unmolested they might continue to worship in the faith of their fathers.

James married his kinswoman, Isabella, the daughter of “deaf” Robert. Their children were Ann, Robert, James, John, Stephen, Jane and George. Ann married the Rev. John Roan, or Rohan, as it was indifferently spelled; Jane became the wife of Rev. Alexander Mitchell; Robert died, leaving a daughter Isabella; James died in April, 1768, preceded in his departure out of this world by his father, James, who died in the autumn of 1766.

This is the race of Cochrans from the period when they quitted their home in Scotland to the time when their bones were first laid in the New World. James, Stephen and David settled in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and laid out their farms near the rippling currents of Octorara. As appears from the records, James first resided in Sadsbury, in the same county and State. In 1742 he purchased one hundred and thirty-five acres additional in the same township, but it was not until the year 1745 that a large tract in Fallowfield, owned in common by the three brothers, was divided, and a patent issued by John, Thomas and Richard Penn to James, for three contiguous lots, aggregating four hundred and thirty acres.

This tract lay to the south of Stephen’s and David’s shares. Through the northern portion, and near to the northwestern boundary, dividing it from the land of Stephen, ran the New Castle, road, today called the Gap and Newport turnpike. There the little village of Cochranville, by its name perpetuates the traditions of the clan, whose pibroch and whose slogan have long ceased to sound on Scottish hills. These facts may be found in an article contributed by Walter L. C. Biddle to the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. III., No. 3, 1879, pp. 241, 242, and also in Judge J. Smith Futhey’s “History of Chester County.” One of the scious of the original Cochran stock settled in New Castle County, Delaware, near Summit Bridge, and had a son James, who also lived there and had the following children, viz.: William, who still survives, (February 1888); Francis, Robert A., and James.

Robert A. Cochran, the subject of this sketch was born Nov. 11, 1805, on what is known as the Levels, about three miles southwest of Middletown, New Castle County, Delaware, on the farm now owned and occupied by Joseph Roberts. Soon after his birth his father, James Cochran, who was born near Summit Bridge, New Castle County, bought and removed to a farm on Bohemia Manor, Cecil County, Maryland, near what is now Murphy’s Mill, about five miles from Middletown. Up to about the time he was sixteen years of age, he worked hard on the farm for nine months in the year, and during a part of the winter months he attended a poor public school in Middletown, many times walking the five miles each way morning and night.

When about sisteen years old he went to Turner’s Creek, in Kent County, Md., to clerk in a store, where he stayed about two years. He then went on horseback to Alabama with an uncle, who was a large cotton-planter, to superintend for him a portion of his business. Being very frugal, he had saved a little money during this time, and when about twenty years of age he paid his own way for tuition at a seminary for about a year, shortly after which he enlisted in General Scott’s army to fight the Indians in Forida, in what is known as the Seminole War. He stayed until the war was over, and thrilling indeed it was to hear him relate the many hair-breadth escapes he made from the savages and from the dreadful fevers that prevailed in the swamps of that wild region around Tampa Bay and the Everglades. After the war he spent several years more in different parts of the South, chiefly in Alabama and Georgia, during which time he managed to save a few thousand dollars. Meanwhile he made several trips to his old home in Maryland on horseback, and finally concluded to leave the South and settle permanently near is old home. On his way back he stopped to rest at Joppa Cross-Roads, in Harford County, Md., which lies immediately on the turnpike then known as the Philadelphia and Balitmore turnpike and stage-route, and where now stans a station onn the new Baltimore and Philadelphia Railroad, called Joppa. Sojourning with his friends and relatives, John Rouse and family, he there and then first met the bright and beautiful girl, Mary L. Rouse, then seventeen years of age, whom he afterwards married, in little over a year. Sarah Rouse, the mother of Mary L., whose maiden-name was Sarah Cochran, had removed from Delaware to Harford County some years before, and was a relative of Robert A. Cochran, and closely connected with the numerous Cochran Family of Balitmore City and Harford County, Md.

The marriage took place at Joppa, September 21, 1837. The bride and groom went very soon thereafter to Middletown, Del., and sepnt the following winter with ex-Governor John P. and R. T. Cochran. In the spring following they took board at the Middletown Hotel, and Mr. Cochran engaged in the lumber business In about a year afterwards he bought the hotel and about seventy acres of land, lying oontiguous thereto, on which a good part of the town now stands.

In 1844 he bought, on the levels near Middletown, a farm, lying adjacent to the one on which he was born, which he proceeded to improve in a vigourous manner. In 1849 he built a large brick house and commodious out-buildings upon it, and removed thereto in the summer of 1850, and by his untiring industry and good management in a few years converted it from a barren common to a rich and fertile farm.

In 1861 Mr. Cochran was elected on the Democratic ticket to the State Legislature, and served through the regular term. He also served in the extra session of 1862. Before the war he had acted with the old Whig party.

In 1866 he left the farm and removed to Middletown again, and devoted himself to building up the town and the management of his seven farms, all of which he had, by his industry, economy and good management, succeeded in buying and paying for in a few years entirely by his own exertion and unaided by any one to the extent of five hundred dollars. He had often been heard to say that when he started South he had just ten cents in his pocket, and he never received a cent from his father’s small estate.

There never lived a more industrious and economical and honest man that Robert A. Cochran. Many people say that the town of Middletown would never have been what it is today had it not been for him, and the many buildings he erected there stand as monuments to commemorate his enterprise, quite as significant as the granite shaft that marks his tomb in the Forest Hill Presbyterian Church Cemetery.

He died November 2, 1882, being within nine days of seventy-seven years of age. His wife had died January 24, 1877. He left an estate valued at two hundred thousand dollars. The children born to Robert A. and Mary L. Cochran were as follows: Edwin R., now clerk of the peace for New Castle County, and married to Ada C., daughter of Charles Beasten, of Odessa, Del. (his home is near Middletown, in a commodious dwelling, built by his father in 1865; he has three children – Edwin R., Jr., Blanche B. and Ada L. Cochran); two sons bore the name of William H. Cochran (the first was born June 16, 1840, the second August 20, 1841; both are now dead); James F., born August 22, 1843; Sarah o., born May 17, 1845; R. Alvin, born February 24, 1849; Christopher C., born April 27, 1851; Mary L., born April 17, 1853; Florence E., born March 30, 1861; and Amanda S., born April 16, 1855, are all deceased, and, with the exception of R. Alvin, died before their father. Frances E., born May 10, 1847, is the wife of William A. Comegys, a relative of Chief Justice Comegys. He is deputy collector of Internal Revenue, and resided at Middletown. Josephine R., born November 30, 1857, is the wife of Mr. Frank Conrey, of Chesapeake City.

Mr. Cochran was an adherent and one of the founders, and from its foundations until his death one of the trustees of the Forest Presbyterian Church at Middletown.

Two children have been born to Mrs. Wm. A. Comegys, viz: Robert A. and Joseph P. Robert A. Cochran (now deceased) left three children, viz.: Evelyn, Bertie and Louise. Mrs. J. R. Conrey has one son Frank.