Old Chester-Wigton Walker Forward

This is the forward to Project Notes for Families related to the Wigton Walkers in Old Chester County. This project is an ongoing study collecting information about the Houston-Porter-Walker-Cowan and other allied families in Old Chester County, PA. The main project page can be found at

John Walker married Ann Houston c1734. many members of their extended family appear together in southwestern Virginia after 1770. In most cases we are unable to explicitly trace these families prior to their appearance in Southwest Virginia. The exceptions to this are the Walkers and the Houston's whose immediate antecedants can be explicitly traced to this area, documentation for which is presented elsewhere [need links]. More problematic are the Porter's and Cowan's. In both cases there is reasonable evidence to suggest that they settled in the Old Chester area prior to c1726. However, explicit evidence linking these families to the Cowans and Porters who married into the line of John Walker III is absent.

Major goals for this project are:

a. To collect data related to the family of Ann Houston, with the objective of linking them to other Houston lines known to be in this area. b. Trace the ancestry of Person:Patrick Porter (1), whose family is believed to come from this area c. Evaluate the data on members of the Cowan family who are present in this area, in terms of their possible relationships to the Cowans who appear in Southwest Virginia.