A family traveling west by ox cart along a wooded road.

They came by ox cart in 1790.

Jonathan Latimer raised eleven children in New London, Connecticut, served through two wars, and then moved the whole family to what is now Sumner County, Tennessee. He gave a piece of the land to his son Charles, and Charles built this house on it.

1724: When Jonathan was born
Eleven: Sons and daughters
1790: When they arrived

01 · New London

A house full of children, and a teacher at the table.

Jonathan Latimer was born in New London, Connecticut, on the twenty seventh of May, 1724. He was the fourth generation of his family in the New World. His great grandfather Robert had come over aboard the Hopewell in 1636, and through his mother the line ran back to the Mayflower.

The house filled up. Nine sons and two daughters. In 1774 a young schoolmaster named Nathan Hale came to New London and boarded with the family. He taught thirty two students that year, and ten of them were Latimer children. He would serve as a lieutenant under Jonathan in the opening years of the war, and he was hanged as a spy two years after that, at twenty one.

02 · The war

What he carried at Saratoga.

He had already served through the French and Indian War before the Revolution called him back. By 1777 he was colonel of his regiment, raised to it after his friend and commander Samuel Selden was taken prisoner and died in a British prison.

At Saratoga his Connecticut troops held the line and counterattacked. Washington later called them two especially fine groups of militia. Jonathan was carrying his promotion papers folded in his coat pocket. A soldier remembered seeing him slap his hand to his leg in the middle of the fighting. Back at quarters that evening a spent ball dropped out of his boot. It had lodged in the papers.

“Tell my old friend I will see him at the front.”

Benedict Arnold, riding toward the fighting at Saratoga,
on being told whose column he had just passed

Four years later Arnold came back to Connecticut in a British uniform. He had grown up near New London and knew the harbour signals, so he gave them and landed without opposition. He massacred the defenders at Fort Griswold and set the town alight. Much of what the Latimers owned burned with it.

Jonathan had been given the defense of the harbour, and nobody warned him. His second in command told his men he had a headache and went home. By the time Jonathan reached the front he had too few men to do anything but harry the British back to their ships. He was tried afterwards, and acquitted with honour.

03 · The crossing

Why a settled family came to Sumner County.

Nobody wrote down the reason. What the record leaves is a set of pressures, and any one of them would have been enough on its own. Eleven children and one estate that would not divide eleven ways. A town in ashes. And west of the mountains, more land than a family could measure.

Two sons and a son in law went ahead in the late 1780's to see the country for themselves. The rest of the family followed by ox cart in 1790. Jonathan was sixty six years old. He bought land in Sumner County along Station Camp Creek and lived another sixteen years on it, dying in 1806 at eighty two.

Eleven: Nine sons and two daughters, and one estate that would not divide eleven ways.
1781: New London burned, and much of what the family held there burned with it.
Late 1780's: Two sons and a son in law went ahead to see the country for themselves.
1790: The rest of the family followed by ox cart and settled in Sumner County.

04 · The house Charles built

The land passed to Charles.

Charles Latimer had served alongside his father in the Revolution, as three of his brothers had. He was one of the sons the frontier was meant to make room for. Jonathan gave him a piece of the Sumner County land along Station Camp Creek, and Charles raised a house on it in the 1790's, from timber cut on the ground where it stands.

The house is still standing. Everything on this page is why it is worth keeping.

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