William Stanford was the first

of our direct ancestors to set foot on American soil. It isn’t clear exactly when he and his small family arrived – although it was almost certainly in the early 1750’s – and I’ve seen nothing that says where they disembarked. The records I’ve seen say he was born in Northern Ireland about 1729, so he would have been about 25 when he made the voyage. He was married – his wife Mary was also born in Ireland – and they may have had a young child at the time.

The records show that William and Mary had eight children, four of whom apparently died in infancy. They lived for a while in Virginia, then in about 1772 they moved to South Carolina. William died in Chester County, which is in the Piedmont section of South Carolina, in 1788.