The Rattan Family History & Genealogy
by Mike McKeever
A History of the Rattan/Rotan Family
Mike McKeever, son of Joanne Rattan, has spent the last 37 years discovering his family's lost history. He has now published The Rattan Family: Pioneers in America, a 343-page hardback book with facts, stories, and historical references covering 285 years of the Rattan/Rotan family history. In the book there is a 1000-person family tree, beginning with family patriarch, Richard Rattan (born about 1700). There are also 380 footnotes referencing the sources as well as a complete index, making it easy to find any ancestor in the book. A summation of the history and an abridged family tree are found below.
The book can be ordered for $29.99. It is being sold for the author's cost plus shipping. To obtain a copy write to Mike McKeever at mckeever40@aol.com or 603 Creekview Cir., Ovilla, TX 75154
Early Rattan/Rotan Family History; beginnings in Charleston, South Carolina
When Richard Rattan (ca. 1700) and Hepzibah Biddle stepped through the doors of a small stone church building in Charleston, South Carolina to marry each other in 1721, they began an epic family story that would include thousand of descendants, cascading across 285 years of American pioneering experience. The small stone church building still stands near the Ashley River. The earliest document found for the Rattan family is the marriage record of Richard and Hepzibah in 1721 in St. Andrews Episcopal Church (St. Andrews Episcopal Chrch Marriages 1714-1774, microfiche SCHS 51-143-2B, Dallas Public Library). Richard Rattan had probably come from England to Charleston. The earliest family record we have for this is a statment made by Volney Rattan in 1889, "John Rattan of England...came to America with his brother William, settled in North Carolina and fought in the Revolutionary War, in which he was shot through the body." (Battey, P.A. Biographical Souvenir of the State of Texas, Chicago, Southern Historical Press, 1978) Volney was only partially correct. John Rattan did serve in the Revolution, but he and William Rattan must have been born in America since their father, Richard, married in Charleston in 1721.
Probable English Roots
It becomes even more apparent that Richard Rattan (ca. 1700) was probably English when we examine his relationships and associations in Charleston. Prior to the marriage of Richard Rattan and Hepzibah Biddle, Hepzibah's mother made an important will. In the will Ann Biddle (in 1713-4) stated that Hepzibah was to receive all of Ann's property if she reached age 21 or married prior to Ann's death. If Ann died before those two events, a Samuel West and his wife Sarah were to receive Ann's property. Doubtless, an arrangement had been made that the Wests would take care of Hepzibah if she were still a child at Ann's death. (Ann Biddle Will, 1713-1714, Charleston South Carolina Will Transcripts 1671-1724 and 1721-1731,Will Book 1711-1718, p. 40)
In Ann Biddle's will she left "mourning rings" to Samuel West, Sarah West, and a John Pendarvis. At that time in history, mourning rings were generally left to family relations, usually cousins or in-laws. Richard Rattan's tie to this group is further substantiated when John Pendarvis named Samuel West and a Richard Butler as brothers-in-law in his will (John Pendarvis Will 1719. South Carolina Will Transcripts 1671-1724 and 1722-1731, Will Book 1724-1725, p. 40.) So it appears that Ann and Hepzibah Biddle were related to West, Pendarvis, and Butler at least by marriage. When Richard Rattan (ca.1700) married Hepzibah, he, too became a part of the group.
Also joining the group in 1721 was a Henry Toomer. He married Mary West, possibly a daughter of Samuel West. The family group would eventually leave Charleston and establish farms together fifty miles to the north. Samuel West came from England to Charleston on the first ship in 1669 (Samuel West of South Carolina, 1669 by Miriam West Jones, p. 17) John Pendarvis' father was from Cornwall, England. He arrived in Charleston in 1671 where his son John was born in 1673. (South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 19, p. 8) The Biblical name, Hepzibah, given to Richard Rattan's wife, is a clue that Ann and Hepzibah Biddle may have been a part of the English Puritan group before they came to Charleston. So it's clear that the family group into which Richard Rattan married was English.
French Huguenot Connection?
There is a family tradition that the Rattans/Rotans were French Huguenots (John Rattan, Revolutionary War Soldier, and His Descendants, 1947; microfilm copy #106704, roll 2, Illinois State Historical Library p.1) It is possible that the Rattans were a part of the significant French Huguenot community that developed in London beginning in the 1550s. There are many British census records for Rattans, and the earliest is for a Leah Rattan who, at age 100, was living in the Christ Church Spitalfields parish, a French Huguenot neighborhood in London, in 1841. (Census Returns of England and Wales, 1841, Kew, Surrey, England. The National Archives of the UK: Public Record Office, 1841; accessed on ancestry.com) No evidence has been found that Richard Rattan (ca. 1700) was descended from the French Huguenot Londoners, but if he was, he would have become throughly anglicized over the years. During the time of Richard's marriage in Charleston, SC, there was a clear and strong tendency for the English, the French, and the other ethnic and religious groups to marry only within their own group. Jumping far forward in time, a study of the 1880 U.S. Census shows 229 Rattans living in America. There were 53 in Texas, 39 in Alabama, 24 in Ohio, 27 in New York, and 9 in California. Of those 229 Rattans, 13 were born in England and 5 in Ireland. So 160 years after the marriage of Richard Rattan (ca. 1700), Rattans were still coming to the U.S. from the British Isles.
Prince George Parish, South Carolina
By 1733 at the latest, the family group had left Charleson and established farms in Prince George Parish 50 miles to the north. A plat map done for Henry Toomer in that year shows the "Richard Rotan" farm to the immediate east of Toomer's. (South Carolina Colonial Plat Books, Vol. I 1731-1735, series S213184, Vol. 1 p. 378, item 2) Later that year, in the same plat book, we find another map done for the widow Sarah West, showing the "Rich Rotan" farm to her immediate west. The family name is spelled Rottan or Rotan or some other similar spelling for the next 80 years in many historical documents. If today the British would pronounce, for instance, the word "passport" something like "paahhsport," it may be that the British colonial settlers pronounced the name Rattan something like "Raahhton" with the accent on the first syllable The study of many colonial records in the rural areas of South Carolina has demonstrated to this author that attorneys and clerks spelled names phonetically and badly. Numerous instances have been found where the name Rattan/Rotan was spelled differently in the same document and sometimes in the same sentence so it is necessary to accept many variant spellings of Rattan.
The plat map for Sarah West shows something unusual. At least 20-30% of her farm was swamp land, and the swamp land extended onto the Richard Rattan/Rotan farm. The South Carolinian immigrants had found difficulty finding a sustainable export until they discovered that rice could be grown in commercial quanties in the swamp areas of South Carolina. Years later Richard Rattan received a land grant in another location in Craven County, South Carolina, and, again, 40-50% of his land was covered in swamp. It's clear that the members of the English family group that left Charleston had become rice farmers.
A baffling fact about this community of the Wests, Butlers, Toomers, Pendarvises, and Rattans in Prince George Parish is that Richard Rattan (ca. 1700) never received a grant for his farm. The Carolinas were owned by the British Lord Proprietors, who were giving the land to settlers so the Proprietors could take a part of their crops in taxes. Obtaining free land was accomplished simply by finding vacant land and applying for a land grant. For some reason, all of the other members of the group got grants, but Richard Rattan didn't.
Slave Theft
Even more amazing than the fact the Richard Rattan (ca. 1700) didn't own his own farm is the next development in his story. In 1737, four years after the aforementioned land plat maps were done, a disturbing ad appeared in the Charleston newspaper, The South Carolina Gazette. The ad was placed by a Thomas Ellery, and it reads as follows:
"Whereas Richard Rattan about 20 days since run off this Province, and carried with him a Negro woman named Flora, and her Child Katey, the Proper Negroes of T.I. Ellery....if any person shall apprehend the said Ratton...shall receive 50 pounds reward from the said Ellery." (South Carolina Gazette, May 21, 1737, p.4)
This ad ran for three consecutive weeks, and this author has found no resolution to the matter. When Ellery says that Rattan has "run off this Province," only a couple of possibilities come to mind. First, is that Rattan had gone further into backcounty South Carolina away from any civilized area where he might be caught. That would have been a risky business since at that time the backcounty was mainly occupied by Indians. A second possibility would be that he boarded a ship and fled, perhaps, up to the Chesapeake Bay area where Jamestown and Williamsburg and other communities had formed in Virginia. The Rattan family disappears from the pages of public record for the next seventeen years only to reemerge in the backcounty of South Carolina in 1754.
The question arises: Were the children of Richard Rattan (ca. 1700) with his wife Hepzibah or with the slave Flora? That becomes clear when Richard's son William Rattan Sr. appeared before the Charleston City Council in 1754 to petition for a land grant for his father. The council records show the following:
"The Petition of Richard Ratten by his son William Rattan humbly setting forth That the Petitioner being aged and not able to Travel his Son William now attending...to prove his Father's right and having 5 Persons in Family viz himself, wife, and three children...prays to lay out 250 acres of Land on Santee River or the waters thereof so that he may obtain a grant for the same. Charles Town, the 7th of May 1754. Richard Ratten. The prayer thereof was granted." (This is one of many instances where the name Rattan is spelled differently in the same sentence of a legal document.) (Holcomb, Brent. Petitions for Land from South Carolina Council Journals, Vol. 4, 1754-1756. B.H. Holcomb distributor, Columbia S.C., p. 58-59.)
We learn from this petition that Richard Rattan (ca. 1700) had three children. From later documents we learn that in addition to his son William Rattan Sr., his firstborn son was John Rattan Sr. The third child may have died or was a girl whose maiden name would not show up in future documents. When William appeared before the Charleston Council, it's clear that he was the child of Richard and Hepzibah rather than the child of Richard and the slave Katey. Any child of Flora's would have been at the most sixteen years old at that time, much too young to obtain an audience with the city council for a land grant petition.
Richard Rattan Receives a Land Grant from King George II
On February 11, 1756 Richard Rattan (ca. 1700) received a grant of 250 acres from King George II of England. The survey describes the land as on Wateree Creek, a tributary of the Wateree River. Located in what later became Fairfield County, SC, the land was about half swamp land and was about 130 miles northwest of Charleston. Thirty-four years after his marriage to Hepzibah Biddle, and at around age 55, Richard Rattan finally owned his own land. Richard must have died on this land sometime in the next fifteen years.
The following deed, registered after the death of Richard Rattan, gives us more information about the Rattan family, including the name of John Rattan Sr.'s wife. "2 Oct 1772 (Fairfield) SC. John Rottan [John Rattan Sr.] and Sithina, his wife, of Craven Co. to James Martin of same, for 10 pounds SC money 250 ac. Granted to Richard Rotten on 11 Feb 1756. John Rotten has good, sure and indefeasible estate of inheritance. Wit: William Rotten, James Eades, William Mark." (Fairfield County, South Carolina Deed Book B, pp. 232-4; FHL microfilm 0,023,991) This most unusual name "Sithina" ties together Rattan family tree in documents for the next 50 years, culminating in a deed in which John Rattan Sr. and Sithina conveyed their land in Kentucky to their son, John Rattan Jr., in 1800.
The Rattans Move West Toward the Appalachian Mountains
Five years prior to the time John Rattan Sr. sold this property he inherited from his father Richard Rattan (ca. 1700), John had migrated further to the northwest where he obtained his own land grant in what was to become Spartanburg Co., South Carolina. Originally this land was in Mecklenberg Co. North Carolina but was later transferred to Spartanburg SC when the state borderline was moved. The grant reads as follows: "John Rottan [John Rattan Sr.] 28 April 1768. 300 acres in Mecklenberg on the both sides of the S. fork of the Packolett [the Pacolet River] including John Rottans improvements."