James LeTort: Huguenot Refugees as the Technical Cog in Our Pennsylvania River Machine

By David T Gardner, 

Sir William’s Key™ the Future of History unlocks a 1719 deed transfer—that terse conveyance from James LeTort to James Logan, recorded in the Pennsylvania Land Office warrant books and preserved in the Pennsylvania Archives, Series 3, Volume XXIV, page 56, where LeTort sells off 500 acres on the west side of the Susquehanna River, abutting creek mouths and trading paths for £50 current money. It's the kind of quiet transaction that sits in the colonial ledgers, overlooked amid the clamor of fur trade deals and Indian councils, but when we cross-reference it with our family's 1720 Donegal warrants for the hemp mill at Chickies Creek, the chain forges itself. We've been auditing our syndicate's pivot from Ulster's linen looms to Pennsylvania's hemp processors, and the LeTorts—those Huguenot refugees from northern France—emerge as the technical experts who made it all turn. No mere neighbors to our John Gardner; they were the fiber specialists, bringing retting and scutching know-how from Protestant exile networks to fuel our closed-loop logistics. The deeds hold clues, yes, but they whisper of a deeper alliance: evasion tactics reborn on the Susquehanna, where Huguenot craftsmanship met our warden rights to outfit the westward push. Let's piece this from the receipts, linking the LeTorts' Huguenot flight to their role in our machine.

The Huguenot Exile: From French Persecution to Pennsylvania Trading Posts

James LeTort thread begins in the fires of religious strife. Jacques LeTort (c. 1651–after 1715) and his wife Anne fled northern France—likely the Sarthe department, as suggested in Huguenot refugee rolls—after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, unleashing waves of Protestant persecution (detailed in the Huguenot Society of Great Britain's Proceedings, Vol. 10, 1901–1903, p. 456, transcribing exile lists). They landed in London first, then sailed for William Penn's colony, arriving in 1686 as noted in the Pennsylvania Provincial Council minutes (Pennsylvania Archives, Series 1, Vol. I, p. 12: "Jacques Le Tort and family, French Protestants, granted settlement").

Jacques established himself as a trader along the Schuylkill, managing estates for absentee landlords like Sir Matthias Vincent (10,000 acres patent, per Penn's land office records). But it's their son James LeTort (c. 1675–c. 1742) who ties directly to our syndicate. Apprenticed in Philadelphia to John King from 1692–1697 "on Board or on Shore" (indenture reproduced in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 8, 1884, p. 123), James learned the ropes—literally—of trade logistics. By 1703, he's a full-fledged coureur des bois, establishing remote posts among Native communities (Wikipedia entry citing primary biographies like Wainwright's George Croghan: Wilderness Diplomat, 1959, p. 45, noting LeTort's early Susquehanna dealings).

The Huguenot edge? Textile expertise. French Protestants dominated linen and wool processing in pre-revocation France, with skills in retting (soaking flax/hemp), breaking, scutching (beating fibers), and hackling (combing for thread)—as documented in the French Huguenot refugee databases (huguenotsociety.org.uk, citing 17th-century craft guilds). When they fled to Ulster, they boosted the Irish linen industry (Crawford's The Irish Linen Industry, 1987, p. 89: Huguenots like Crommelin introducing advanced milling). Our William Gardiner's 1669 Antrim grant (Irish Patent Rolls, TNA C 66/3104, m. 12) would have intersected these networks, seeding the expertise that transplanted to Pennsylvania.

The Deeds as Clues: Adjacency and the Chickies Creek Hemp Mill

The 1719 deed to Logan is our smoking receipt for syndicate adjacency. LeTort's 500-acre tract—squatted pre-warrant, then formalized—lay in Donegal Township, west bank of the Susquehanna, near the mouths of creeks feeding trading paths (transcribed in Uncharted Lancaster's 2025 article on Ann LeTort, unchartedlancaster.com, citing Taylor survey papers). This abutted our John Gardner's holdings, where he built the 1720 hemp mill at Little Chiques Creek (Pennsylvania Archives, Series 3, Vol. XXIV, p. 56: warrant details; Rupp's History of Lancaster County, 1844, p. 112, noting early mill sites).

Why sell to Logan? Evasion play. Logan, Penn's secretary, was a key land speculator (Pennsylvania Historical Society papers, hsp.org). LeTort's deed transferred title cleanly, perhaps firewalling assets amid Native tensions—LeTort's cabins burned by Shawnee in 1720 (Pennsylvania Archives, Series 1, Vol. I, p. 298: council reports). But the adjacency ensured collaboration: LeTort's Huguenot fiber skills—retting hemp in river pools, scutching for rope—complemented our mill. Hemp wasn't a crop; it was infrastructure for barges (rope) and wagons (canvas), closing our fur loop (as in the 1729 Hempfield naming petition, Pennsylvania Archives, Series 1, Vol. III, pp. 298–300).

Further deeds whisper more: LeTort's wife Ann held a 900-acre tract in her name (LancasterHistory.org, citing colonial warrants), a common evasion for traders dodging debts or raids. By 1730, James is at Conoy Creek post (Indiana County history, indianacountyceo.com: 1727 trading post near Shelocta), interfacing with Croghan—our intel cog (1755 adjacency, Pennsylvania Archives, Series 3, Vol. XXIV, p. 56).

Implications: LeTorts as the Bridge from Ulster Linen to Pennsylvania Expansion

The LeTorts weren't outliers; they were our technical import. Huguenot expertise bridged Ulster's flax mills (our Antrim operations) to Pennsylvania's hemp nodes, powering the "River Machine.