COUTANCH Jersey to Colonial America

Coutanch

Jersey to Colonial America

Brothers

Michael Coutanch

of Bath, North Carolina and his daughter

Susanna Coutanch Evans, Founder of Greenville, NC

&

John Coutanch

of Western New Jersey and his son

William Cotanch, Revolutionary War Officer

by

Joanie Scott

In the 1730s, two brothers sailed from the Isle of Jersey to the American colonies. Michael and John Coutanch arrived with little more than hope and determination. Over the next two centuries their descendants turned wilderness into farms, carved towns from frontier forests, built churches and schools, and helped shape the young republic. This is their story - an authentic, primary-source saga of ordinary people who did extraordinary things to build America.

Michael Coutanch settled in historic Bath, North Carolina, where he became a merchant and respected legislator. After profound personal tragedy, his daughter Susanna Coutanch Evans rose from grief to found Greenville, one of North Carolina's earliest inland towns. Her Southern descendants continued the pioneering journey, pushing into the rich lands of Alabama and Mississippi and helping settle the expanding American South.

John Coutanch made his home in western New Jersey. His son William served as a Revolutionary War officer, fighting for the independence their family had crossed an ocean to find. Later generations moved northward, settling in New York's Finger Lakes region and eventually Wisconsin. Remarkably, descendants of these same Jersey brothers would one day face each other across Civil War battlefields - blood relatives on opposite sides of a divided nation.

From colonial merchants and Revolutionary patriots to B-29 pilots over the Pacific, the Coutanch family's journey is a powerful testament to resilience, courage, and the making of America.