1743-1783

May 28

James Rumsey was born in March 1743 at Bohemia Manor in Cecil County, Maryland, to a farming family. His father was a farmer of good social standing but with limited means and a large family, which restricted opportunities for his children's formal schooling. While specific names of his parents are not widely detailed in historical accounts, records indicate his father was Edward Rumsey, and the family later migrated from Maryland's Eastern Shore to what is now Berkeley County, West Virginia (then Virginia), during Rumsey's youth. Rumsey received no formal education due to his family's circumstances but showed early mechanical ingenuity and became largely self-taught through practical experience and independent study. The next evidence we have of Rumsey is his employment at the town of Bath, now Berkeley Springs, WV in 1783.