I'm actually doing some writing on the Wallaces, mostly because I'm afraid I'll lose what I have gathered so far if I don't get it down on paper.
I started with Scotland, but that's where the muddiness of it got to me and I kind of gave it up.
We go pretty clearly back to a guy named John Wallace (~1750), who came over about 1770, went back, actually married in Scotland and raised a family in Northern Ireland, then returned to Cecil County, Maryland in about 1798, when a son Robert was very young. A Cecil County census is about all we have on him; he had a large family there in Cecil County in 1800 but disappeared soon after that. Robert is well known; he joined the army, led an upright life, had many children, founded the Wallace Run family most of whom ended up in New Castle PA or thereabouts.
The problem is that it's not very clear where he's from. We don't have a middle name, or an exact birth year, so there are lots of John Wallaces back in Ayrshire or around there, born in 1750 or around then. So he seemed to have a brother James and another brother William. There are still lots of John Wallaces who fit the bill, and. besides, the whole account of his coming over, with the brothers, is as far as I can tell speculation based on the fact that someone was pretty sure they were all brothers. They could have been half-brothers, or even cousins; they also could have not come over together, just all ended up in Carlisle PA for whatever reason.
I suspect the reason was this one character Hugh Wallace, who was already in Carlisle, and who joined the Revolutionary Army, and who may have been a cousin and poossibly even a second cousin. Some claimed that Hugh was a fourth brother, or came over with them, which would be possible, but now the number of families they could have come from is much more limited. And there are problems tracking down the family anyway.
So I wrote a little about Scotland, and now I'm about to talk about John, and say pretty much what I've just said here. He came over; he had sizeable family; they all seemed to disappear with the exception of Robert who married a New Castle woman and had many children; and also a John Junior who married a Pennsylvania woman and ended up farming in eastern Ohio.
With two of the six children drifting up to PA, and a William who is somewhat of a mystery, and girls who disappeared, there's a huge mystery. His wife, Geneva Jane, disappeared. Died early? Went back? Never came over in the first place?
My search somehow led me to a place called Sinking Valley PA where a house fire killed a William Wallace, older brother of Michael who owned the place. Nearby is a grave for a John Wallace, one of many for whom nobody knows. who this John Wallace might be. I say it's ours. It would make sense that our John would go up and live with his older sons, as long as he could, and that he died early enough and in obscurity so that he got this kind of grave. It doesn't explain Geneva Jane though - maybe she went back? She had a sister at Wallace Run but try as I might I cannot seem to find that any of them went there or died there. It would make sense though, and there are enough Wallaces up there that a grave marked "John" or "Jane" might very well go unnoticed, or unattributed.
So the Sinking Valley theory states that this Michael, second son, came up from Maryland (they said he was from Maryland), and settled at Sinking Valley (near State College, in the center of the state) and his older brother William died there, as did his father. He kicked around for a while, left and came back, ran a few businesses, but nobody ever figured out what Wallaces he was from - was he then a brother of Robert and John Jr.? Yes I'd say that's a reasonable explanation, and it would account for everyone except Geneva Jane and the two girls.
No sign of them, anywhere. I have a couple of names, Jane and Adeline, but still no luck.
Stay tuned, I'm still putting things together.
