CHAPTER I.  SCOTCH-IRISH In IRELAND And In AMERICA by ANDREW PHELPS McCORMICK, 1897

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INTRODUCTION.

Scotch-Irish in Ireland and in America

	At least equally with the English and Dutch Puritans, the Scotch-Irish 
Presbyterians, who in the eighteenth century emigrated from Ireland and settled in 
Virginia and the Carolinas, were grounded and disciplined in the principles and love 
of divine truth and of civil and religious liberty.  The history of the origin and growth 
of the Scotch-Irish race is instructive and attractive.  The last of the O'Neils, 
O'Donnels, O'Doghertys and other native chiefs, had been subdued, fled or punished, 
and their lands declared forfeited, to such an extent that nearly the whole of six 
counties in Ulster, covering an area of 3,785,057 English acres in a compact body, 
was held by the courts to be subject to the King's grant.  All former efforts by the 
Government to plant and foster colonies of Loyal English subjects in Ireland had 
resulted in failure.  On this subject the King held long and anxious consultations with 
Sir Arthur Chichester, the lord deputy, Sir John Davis, the attorney general, and other 
commissioners, during the years 1608, 1609 and 1610.  His object was to introduce a 
thoroughly Protestant and anti-Irish element which should dominate the Roman 
Catholics and the natives.  He had the whole of the confiscated country accurately 
surveyed, the surveyors being protected by an adequate force of mounted troops.  It 
was found that four-fifths of the lands were barren or "lean" lands, and the remainder, 
or one-fifth only, were valuable or "fat" lands.  It was ascertained by careful inquest 
what land was temporal and what was ecclesiastical property.  It was determined that 
the grants to be made should be of a manageable extent; that the native should be 
removed to locations selected for them by commissioners; that new settlers from 
England and Scotland should be introduced and should be located in groups together, 
so as to be a help and protection to each other; that the bulk of the Irish should be 
cleared from the "fat lands" into the "lean lands."  The valuable lands were divided 
into lots of 2,000 acres, 1,500 acres and 1,000 acres each, to be granted at a reserved 
quit rent, partly to English and Scotch undertakers, partly to English servitors -- that 
is, those who held civil or military appointments during the war -- and partly to 
native Irish "of good merit."  Reservations were made for the Crown, for the 
bishoprics, for the building of free schools and the erection of forts and corporate 
towns.

	In conformity to the scheme, the corporation of London and the twelve city 
guilds were permitted to take up the whole county of Coleraine to maintain the forts 
of Culmore, Coleraine and Derry, and grants aggregating 81,500 Irish acres were 
made to 50 English undertakers, and aggregating 81,000 acres to 59 Scotch 
undertakers, and 49,914 acres to 60 English servitors, and 52,279 acres to 286 native 
Irish of good merit; and for public purposes the London guilds, bishops, dean and 
chapters, colleges, schools and the like, grants were made which, with those already 
named, aggregated 511,465 Irish acres, or about 682,000 English acres.  Every 
undertaker of the larger lots (of 2,000 acres) gave bond in the sum of £400, requiring 
him to build on his land within four years a castle or mansion house, and a bawn or 
walled enclosure for the protection of his cattle and the cattle of his tenants, and 
within five years to plant on his estate four free farmers, each on 120 acres, and six 
leaseholders, each on 100 acres, and eight families of skilled workmen and laborers.  
Every undertaker of the smaller lots was under similar and proportionate obligations.  
No land was to be sub-let for less than twenty-one years, nor could it be sold to 
anyone but the tenants during the first five years of it's occupancy.  The tenants were 
required to build houses to dwell in and to keep good store of arms.  The dwelling-
houses were to be built in groups, so as to form towns and villages.  None of the 
undertakers were permitted to take any native Irish as tenants.  The servitors and the 
church, in their discretion, might let a farm to an irishman.  "Slowly and sullenly the 
Irish gentry removed themselves and their belongings into the contracted locations to 
which they had been appointed, away from the "fat lands" to the "lean lands," from 
the rich pasture to the barren moor.  Slowly and sullenly the mass of the people 
followed them, thrust out of their homes to find new refuges wherein to lay their 
heads -- some among the new servitors, some in the "lean lands," some transplanted 
in gangs at the command of the government, into waste land, which no one wanted, 
in Munster and Connaught." * 

	One writing at an early day of and from the Colony, says: "Of the English not 
many come over, for it is to be observed that, being a great deal more tenderly bred at 
home in England, and entertained in better quarters than they could find in Ireland, 
they were unwilling to flock thither except to good land such as they had before at 
home (i.e., well improved land), or to good cities where they might trade, both of 
which in those days were scarce enough here.  Besides, the marshiness and fogginess 
of this Island were still found to be unwholesome to English bodies.  And, moreover, 
the King had a natural love to have Ireland planted with Scots, as being not only truly 
loyal to him but of a middle temper between the English tender and the Irish rude 
breeding, and a great deal more likely to venture to plant Ulster.



	* Walpole, Kingdom of Ireland, 132
	The limitations on the employment of the native Irish were not strictly 
observed, and could not be enforced owing to the difficulty the undertakers 
experienced in obtaining sufficient number of laborers.  Many of the natives had 
lapsed into barbarism, or had not been raised out of it, and all were poor, and the 
masses of them were destitute.  The more civilized and quiet of them, who were 
willing to work, were retained by the undertakers as sub-tenants or laborers, and this 
breach of covenant and bond was winked at by those in authority.  The undertakers 
were gentlemen of good birth and more or less estate, of good intelligence, education 
and manners.  Many of the tenants and sub-tenants were honest, well reputed 
yeomen, of some education, who had always held more or less property, and some 
were distinctly religious men.  But the conditions and circumstances of the settlement 
were more attractive to the restless, and to those who looked more to bettering their 
condition in this world, to get riches in the Kingdom of Ireland, than to the sedate and 
pious who were contented with the comforts and privileges they had in Scotland, or 
whose chief care was to inherit the true riches in the Kingdom of Heaven.  The 
Roman hierarchy had covered Ulster with the customary ecclesiastical divisions, but 
their ministry was driven out.  At first, and for some years, nothing took its place.  
The native Irishmen and women, sub-tenants, or hewers of wood and drawers of 
water, unenlightened and not permitted the open use of the superstitious worship they 
had before indulged, were still the majority in numbers of the people.  These 
symptoms of spiritual life disappeared, and with so many of the wholesome restraints 
wanting, social life began to manifest the features of the earth earthy.  Pious Kirkmen 
from Scotland who visited the Colony, were shocked, and returning gave such a 
name that "Ireland will be your latter end" became a by-word expressive of the 
strongest contempt.  In a few years some missionaries were sent over.  One of the 
early ministers, in his account of the state of the Colony, sums it up thus: "Verily, at 
this time the whole body of this people seems ripe for the manifestation of God's 
judgments, or of God's mercy."

	King James, from his accession to the English throne, magnified his office as 
head of the English Church.  The wealth of his royal learning was lavished on 
elucidating its soundness in doctrine and the power and purity of its prelatical system 
of government, teaching and worship.  He was not an intolerant persecutor, but he 
greatly desired to secure conformity to the English Church in that kingdom.  I due 
time the Irish Church was established on the model of the English Church, but 
separate from it and independent of it.  The divisions of the country into ecclesiastical 
jurisdictions that had been made by the Papists were retained in great part, and the 
bishoprics, deaneries and livings were to be filled by Protestants.  Many able and 
zealous ministers in the Church in England were strongly Calvinistic in their faith 
and favorable to the Presbyterial form of government and worship, and these men 
began to feel constraint as the King's character as a stickler for conformity began to 
find practical expression more and more.  They, therefore, sought to exchange their 
places in England for preferment in Ireland.  There the distinction between the 
Protestants and the Papists was so much the burning, practical question, and the work 
of supporting and extending civilization and loyalty so engrossing, that the divisions 
between loyal Protestants became relatively inconsiderable.  The King was glad to 
remove these dissenters from England, where they were irritating, to Ireland where 
they would not be only harmless, but useful to him.  Doctor James Usher, Professor 
of Divinity in the College of Dublin, had drawn up the Confession of the Irish 
Church, which was a decidedly Calvinistic as that afterwards drawn up by the 
Westminster divines.  Although he was afterwards Archbishop, he was never wedded 
to prelacy.  Echlin, Bishop of Down, called to his aid other ministers in conferring 
ordination, himself appearing with them to meet the letter of the law, but acting only 
as a presbyter.  Knox, Bishop of Raphoe, did the same, and more, for he let the others 
lead and ask only such questions as were not objectionable to a Scotch Presbyterian, 
and did not care for their unwillingness to address him as "my Lord."  Mr. Gibson, 
Protestant Dean of Down, in the year 1625, condemned Episcopacy more strongly 
than Robert Blair durst to do, and charged Mr. Blair in the name of Christ, as he 
expected a blessing on his ministry, not to leave that good way in which he had 
begun to walk in Scotland.  Hence, and thus, it was that Mr. Blair, who had been 
Professor in the College of Glasgow, and constrained to leave his situation there on 
account of the measures being used to introduce prelacy in Scotland, was accepted, 
ordained and inducted into the charge of the established church, in Bangor.  In like 
manner were all the Scotch Presbyterian and English Puritan ministers, who went 
over to Ulster during the first twenty years, received and welcomed and set to work.  
Among those was James Glendenning, whose impassioned denunciations of sin, and 
warnings of the wrath to come with its day of doom, awoke the careless impenitent 
and the scorner, and started that Great Revival that reconstructed Ulster and laid the 
foundation of the Irish Presbyterian Church.  The Revival, starting at Old Stone, near 
Antrim, spread through the whole protestant population of the province, and 
ultimately to other countries.  No awakening of religious interest comparable to it is 
mentioned in the annals of Protestantism.  As the Revival progressed, the fame of it 
reached Scotland and called the attention of the whole Christian community to 
Ireland, and in consequence, some very able ministers went over to take part in and 
guide the work.  Though no organized presbytery existed in Ireland, and no effort had 
been made, or was at the time made, to institute one, the promoters of the Revival 
followed presbyterial forms.  A monthly meeting of the most intelligent, earnest 
laymen began to be held at the manor-house of Hugh Campbell in the parish the Old 
Stone, which was soon regularly attended by a number of ministers, and, besides 
becoming a season for general communion, developed features akin to Presbytery, 
kept watch on the whole field of the work, and encouraged, advised and directed the 
laborers.  The work became so active, extensive and distinctly presbyterian, that it 
provoked the jealousy and opposition of all the clergy who had received regular 
episcopal ordination and who observed the forms of the Established Church.  The 
Bishops -- except Knox, Bishop of Raphoe, and Usher, the Archbishop -- withdrew 
their protection from the non-conforming ministers and congregations.  Bishop 
Echlin, of Down, once so tolerant and kind, became intensely hostile to the 
movement and to the men who were guiding and pushing it.  Charles the First was 
ruling in England without a parliament.  Wentworth and Laud were inaugurating 
"Thorough."  The Bishops in Ulster "Proceeded to silence ministers that would not 
conform strictly to the rites and ceremonies of the establishment, and began with 
Blair and Livingston.  By the good offices of Archbishop Usher these eminent men 
were soon restored to their ministry, but their enemies made such representations at 
court that Blair and Livingston were again debarred from the exercise of their sacred 
office; and at this time Welch and Dunbar were also silenced.  These oppressed 
ministers and a number of the members of their respective flocks began to make 
preparation for removal to America, but unexpected difficulties caused delay until the 
ministers were restored, and prospects in Ireland appearing more favorable, the 
project was for a time abandoned.

	In 1634, Blair, Welch and Dunbar were again suspended, and the next year 
Livingston and four others shared the same fate.  Once more preparations for 
emigration were commenced, and a correspondence opened with the Colonies in 
New England, which resulted in the choice of a tract near the mouth of the Merrimac 
River, whither they intended to transplant themselves.  Due preparation for the 
voyage and settlement was made, and on September 9, 1636, they sailed in the 
"Eagle Wing" from Lockfergus.  The emigrants numbered one hundred and forty 
souls; among them were the four noted preachers, Robert Blair, John Livingston, 
James Hamilton and John McClelland.  After some adverse experiences they reached 
mid-ocean in good condition, but there they met a great storm from the northwest, 
which, by the utmost exertion of all on board the ship, was withstood for a number of 
days, till early in the morning of another day of unabated storm, the master reported 
to the company that it was impossible to hold on their voyage; that, if they could 
succeed in keeping the ship afloat through this storm, the prospect of recurring 
storms, the condition of the ship, and the distance to any American port, made the 
hazard of continuing the voyage too great to be assumed; that with the prevailing 
winds and currents they could return to Ireland, but could not reasonably hope to 
reach America.  After earnest consultation with one another, and fervent prayer, the 
ship was turned and steered for Ireland, and on November 3rd again anchored in 
Lockfergus.  Mr. Blair said, "If ever the Lord spoke by His winds and other 
dispensations, it was made evident to us that it was not His will that we should go to 
New England."  The ministers, finding no peace for them in Ireland, where 
Wentworth's hand was too heavy, went over into Scotland where the presbyterians 
were stronger.

	Thus, the first foundations of the Irish Presbyterian Church were completely 
uptorn, but the material was saved to be better seasoned and made more fit for future 
use.  Of the pronounced and active presbyterians, the nobles and gentlemen of 
substance, and all who could, passed over into Scotland to escape the vexatious 
oppression and to enjoy their highly valued church privileges.  The refugee ministers 
obtained settlements at points on or near the west coast, and very many members of 
their former flocks, left shepherdless in Ulster, crossed the narrow seas from time to 
time at seasons of refreshing, to hear the word and break the bread with their Scottish 
brethren.  On one occasion five hundred persons went over from Down to Stranrear 
to receive the sacrament at the hands of Mr. Livingston.  At another time he baptized 
twenty children brought over to him by their parents, who were unwilling to receive 
the ordinance from the prelatical clergy.  The deposed divines were zealous 
promoters of the national covenant, which was renewed for the third time, in 
Edinburgh, March 1, 1638.  Four of them were members of the famous Assembly 
that met in Glasgow in November of the same year, and took an active part in the 
doings of that body by which prelacy in Scotland was abolished, the bishops deposed 
and presbytery re-established.*

	On October 13, 1641, the papist rebellion broke out in Ireland.  Their plans 
were laid for concerted action and carried out with such energy that in a few months 
many thousand protestants were slain.  The presbyterians, who were then suffering 
persecution, were spared by the papists in their massacre.  In the spring of 1643 
General Monro was sent over from Scotland with a force of 2,500 men to assist in 
quelling this rebellion.  The Scotch forces were from seven different regiments, each 
of which had its own chaplain, who accompanied the division to Ireland, and besides 
these, Mr. Livingston was sent by the Council to labor in Ulster, with and under the 
protection of the troops.  The chaplains first formed regular churches in four of the 
regiments, choosing the most grave and pious men for elders, and setting them apart 
to their office, in due form, according to the Scotch confession.  On June 10, 1642, 
the ministers and elders met and constituted presbytery.  Thus, the foundations of the 
Irish Presbyterian Church were relaid in conformity with the model of the Church of 
Scotland.  The congregations took possession of the parish churches that were 
standing vacant, and many clergymen who had been episcopally ordained, applied to, 
and were permitted to join the

	* Foote's Sketches, 106-107

presbytery, but were not recognized as active members until they had been regularly 
called and inducted to the charge of some congregation.  Thus, those ministers who 
had first been led to go to Ireland because they could not exercise their ministry in 
Scotland, and after being successful in Ireland were driven back to Scotland, having 
been repelled from America by a tempest, now came again to Ireland, and set up the 
Presbyterian Church that has been the mother-church of so many in America, 
especially in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North and South Carolina.  In 1644 they 
adopted the last amended edition of the Solemn League and Covenant, "on which 
mainly rests under Providence, the noble structure of the British Constitution," and 
America's system of regulated liberty.

	The General Assembly of Scotland sent out to Ulster needed supplies of 
laborers in the ministry.  During the war between the King and Parliament, and, 
despite some difficulties under the reign of Parliament and of the Sovereign 
Protector, Oliver, the work went on; and at the Restoration there were in Ulster 
seventy regularly settled presbyterian ministers and eighty organized congregations, 
comprising a presbyterian membership of not less than one hundred thousand souls.  
The whole protestant element in Ulster had been welded into one race -- the Scotch-
Irish Presbyterians.  They were to have alternating seasons of joy and of sorrow; of 
revival and coldness; of peace, protection and favor, and of the frowns of power, 
culminating in 1689 and 1690 in the fiery trials but final triumphs at Londonderry, 
Newton, Butler and the battle of the Boyne.  They stood every test.  The hand of the 
diligent maketh rich.  They prospered and multiplied; they filled the Province of 
Ulster, and made all its waste places to blossom.  But it became the policy of England 
to check the prosperity and growth of wealth in Ireland; to limit its production and 
put ruinous restrictions and burdens on its trade.  Emigration became a necessity.  At 
first, single men, then a single family, or a few families in company, began to go out 
to America.  By 1740 a continuous stream of emigrants was flowing out of the north 
of Ireland to the Delaware River.  They settled in companies in Pennsylvania and 
Virginia, organized congregations, schools and churches, and continued to cultivate 
the type of civilization to which they had been bred in Ireland.  A few of them at an 
early day followed the path of the Indian traders through the valley of Virginia and 
the Piedmont districts into that portion of North Carolina drained by the Yadkin and 
Catawba Rivers.

	In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh received from the Virgin Queen a grant of 
authority to make discoveries and settlements in America.  He landed on Roanoke 
Island, and made extensive explorations of that part of the Atlantic Coast.  He 
obtained from the Queen a grant embracing what is now the two Carolinas and much 
other territory, all of which he named Virginia.  With the genius of statesman and the 
courage of a hero, he made and for number of years persisted in, the effort to plant it 
with colonists.  After his third attempt had failed and his large estate was exhausted, 
he surrendered his grant to the Crown for an inconsiderable sum of money.  Twenty 
years later a royal colony was the line which now divides the State of Virginia from 
North Carolina.  The newly granted territory and the successfully planted colony 
received and engrossed the name "Virginia."  It grew in population and in wealth.  
Noble lords and gentlemen of England acquired large landed estates in that colony, 
and stocked them with negroes and other slaves.  Many of the owners of these 
estates, spoken of later as the first families of Virginia, came over, lived 
sumptuously; and gave tone to the social and civil life of the Colony.  Its southern 
boundary was clearly designated in the charter, but was not marked by the stream of 
any river or other clear line of natural objects on the ground; nor was it then traced 
out by competent authority and marked by artificial monuments.  From the first 
settlement on the James River, restless individuals, and a little later, sprinkles of 
population of the floating class, drifted southward, not knowing or caring whether 
their lodges were within or without the bounds of the royal colony.  By this continued 
drift, scattered settlements of squatters began to appear and grow on the coast and 
streams near the coast to the south of Virginia.  In 1662, all of the country between 
Virginia and the Floridas was granted by Charles the Second to eight of his noble 
courtiers.  They endeavored to set up a proprietary government, but there was little 
wisdom in their "multitude counsel."  They had no just conception of the conditions 
or wants, or resources, of the empire the King had given them.  They were engrossed 
with the frivolities and cabals of the court; they sent out agents, some of whom were 
venal and all of whom were incompetent.  The country began to fill up with 
intelligent, enterprising, worthy men.  New settlements were made and continued to 
grow and prosper.  But for many years there was practically no civil government, and 
actually no minister of religion in the land; the inhabitants rendered no tribute to God 
or to Caesar.  The model system devised by John Locke for the government of the 
Carolinas was so conspicuously a misfit that the planters spurned it and persisted in 
living without government, until they were conceded the right of local self-
government.  The proprietaries could collect no adequate revenues.  In 1729, the 
owners of seven-eighths interest in the imperial grant sold their interest in it to the 
Crown.  In 1744, Earl Granville surrendered his political rights as the remaining one 
of the proprietaries and obtained partition of the ownership of the soil.  There was 
allotted to him all that part south of Virginia and north of latitude 35? 34', and 
extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.  He promptly caused land offices to 
be opened at eligible points, and set to sale all that portion of his land situated east of 
the Blue Ridge.  He had the lands surveyed in tract varying in quantity to suit 
purchasers.  The western portion of the lands thus opened to entry is drained and 
watered by the Yadkin and the Catawba rivers and their numerous tributaries.  IT was 
then a most attractive country to persons seeking a frontier location.

	In 1700, the Government sent out Captain Lawson to explore the interior of 
the Carolinas.  He started from Charleston, making his way west to the foot of the 
mountains; then northward across the numerous streams to the neighborhood of the 
Virginia line, and thence to Pamlico Sound.  In his report he describes the Yadkin 
and Catawba country as "a pleasant Savanna ground, high and dry, having very few 
trees upon it, and those standing at a good distance free from grubs and underwood."  
Emigration from Pennsylvania and other States on the Delaware was encouraged and 
directed southward in its earliest periods by the vast prairies covered with peavine 
grass and with cane-brakes, which stretched across the States of Virginia and 
Carolina.  Since the first settlement, forests have grown up in many places where no 
tree or shrub then grew.  The elevation above the tide level ranges from seven 
hundred to one thousand feet.  The Yadkin and the Catawba are large rivers, and 
Lord Cornwallis said: "Their numerous large tributaries, here called creeks, would be 
called rivers in any other country."  These rivers and creeks each has its bottom-land, 
a strip of varying width, on each side of the stream, only a little above ordinary high 
water.  These bottoms are almost uniformly of generous fertility.  Then the valley 
lands on a somewhat higher level, of varying character as to smoothness and 
productiveness, but generally only a little less fertile than the bottom lands; then 
comes the divide or top plain, from which water flows in opposite directions to the 
streams on each side.  This divide is sometimes narrow and rocky, but often widens 
out into smooth, rich plain of considerable extent.  This variety in elevation, and in 
the character of the soil with its appropriate flora, gives a charming beauty to the 
landscape.  The climate is soft, the air is healthful and exhilarating.  More numerous 
examples of extreme longevity cannot elsewhere be found.

	After the proprietary colonial power had been surrendered to the Crown, the 
royal governors exerted more vigor, but the independent planters did not abate their 
obstinate and successful resistance to measures that were distasteful to them, and 
contrary to their notions of their rights as freeman.  The Colony grew.  It ranked 
fourth in population and power, having one hundred and eighty thousand free white 
citizens and more than forty thousand negroes.   Only Virginia, Massachusetts and 
Pennsylvania, in the order named, had precedence of it.  On the coast, especially on 
the rivers below the falls, where, influenced by the ocean tides, they were navigable 
all the year, wealth had accumulated in many families, and Fashion had erected her 
throne and held regal sway.  Among the men there was an abundance of hard 
drinking, hard swearing and high sport.  And of the gentler sex, high dames born or 
bred abroad, and Creole princesses of equal quality and culture, vied with each other 
in treading the stately steppings of the minuet, and in betting their money at hazard in 
a manner that should have pleased "the god of this world," and did shock the Quakers 
and other puritans.  A different order of people was pouring into the Piedmont 
districts -- Cromwellian ironside Baptists, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians.

	The presbyterians from the north of Ireland did not begin to make strong 
settlements in Virginia or North Carolina until after 1730.  Before that time scattered 
families or a few small congregations had appeared on the Delaware and 
Chesapeake.  As the more eligible situations were taken up, new arrivals of in-
comers were projected more and more to the frontier, or those with sufficient means 
purchased places already settled and improved, and the vendors, with their supply of 
money, live stock and other goods, increased by the sale, moved out to repeat the 
process so attractive to the veteran pioneer settler, of home-making amid the so-
called privations, the truly primitive, unconventional features of frontier life, on 
virgin soil, and in communion with bounteous nature.  Before the outbreak of 
"Braddock's war," the smoke from these settlements began to rise in all the Valley of 
Virginia.  As early as 1740, some settlements of Scotch-Irish presbyterians were 
made on the Catawba River.  The severity of the Established Church in Virginia 
started the emigration movement, which extended into Pennsylvania.  Braddock's 
defeat, July 9, 1755, uncovered the frontiers of Virginia, excited and stimulated the 
hostilities and depredations of the Indians on that border, where the settlements were 
much exposed, to escape which many presbyterian families living in unsheltered 
situations took up their stakes, passed the Blue Ridge, made their way into the more 
quiet regions of North Carolina, and located among the earlier settlers on the 
Catawba.  During this period, between 1740 and 1760, another stream of Scotch-Irish 
presbyterians set in towards this region through the port of Charleston, and thus such 
a multitude of brave and godly men came to fill this blooming wilderness, that an 
overflow was soon developed which swept across the mountains into the valleys of 
the Tennessee, the Cumberland and the Ohio, and after the purchase of Louisiana by 
Mr. Jefferson in 1803, spread out over Missouri and all the West.  These early settlers 
on the Catawba, from Ireland, Scotland and England, or later in large numbers from 
Pennsylvania, did not come into the wilderness to escape the presence of God and the 
law, to forget Him, or to avoid the just restraints of civil society.  Scarcely had the 
first settlers built their cabins on the streams and branches that flow into the Yadkin 
and the Catawba before they began to provide places for public worship.  They 
sometimes erected, at first only, stands, rough structures for the sacred desk, or 
sometimes only a "book board" supported at each end by being let into growing trees, 
and surrounded by this primitive altar by seats made of logs split in halves, choosing 
for this tabernacle in the wilderness some elevated spot in a grove near a spring of 
good water, and central to the neighborhood of the worshipers.  The first organized 
congregation in this region was that of Sugar Creek, whose place of meeting was at a 
spot about three miles north of Charlotte.  The congregation knew no other bounds 
than the distance men and women could walk or ride to church, which was ten or 
fifteen miles for regular attendance, and twenty or more miles for an occasional 
meeting.  During the years 1755 and 1756, the Reverend Hugh McAden visited the 
region as an evangelist.  Among the refugees from the valley of Virginia was the 
Rev. Alexander Craighead.  He was a native of Ireland.  He had been in America a 
number of years, was ordained by the presbytery of Donegal, and had labored in 
Pennsylvania before his settlement in Virginia.  As a divine prophet he bore a fiery 
cross.  With him the "active doctrine" was "from the days of John the Baptist until 
now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force."  
Presbytery chided and tried to moderate him, but could not stand against his 
vehement appeals to the public mind, which carried the sympathies of the community 
in his favor.  He was inspired with an ardent love of liberty and freedom of opinion 
which had rendered him obnoxious to the Governor and to the Synod in 
Pennsylvania, and which he had been compelled to restrain in some measure in 
Virginia.  Here in Carolina he found a people remote from the seat of authority, 
among whom the intolerant laws were a dead letter, so far divided from other 
congregations, even of his own faith, that there could be no collision with him on 
account of faith or practice, and so united in their general principles of religion and 
church government that he was received as the teacher of the whole population.  At 
the time of leaving Virginia he was a member of Hanover Presbytery.  In January, 
1758, it directed him to preach at Rocky River on the second Sabbath of February 
and visit the other vacant congregations till the spring meeting of the presbytery.  
Soon after that, by order this presbytery, he accepted a call to be pastor of the church 
at Rocky River.  This was the first fully organized Presbyterian Church in the upper 
country of North Carolina.  It then included in its bounds Sugar Creek.  In 1765, the 
congregations in these settlements had become so numerous and the number of 
members so large, that it was deemed necessary or expedient that their respective 
bounds should be adjusted and fixed by order of the Synod.  "In this beautiful, fertile 
and peaceful country, Mr. Craighead passed the remainder of his days, in the active 
duties of a frontier minister of the Gospel, and ended his successful labors in his 
Master's vineyard in the month of March, 1766; the solitary minister between the 
Yadkin and the Catawba."*  He had enjoyed and rightly used the privilege of 
moulding into living form the principles, both civil and religious, of this "race of men 
that feared God and feared not labor and hardship, or the face of man; a race that 
sought for freedom and prosperity in the wilderness, and having found them, 
rejoiced; a race capable of great excellence, mental and physical, whose minds could 
conceive the glorious idea of Independence, and whose convention announced it to 
the world in May, 1775, and whose hands sustained it in the trying scenes of the 
Revolution."  Ten years after his death, at the opening of the War for Independence, 
there were

	* Foote's Sketches, 186.
between the Virginia and the North Carolina line, along the track traversed a few 
years later by the army of Earl Cornwallis, more than twenty organized presbyterian 
churches with strong congregations, constituting "that hornet's nest of rebels" named 
in the Earl's reports and in Tarleton's history of the campaign in the South.  The 
religious doctrines of the Scotch-Irish inspired and controlled their political opinions.  
In forming and maintaining their constitution and church government, their 
discipline, their modes of worship and their creed, they had learned the rudiments of 
republicanism before they immigrated to America.  

	The Presbyterian Church in Ireland and in Scotland had always been a church 
militant.  Their higher law was that "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."  In the 
early work of the Irish Church no person was admitted to its privileges who did not 
possess a competent degree of knowledge, or who did not fully approve of her 
constitution and discipline, or who was unable to state the grounds of that approval.  
Wherever individuals of their faith were located out of reach of a congregation 
already formed, they organized one as soon as the scriptural two or three could meet 
together and invoke the Master's presence and blessing.  Missionaries and evangelists 
were invited, received and held in honor, heard gladly and helped on in their journeys 
and in their work in the true spirit of the apostolic times.  A permanent pastor was 
secured as soon as the conditions of the harvest and the supply of laborers would 
permit.  Devout parents, like the mother of Samuel, besought the Lord to choose a 
son of theirs for this sacred service, and when a son was born to them who seemed, 
by being endowed with superior intellect and by being spiritually-minded, to be 
called for this work, his parents gladly gave their toil and time and treasured store of 
money to secure for him the best instruction and education to suit him to be a leader 
of the people and to minister in holy things.  Their ministers were required to be, and 
were, gifted and learned men.  Only the gifted were recognized as having been 
called.  No one could be installed as a pastor who was not ordained, or obtain 
ordination without having first mastered the learning then taught in the highest 
schools.  One star differeth from another star in glory, but the pastors, who were the 
leaders of thought and of public action among these people during the period that 
Independence was in its condition of gestation, heroic delivery and growth to adult 
establishment, were stars of the first rank in size and brilliancy.  

	Alexander Craighead, the pioneer pastor, was called to an "upper seat" before 
the bloody travail began.  Henry Patillo, full of the learning and spirit of Dr. 
Witherspoon, though probably never at Nassau Hall, was a member of the first 
provincial congress of North Carolina; David Caldwell, the mediator at Alamance, a 
member of the Convention of 1776 that framed the constitution of the state 
government, a physician to both the souls and the bodies of his congregations -- for 
he was proficient in medicine and successful in its practice -- the founder and 
conductor of a classical school of great merit and widely extended and long-
continued influence, for more than fifty years, at his home near the battle-field of 
Guilford, he sat enthroned as an oracle in piety, wisdom, learning, and patriotic 
public thought and conduct.  Samuel E. McKorkle, an early pupil of Dr. Caldwell, a 
graduate of Princeton, an elegant scholar and superb man, six feet and one inch in 
stature, finely formed, light hair and pale blue eyes, mild, grave and dignified in his 
appearance, cheerful in his disposition and of fine conversational powers, became the 
Bishop of Thyatera August 2, 1777, and preached and taught and governed in Rowan 
until June 21, 1811, when he fell on sleep.  James Hall, the pastor of Fourth Creek, 
Bethany and Concord -- the great congregation that covered the area now embraced 
in Iredell County -- the captain of a company in active service and the chaplain of the 
regiment who deserved and was offered promotion to Brigadier-General, but 
declined because he knew others fit for that place who would be glad to serve, while 
he could not consent to quit his work as chaplain.  Humphrey Hunter, an early pupil 
of Dr. Hall at Clio Nursery, and afterwards of Dr. McWhorter at Queen's Museum, 
enlisted as a private under Colonel Thomas Polk in 1776.  When the force was 
disbanded he resumed his classical studies and pursued them until General 
Rutherford collected forces in Mecklenburg, Rowan and Guilford to repel the 
Cherokee Indians, with which Mr. Hunter went as a lieutenant of cavalry under 
Captain Robert Mayben.  Again resuming his studies, at the close of this campaign 
against the Indians, he was at Liberty Hall (Queen's Museum) in Charlotte, when that 
institution was broken up by the approach of the British army under Lord Cornwallis.  
After the surrender of Charleston, and the massacre of Buford's regiment on the 
Waxhaw, he again entered the service, and went as a lieutenant in the company of 
Captain Thomas Givens under General Rutherford, and joined the army of General 
Gates at Cheraw.  In the battle at Camden, his general was wounded and captured 
with many of his men, including Mr. Hunter, who bravely stood their ground.  He 
was detained a prisoner and sent to Orangeburg, from which he made his escape, and 
getting home in nine or ten days, rejoined the army, became a lieutenant of cavalry 
under Colonel Henry Hampton attached to the regiment under Colonel Henry Lee, 
and was wounded in the battle of Eutaw Springs.  For more than twenty years he was 
the pastor of Steele Creek Church, whose "Meeting House" was and is situated about 
ten miles southwest of Charlotte.  He was above ordinary stature, of a robust frame 
and dark complexion.  One who knew him, writing of him the year after his death, 
said: "The stars of the Revolutionary contest are rapidly setting.  They shine with 
additional lustre as they go down from our view.  They leave behind them a 
generation blesses with the light of their example and permitted to gather the fruit of 
their toils.  Another mighty revolution must take place before such a cluster of 
worthies will live and labor together."  Lew Feuilleteau Wilson, the successor of Dr. 
James Hall in the pastorate of Fourth Creek and Concord, his fellow-student at 
Nassau Hall in their youth, his life-long, dearly loved and trusted friend, born in one 
of the West India Islands, of wealthy English parents, who removed to London when 
he was four years old, he was bred in influence and received his early education in 
the best schools.  When he was seventeen years old, he came to New Jersey and 
entered Princeton College, then under the government of Dr. Witherspoon.  He 
attained the bachelor's degree with distinguished honor.  He purposed entering the 
ministry and commenced his preparation, but meeting difficulties in that direction, he 
studied medicine and surgery, and as physician and surgeon was engaged in active 
service on land and sea in support of the cause of independence during the whole 
period of the Revolutionary War.  When peace came he practiced his profession of 
physician with eminent success for a few years, until the earnest solicitation of 
valued friends, who were impressed with his fitness for the ministry, united with his 
own desire for that work, induced him to resume and complete the preparatory   
course of study and apply for ordination.  "Throughout almost the whole of his 
ministerial course, with ability and faithfulness he sustained the pastoral relation over 
the united congregations of Fourth Creek and Concord."  These eminent men, with 
others of like faith and spirit to the number of a score or more, wrought and taught in 
this back country upland district of North Carolina, and had large congregations of 
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who looked to their pastors and listened to them in full 
rapport with their political principles, teaching and conduct.  The chief centres of 
these populations and of these congregations were then embraced in Rowan and 
Mecklenburg counties.  

	In some other parts of the Province there was, during the whole period of the 
struggle towards and for independence, a considerable party of worthy men who in 
judgment and sentiment opposed the movement.  These at the call of the royal 
governor embodied in 1776 to support the Crown, but were overwhelmed at Moore's 
Creek.  There was also, perhaps, a larger party of humbler men who, indifferent to 
the struggles for political power, rendered quiet service to those in authority in their 
locality who held the sword and lived with their families on their farms as nearly 
neutral as the times would allow.  When, in the summer of 1780, it appeared that the 
power of the Crown had been fully restored in Georgia and South Carolina, and was 
ready to advanced into North Carolina as soon as the growing crops were sufficiently 
ripened and harvested to furnish supplies for Lord Cornwallis' army, this hitherto 
neutral class were called on by the King's recruiting officers with such assurances, 
threatenings and promises as brought them to muster to declare their allegiance in the 
only way then accepted -- by taking arms and rendering soldier service, or such other 
aid as the age and condition of each qualified them, in the judgement of the recruiting 
officers, to give most helpfully.  By June 20, 1780, about 1300 had answered the call 
of the British colonel, Moore, and mustered at Ramsour's Mill, where and when the 
Whigs from Rowan and Mecklenburg, with sad slaughter, so dispersed these King's 
recruits that they did not make the same mistake again.  On August 16th, at Camden, 
the patriotic militia, raw and ill-commanded, unexpectedly brought face to face with 
veteran troops in equal or superior numbers, commanded by the best general and 
lieutenants in the British service, were routed, but the general of the Mecklenburg 
levies was wounded, and he and many of his men captured while vainly striving on 
that stricken field to stay the tide of disaster.  A few weeks later, September 26, at 
Charlotte, a handful of this militia held the whole army at bay for a time, to the 
astonished admiration of its noble commander, and to the immortal renown of the 
patriot colonel and his little band of heroes. People of this stock and faith, though 
from a wider dispersion, formed themselves into that "Army of the West" which, at 
Kings Mountain, destroyed Ferguson's well posted advance column, forced Tarleton, 
who was bringing his squadron to Ferguson's support, to retreat, and compelled the 
Earl general to withdraw his army from North Carolina and await reinforcements.  
On October 14th his troops began their march back to the Catawba ford.  The men of 
Mecklenburg and Rowan who had disputed his advance, now hung at his heels and 
on his flanks, harassed his foraging parties, intercepted his dispatches, cut off his 
communications, captured many of his wagons loaded with stores, and pressed him 
so fiercely that single men would ride up within gunshot of his retreating columns, 
discharge their rifles into the ranks, and escape.  The "Hornets Nest" was in full 
swarm.  The Catawba ford was made and passed with irritating hazard and much real 
difficulty.  The Earl general was wrought into a serious fever, so that the command 
devolved on his lieutenants.  His army was sometimes without meat, and sometimes 
without bread, and at one time was for five days without meat or bread, and forced to 
subsist on Indian corn plucked from the fields, five ears being a day's allowance for 
two soldiers.  By December, Gen. Gates had got together about twenty-three hundred 
men into what he had once called his "grand army," but they were not equipped or 
clothed for active service, and were under no discipline.  When General Greene 
assumed command, he began to enforce discipline and soon made the morale of the 
army equal to the courage of the men.  Morgan was given a separate command and 
commenced his movements beyond the Catawba.  Cornwallis now rested and 
reinforced, dispatched Tarleton to stop Morgan's advance.  The battle at the 
"Cowpens," January 17, 1781, marked their meeting, encumbered Morgan with 
prisoners and valuable munitions, to secure which he made prompt retreat toward the 
Catawba settlements, and to re-capture which, and to capture the victorious troops, 
Cornwallis then encamped at Turkey creek, only twenty-five miles distant, put his 
whole army in rapid motion.  This brought the war back to the "Hornet's Nest," 
through which the tide of conflict swept in flood and eddy and ebb for months of 
supreme trial and agony.  The historian Moore says: "Mecklenburg, Rowan and the 
counties lying between the Catawba and Yadkin Rivers seemed alike exhaustless in 
men and patriotism."