An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America Part 2

Among the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, nine were of this lineage, one of whom, McKean, served continuously in Congress from its opening in 1774 till its close in 1783, during a part of which time he was its president, and also serving as chief justice of Pennsylvania. The chairman of the committee that drafted the const.i.tution of the United States, Rutledge, was, by ancestry, Scotch-Irish. When the same instrument was submitted, the three states first to adopt it were the middle states, or Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, so largely settled by the same cla.s.s of people.

Turning again specifically to the Scotch-Irish emigrants it may be remarked that they had received in the old country a splendid physique, having large bones and sound teeth, besides being trained to habits of industry. The ma.s.s of them were men of intelligence, resolution, energy, religious and moral in character. They were a G.o.d-fearing, liberty-loving, tyrant-hating, Sabbath-keeping, covenant-adhering race, and schooled by a discipline made fresh and impressive by the heroic efforts at Derry and Enniskillin. Their women were fine specimens of the s.e.x, about the medium height, strongly built, with fair complexion, light blue or grey eyes, ruddy cheeks, and faces indicating a warm heart, intelligence and courage; and possessing those virtues which const.i.tute the redeeming qualities of the human race.

These people were martyrs for conscience sake. In 1711 a measure was carried through the British parliament that provided that all persons in places of profit or trust, and all common councilmen in corporations, who, while holding office, were proved to have attended any Nonconformist place of wors.h.i.+p, should forfeit the place, and should continue incapable of public employment till they should depose that for a whole year they had not attended a conventicle. A fine of 40 was added to be paid to the informer. There were other causes which a.s.sisted to help depopulate Ulster, among which was the destruction of the woolen trade about 1700, when twenty thousand left that province. Many more were driven away by the Test Act in 1704, and in 1732. On the failure to repeal that act the protestant emigration recommenced which robbed Ireland of the bravest defenders of English interests and peopled America with fresh blood of Puritanism.

The second great wave of emigration from Ulster occurred between 1771 and 1773, growing out of the Antrim evictions. In 1771 the leases on the estate of the marquis of Donegal, in Antrim, expired. The rents were placed at such an exorbitant figure that the demands could not be met. A spirit of resentment to the oppressions of the landed proprietors at once arose, and extensive emigration to America was the result. In the two years that followed the Antrim evictions of 1772, thirty thousand protestants left Ulster for a land where legal robbery could not be permitted, and where those who sowed the seed could reap the harvest.

From the ports of the North of Ireland one hundred vessels sailed for the New World, loaded with human beings. It has been computed that in 1773 and during the five preceding years, Ulster, by emigration to the American settlements, was drained of one-quarter of the trading cash, and a like proportion of its manufacturing population. This oppressed people, leaving Ireland in such a temper became a powerful adjunct in the prosecution of the Revolution which followed so closely on the wrongs which they had so cruelly suffered.

The advent of the first Scotch-Irish clergyman in America, so far as is now known, was in 1682, signalled by the arrival of Francis Makemie, the father of American Presbyterianism. Almost promptly he was landed in jail in New York, charged with the offense of preaching the gospel in a private house. a.s.sisted by a Scottish lawyer from Philadelphia (who was silenced for his courage), he defended the cause of religious liberty with heroic courage and legal ability, and was ultimately acquitted by a fearless New York jury. Thus was begun the great struggle for religious liberty in America. Among those who afterwards followed were George McNish, from Ulster, in 1705, and John Henry, in 1709.

Early in the spring of 1718, Rev. William Boyd arrived in Boston as an agent of some hundreds of people who had expressed a desire to come to New England should suitable encouragement be offered them. With him he brought a brief memorial to which was attached three hundred and nineteen names, all but thirteen of which were in a fair and vigorous hand. Governor Shute gave such general encouragement and promise of welcome, that on August 4, 1718, five small s.h.i.+ps came to anchor at the wharf in Boston, having on board one hundred and twenty Scotch-Irish families, numbering in all about seven hundred and fifty individuals. In years they embraced those from the babe in arms to John Young, who had seen the frosts of ninety-five winters. Among the clergy who arrived were James McGregor, Cornwell, and Holmes.

In a measure these people were under the charge of Governor Shute. He must find homes for them. He dispatched about fifty of these families to Worcester. That year marked the fifth of its permanent settlement, and was composed of fifty log-houses, inhabited by two hundred souls. The new comers appear to have been of the poorer and more illiterate cla.s.s of the five s.h.i.+p loads. At first they were welcomed, because needed for both civic and military reasons. In September of 1722 a towns.h.i.+p organization was effected, and at the first annual town meeting, names of the strangers appear on the list of officers. With these emigrants was brought the Irish potato, and first planted in the spring of 1719.

When their English neighbors visited them, on their departure they presented them with a few of the tubers for planting, and the recipients, unwilling to show any discourtesy, accepted the same, but suspecting a poisonous quality, carried them to the first swamp and threw them into the water. The same spring a few potatoes were given to a Mr. Walker, of Andover, by a family who had wintered with him. He planted them in the ground, and in due time the family gathered the "_b.a.l.l.s_" which they supposed was the fruit. These were cooked in various ways, but could not be made palatable. The next spring when plowing the garden, potatoes of great size were turned up, when the mistake was discovered. This introduction into New England is the reason why the now indispensable succulent is called "Irish potato." This vegetable was first brought from Virginia to Ireland in 1565 by slave-trader Hawkins, and from there it found its way to New England in 1718, through the Scotch-Irish.

The Worcester Scotch-Irish pet.i.tioned to be released from paying taxes to support the prevalent form of wors.h.i.+p, as they desired to support their own method. Their prayer was contemptuously rejected. Two years later, or in 1738, owing to their church treatment, a company consisting of thirty-eight families, settled the new town of Pelham, thirty miles west of Worcester. The scandalous destruction of their property in Worcester, in 1740, caused a further exodus which resulted in the establis.h.i.+ng the towns of Warren and Blandford, both being incorporated in 1741. The Scotch-Irish town of Colerain, located fifty miles northwest of Worcester was settled in 1739.

Londonderry, New Hamps.h.i.+re, was settled in April, 1719, forming the second settlement, from the five s.h.i.+ps. Most of these pioneers were men in middle life, robust and persevering. Their first dwellings were of logs, covered with bark. It must not be thought that these people, strict in their religious conceptions, were not touched with the common feelings of ordinary humanity. It is related that when John Morrison was building his house his wife came to him and in a persuasive manner said, "Aweel, aweel, dear Joan, an' it maun be a log-house, do make it a log heegher nor the lave;" (than the rest). The first frame house built was for their pastor, James McGregor. The first season they felt it necessary to build two strong stone garrison-houses in order to resist any attack of the Indians. It is remarkable that in neither Lowell's war, when Londonderry was strictly a frontier town, nor in either of the two subsequent French and Indian wars, did any hostile force from the northward ever approach that town. During the twenty-five years preceding the revolution, ten distinct towns of influence, in New Hamps.h.i.+re, were settled by emigrants from Londonderry, besides two in Vermont and two in Nova Scotia; while families, sometimes singly and also in groups, went off in all directions, especially along the Connecticut river and over the ridge of the Green Mountains. To these brave people, neither the crown nor the colonies appealed in vain. Every route to Crown Point and Ticonderoga had been tramped by them time and again. With Colonel Williams they were at the head of Lake George in 1755, and in the battle with Dieskau that followed; they were with Stark and lord Howe, under Abercrombie, in the terrible defeat at Ticonderoga in 1758; others toiled with Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham; and in 1777, fought under Stark at Bennington, and against Burgoyne at Saratoga.

A part of the emigrants intended for New Hamps.h.i.+re settled in Maine, in what is now Portland, Topsham, Bath and other places. Unfortunately soon after these settlements were established some of them were broken up by Indian troubles, and some of the colonists sought refuge with their countrymen at Londonderry, but the greater part removed to Pennsylvania,--from 1730 to 1733 about one hundred and fifty families, princ.i.p.ally of Scotch descent. In 1735, Warren, Maine, was settled by twenty-seven families, some of whom were of recent emigration and others from the first arrival in Boston in 1718. In 1753 the town received an addition of sixty adults and many children brought from Scotland.

The Scotch-Irish settlement at Salem in Was.h.i.+ngton county, New York, came from Monaghan and Ballibay, Ireland. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of their minister, Rev. Thomas Clark, three hundred sailed from Newry, May 10, 1764, and landed in New York in July following. On September 30, 1765, Mr. Clark obtained twelve thousand acres of the "Turner Grant," and upon this land he moved his paris.h.i.+oners, save a few families that had been induced to go to South Carolina, and some others that remained in Stillwater, New York. The great body of these settlers took possession of their lands, which had been previously surveyed into tracts of eighty-eight acres each, in the year 1767. The previous year had been devoted to clearing the lands, building houses, etc. Among the early buildings was a log church, the first religious place of wors.h.i.+p erected between Albany and Canada. March 2, 1774, the legislature erected the settlement into a towns.h.i.+p named New Perth. This name remained until March 7, 1788, when it was changed to Salem.

The Scotch-Irish first settled in Somerset county, New Jersey, early in the last century, but not at one time but from time to time.

These early settlers repudiated the name of Irish, and took it as an offense to be so called. They claimed, and truly, to be Scotch. The term "Scotch-Irish" is quite recent, but has come into general use.

From the three centers, Worcester, Londonderry and Wisca.s.set, the Scotch-Irish penetrated and permeated all New England; Maine the most of all, next New Hamps.h.i.+re, then Ma.s.sachusetts, and in lessening order, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island. They were one sort of people, belonging to the same grade and sphere of life. In worldly goods they were poor, but the majority could read and write, and if possessed with but one book that was the Bible, yet greatly esteeming Fox's "Book of Martyrs" and Bunyon's "Pilgrim's Progress." Whatever their views, they were held in common.

The three doors that opened to the Scotch-Irish emigrant, in the New World, were the ports of Boston, Charleston and New Castle, in Delaware, the great bulk of whom being received at the last named city, where they did not even stop to rest, but pushed their way to their future homes in Pennsylvania. No other state received so many of them for permanent settlers. Those who landed in New York found the denizens there too submissive to foreign dictation, and so preferred Pennsylvania and Maryland, where the proprietary governors and the people were in immediate contact. Francis Machemie had organized the first Presbyterian church in America along the eastern sh.o.r.e of Maryland and in the adjoining counties of Virginia.

The wave of Quaker settlements spent its force on the line of the Conestoga creek, in Lancaster county. The Scotch and Scotch-Irish arriving in great numbers were permitted to locate beyond that line, and thus they not only became the pioneers, but long that race so continued to be. In 1725, so great had been the wave of emigration into Pennsylvania, that James Logan, a native of Armagh, Ireland, but not fond of his own countrymen who were not Quakers, declared, "It looks as if Ireland were to send all her inhabitants. .h.i.ther; if they continue to come they will make themselves proprietors of the province;" and he further condemned the bad taste of the people who were forcing themselves where they were not wanted. The rate of this invasion may be estimated from the rise in population from twenty thousand, in 1701, to two hundred and fifty thousand in 1745, which embraced the entire population of that colony. Between the years 1729 and 1750, there was an annual arrival of twelve thousand, mostly from Ulster. Among the vessels that helped to inaugurate this great tide was the good s.h.i.+p "George and Ann," which set sail from Ireland on May 9th, 1729, and brought over the McDowells, the Irvines, the Campbells, the O'Neills, the McElroys, the Mitch.e.l.ls, and their compatriots.

Soon after the emigrants landed at New Castle they found their way along the branches of various rivers to the several settlements on the western frontier. The only ones known to have come through New York was the "Irish settlement" in Allen towns.h.i.+p, Northampton county, composed princ.i.p.ally of families from Londonderry, New Hamps.h.i.+re, where, owing to the rigid climate, they could not be induced to remain. It grew but slowly, and after 1750 most of the descendants pa.s.sed on towards the Susquehanna and down the c.u.mberland.

As early as 1720 a colony was formed on the Neshaminy, in Bucks County, which finally became one of the greatest landmarks of that race. The settlements that commenced as early as 1710, at f.a.gg Manor, at Octorara, at New London, and at Brandywine Manor, in Chester County, formed the nucleus for subsequent emigration for a period of forty years, when they also declined by removals to other sections of the State, and to the colonies of the South. Prior to 1730 there were large settlements in the towns.h.i.+ps of Colerain, Pequea, and Leac.o.c.k, in Lancaster County.

Just when the pioneers arrived in that region has not been accurately ascertained, but some of them earlier than 1720. Within a radius of thirty-five miles of Harrisburgh are the settlements of Donegal, Paxtang, Derry, and Hanover, founded between 1715 and 1724; from whence poured another stream on through the c.u.mberland Valley, across the Potomac, down through Virginia and into the Carolinas and Georgia. The valley of the Juniata was occupied in 1749. The settlements in the lower part of York County date from 1726. From 1760 to 1770 settlements rapidly sprung up in various places throughout Western Pennsylvania.

Soon after 1767 emigrants settled on the Youghiogheny, the Monongahela and its tributaries, and in the years 1770 and 1771, Was.h.i.+ngton County was colonized. Soon after the wave of population extended to the Ohio River. From this time forward Western Pennsylvania was characteristically Scotch-Irish.

These hardy sons were foremost in the French and Indian Wars. The Revolutionary struggle caused them to turn their attention to statesmans.h.i.+p and combat,--every one of whom was loyal to the cause of independence. The patriot army had its full share of Scotch-Irish representation. That thunderbolt of war, Anthony Wayne,[6] hailed from the County of Chester. The ardent manner in which the cause of the patriots was espoused is ill.u.s.trated, in a notice of a marriage that took place in 1778, in Lancaster County, the contracting parties being of the Ulster race. The couple is denominated "very sincere Whigs."

It "was truly a Whig wedding, as there were present many young gentlemen and ladies, and not one of the gentlemen but had been out when called on in the service of his country; and it was well known that the groom, in particular, had proved his heroism, as well as Whigism, in several battles and skirmishes. After the marriage was ended, a motion was made, and heartily agreed to by all present, that the young unmarried ladies should form themselves into an a.s.sociation by the name of the 'Whig a.s.sociation of Unmarried Young Ladies of America,' in which they should pledge their honor that they would never give their hand in marriage to any gentleman until he had first proved himself a patriot, in readily turning out when called to defend his country from slavery, by a spirited and brave conduct, as they would not wish to be the mothers of a race of slaves and cowards'"[7]

Pennsylvania was the gateway and first resting place, and the source of Scotch-Irish adventure and enterprise as they moved west and south. The wave of emigration striking the eastern border of Pennsylvania, in a measure was deflected southward through Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, reaching and crossing the Savannah river, though met at various points by counter streams of the same race, which had entered the continent through Charleston and other southern ports. Leaving Pennsylvania and turning southward, the first colony into which the stream poured, was Maryland, the settlements being princ.i.p.ally in the narrow strip which const.i.tutes the western portion, although they never scattered all over the colony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUILT BY HENRY MCWHORTER IN 1787, AT JANE LEW, WEST VIRGINIA, PHOTOGRAPHED IN 1893]

Proceeding southward traces of that race are found in Virginia east of the Blue Ridge, in the latter part of the seventeenth and early in the eighteenth century. They were in Albemarle, Nelson, Campbell, Prince Edward, Charlotte and Orange counties, and even along the great valley west of the Blue Ridge. It was not, however, until the year 1738 that they entered the valley in great numbers, and almost completely possessed it from the Pennsylvania to the North Carolina line. During the French and Indian wars the soldiers of Virginia were mainly drawn from this section, and suffered defeat with Was.h.i.+ngton at the Great Meadows, and with Braddock at Fort Duquesne, but by their firmness saved the remnant of that rash general's army. In 1774 they won the signal victory at Point Pleasant which struck terror into the Indian tribes across the Ohio.

The American Revolution was foreshadowed in 1765, when England began her oppressive measures regardless of the inalienable and chartered rights of the colonists of America. It was then the youthful Scotch-Irishman, Patrick Henry, introduced into the Virginia House of Burgesses, the resolutions denying the validity of the Act of the British parliament, and by Scotch-Irish votes he secured their adoption against the combined efforts of the old leaders. At the first call for troops by congress to defend Boston, Daniel Morgan at once raised a company from among his own people, in the lower Virginia valley, and by a forced march of six hundred miles reached the beleaguered city in three weeks. With his men he trudged through the wilderness of Maine and appeared before Quebec; and later, on the heights of Saratoga, with his riflemen, he poured like a torrent upon the ranks of Burgoyne. Through the foresight of Henry, a commission was given to George Rogers Clark, in 1778, to lead a secret expedition against the northwestern forts. The soldiers were recruited from among the Scotch-Irish settlements west of the Blue Ridge. The untold hards.h.i.+ps, sufferings and final success of this expedition, at the Treaty of Peace, in 1783, gave the great west to the United States.

The greater number of the colonists of North Carolina was Scotch and Scotch-Irish, in so much so as to have given direction to its history.

There were several reasons why they should be so attracted, the most potent being a mild climate, fertile lands, and freedom of religious wors.h.i.+p. The greatest accession at any one time was that in 1736, when Henry McCulloch secured sixty-four thousand acres in Duplin county, and settled upon these lands four thousand of his Ulster countrymen. About the same time the Scotch began to occupy the lower Cape Fear. Prior to 1750 they were located in the counties of Granville, Orange, Rowan and Mecklenburg, although it is uncertain when they settled between the Dan and the Catawba. Braddock's defeat, in 1755, rendered border life dangerous, many of the newcomers turning south into North Carolina, where they met the other stream of their countrymen moving upward from Charleston along the banks of the Santee, Wateree, Broad, Pacolet, Ennoree and Saluda, and this continued till checked by the Revolution.

These people generally were industrious, sober and intelligent, and with their advent begins the educational history of the state. Near Greensborough, in 1767, was established a cla.s.sical school, and in 1770, in the town of Charlotte, Mecklenburg county, was chartered Queen's College, but its charter was repealed by George III. However, it continued to flourish, and was incorporated as "Liberty Hall," in 1777.

The Revolution closed its doors; Cornwallis quartered his troops within it, and afterwards burned the buildings.

Under wrongs the Scotch-Irish of North Carolina were the most restless of all the colonists. They were zealous advocates for freedom of conscience and security against taxation unless imposed by themselves.

During the administration of acting Governor Miller, they imprisoned the president and six members of the council, convened the legislature, established courts of justice, and for two years exercised all the functions of government; they derided the authority of Governor Eastchurch; they imprisoned, impeached, and sent into exile Governor Sothel, for his extortions, and successfully resisted the effort of lord Granville to establish the Church of England in that colony. In 1731, Governor Burrington wrote: "The people of North Carolina are neither to be cajoled or outwitted; * * * always behaved insolently to their Governors. Some they imprisoned, others they have drove out of the country, and at other times set up a government of their own choice."

In 1765, when a vessel laden with stamp paper arrived, the people overawed the captain, who soon sailed away. The officers then adopted a regular system of oppression and extortion, and plundered the people at every turn of life. The people formed themselves into an a.s.sociation "for regulating public grievances and abuse of powers." The royal governor, Tryon (the same who later originated the infamous plot to poison Was.h.i.+ngton), raised an army of eleven hundred men, and marched to inflict summary punishment on the defiant sons of liberty. On May 16, 1771, the two forces met on the banks of the Great Alamance. After an engagement of two hours the patriots failed. These men were st.u.r.dy, patriotic members of three Presbyterian churches. On the field of battle were their pastors, graduates of Princeton. Tryon used his victory so savagely as to drive an increasing stream of settlers over the mountains into Tennessee, where they made their homes in the valley of the Watauga, and there nurtured their wrongs; but the day of their vengeance was rapidly approaching.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF BATTLE FIELD OF ALAMANCE.]

The stirring times of 1775 found the North Carolinians ready for revolt.

They knew from tradition and experience the monstrous wrongs of tyrants.

When the people of Mecklenburg county learned in May, 1775, that parliament had declared the colonies in a state of revolt, they did not wait for the action of congress nor for that of their own provincial legislature, but adopted resolutions, which in effect formed a declaration of independence.

The power, valor and uncompromising conduct of these men is ill.u.s.trated in their conduct at the battle of King's Mountain, fought October 7, 1780. It was totally unlike any other in American history, being the voluntary uprising of the people, rus.h.i.+ng to arms to aid their distant kinsmen, when their own homes were menaced by savages. They served without pay and without the hope of reward. The defeat of Gates at Camden laid the whole of North Carolina at the feet of the British.

Flushed with success, Colonel Furguson, of the 71st Regiment, at the head of eleven hundred men marched into North Carolina and took up his position at Gilbert Town, in order to intercept those retreating in that direction from Camden, and to crush out the spirit of the patriots in that region. Without any concert of action volunteers a.s.sembled simultaneously, and placed themselves under tried leaders. They were admirably fitted by their daily pursuits for the privations they were called upon to endure. They had no tents, baggage, bread or salt, but subsisted on potatoes, pumpkins and roasted corn, and such venison as their own rifles could procure. Their army consisted of four hundred men, under Colonel William Campbell, from Was.h.i.+ngton county, Virginia, two hundred and forty were under Colonel Isaac Shelby, from Sullivan county, North Carolina, and two hundred and forty men, from Was.h.i.+ngton county, same state, under John Sevier, which a.s.sembled at Watauga, September 25, where they were joined by Colonel Charles McDowell, with one hundred and sixty men, from the counties of Burke and Rutherford, who had fled before the enemy to the western waters. While McDowell, Shelby and Sevier were in consultation, two paroled prisoners arrived from Furguson with the message that if they did not "take protection under his standard, he would march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay waste their country with fire and sword." On their march to meet the army of Furguson they were for twenty-four hours in the saddle. They took that officer by surprise, killed him and one hundred and eighty of his men, after an engagement of one hour and five minutes, the greater part of which time a heavy and incessant fire was kept up on both sides, with a loss to themselves of only twenty killed and a few wounded. The remaining force of the enemy surrendered at discretion, giving up their camp equipage and fifteen hundred stand of arms. On the morning after the battle several of the Royalist (Tory) prisoners were found guilty of murder and other high crimes, and hanged.

This was the closing scene of the battle of King's Mountain, an event which completely crushed the spirit of the Royalists, and weakened beyond recovery the power of the British in the Carolinas. The intelligence of Furguson's defeat destroyed all Cornwallis's hopes of aid from those who still remained loyal to Britain's interests. The men oppressed by British laws and Tryon's cruelty were not yet avenged, for they were with Morgan at the Cowpens and with Greene at Guildford Court House, and until the close of the war.

In the settling of South Carolina, every s.h.i.+p that sailed from Ireland for the port of Charleston, was crowded with men, women and children, which was especially true after the peace of 1763. About the same date, within one year, a thousand families came into the state in that wave that originated in Pennsylvania, bringing with them their cattle, horses and hogs. Lands were allotted to them in the western woods, which soon became the most popular part of the province, the up-country population being overwhelmingly Scotch-Irish. They brought with them and retained, in an eminent degree, the virtues of industry and economy, so peculiarly necessary in a new country. To them the state is indebted for much of its early literature. The settlers in the western part of the colony, long without the aid of laws, were forced to band themselves together for mutual protection. The royal governor, Montague, in 1764, sent an army against them, and with great difficulty a civil war was averted.

The division thus created reappeared in 1775, on the breaking out of the Revolution. The state suffered greatly from the ravages of Cornwallis, who rode roughly over it, although her sons toiled heroically in defence of their firesides. The little bands in the east gathered around the standard of Marion, and in the north and west around those of Sumter and Pickens. They kept alive the flame of liberty in the swamps, and when the country appeared to be subdued, it burst forth in electric flashes striking and withering the hand of the oppressor. Through the veins of most of the patriots flowed Scotch-Irish blood; and to the hands of one of this cla.s.s, John Rutledge, the destinies of the state were committed.

Georgia was spa.r.s.ely settled at the time of the Revolution. In 1753 its population was less than twenty-four hundred. Emigration from the Carolinas set in towards North Georgia, bringing many Scotch-Irish families. The movement towards the mountain and Piedmont regions of the southeast began about 1773. In that year, Governor Wright purchased from the Indians that portion of middle Georgia lying between the Oconee and the Savannah. The inducements he then offered proved very attractive to the enterprising sons of Virginia and the Carolinas, who lived in the highlands of those states. These people who settled in Georgia have thus been described by Governor Gilmer: "The pretty girls were dressed in striped and checked cotton cloth, spun and woven with their own hands, and their sweethearts in sumach and walnut-dyed stuff, made by their mothers. Courting was done when riding to meeting on Sunday, and walking to the spring when there. Newly married couples went to see the old folks on Sat.u.r.day, and carried home on Sunday evening what they could spare. There was no _ennui_ among the women for something to do. If there had been leisure to read, there were but few books for the indulgence. Hollow trees supplied cradles for babies."

A majority of the first settlers of East Tennessee were of Scotch-Irish blood, having sought homes there after the battle of Alamance, and hence that state became the daughter of North Carolina. The first written const.i.tution born of a convention of people on this continent, was that at Watauga, in 1772. A settlement of less than a dozen families was formed in 1778, near Bledsoe, isolated in the heart of the Chickasaw nation, with no other protection than a small stockade enclosure and their own indomitable courage. In the early spring of 1779, a little colony of gallant adventurers, from the parent line of Watauga, crossed the c.u.mberland mountain, and established themselves near the French Lick, and planted a field of corn where the city of Nashville now stands. The settlement on the c.u.mberland was made in 1780, after great privations and sufferings on the journey. The settlers at the various stations were so hara.s.sed by the Indians, incited thereto by British and Spanish agents, that all were abandoned except Elatons and the Bluffs (Nashville). These people were compelled to go in armed squads to the springs, and plowed while guarded by armed sentinels. The Indians, by a well planned stratagem, attempted to enter the Bluffs, on April 22d, 1781. The men in the fort were drawn into an ambush by a decoy party.

When they dismounted to give battle, their horses dashed off toward the fort, and they were pursued by some Indians, which left a gap in their lines, through which some whites were escaping to the fort; but these were intercepted by a large body of the enemy from another ambush. The heroic women in the fort, headed by Mrs. James Robertson, seized the axes and idle guns, and planted themselves in the gate, determined to die rather than give up the fort. Just in time she ordered the sentry to turn loose a pack of dogs which had been selected for their size and courage to encounter bears and panthers. Frantic to join the fray, they dashed off, outyelling the savages, who recoiled before the fury of their onset, thus giving the men time to escape to the fort. So overjoyed was Mrs. Robertson that she patted every dog as he came into the fort.

So thoroughly was Kentucky settled by the Scotch-Irish, from the older colonies, that it might be designated as of that race, the first emigrants being from Virginia and North Carolina. It was first explored by Thomas Walker in 1747; followed by John Finley, of North Carolina, 1767; and in 1769, by Daniel Boone, John Stewart, and three others, who penetrated to the Kentucky river. By the year 1773, lands were taken up and afterwards there was a steady stream, almost entirely from the valley and southwest Virginia. No border annals teem with more thrilling incidents or heroic exploits than those of the Kentucky hunters, whose very name finally struck terror into the heart of the strongest savage.

The prediction of the Cherokee chief to Boone at the treaty at Watauga, ceding the territory to Henderson and his a.s.sociates, was fully verified: "Brother," said he, "we have given you a fine land, but I believe you will have much trouble in settling it."

The history of the Scotch-Irish race in Canada, prior to the peace of 1783, is largely that of individuals. It has already been noted that two settlements had been made in Nova Scotia by the emigrants that landed from the five s.h.i.+ps in Boston harbor. It is recorded that Truro, Nova Scotia, was settled in 1762, and in 1756 three brothers from Ireland settled in Colchester, same province. If the questions were thoroughly investigated it doubtless would lead to interesting results.

It must not be lost sight of that one of the important industrial arts brought to America was of untold benefit. Not only did every colony bring with them agricultural implements needful for the culture of flax, but also the small wheels and the loom for spinning and weaving the fibre. Nothing so much excited the interest of Puritan Boston, in 1718, as the small wheels worked by women and propelled by the foot, for turning the straight flax fibre into thread. Public exhibitions of skill in 1719 took place on Boston common, by Scotch-Irish women, at which prizes were offered. The advent of the machine produced a sensation, and societies and schools were formed to teach the art of making linen thread.

The distinctive characteristics which the Scotch-Irish transplanted to the new world may be designated as follows: They were Presbyterians in their religion and church government; they were loyal to the conceded authority to the king, but considered him bound as well as themselves to "the Solemn League and Covenant," entered into in 1643, which pledged the support of the Reformation and of the liberties of the kingdom; the right to choose their own ministers, untrammeled by the civil powers; they practiced strict discipline in morals, and gave instruction to their youth in schools and academies, and in teaching the Bible as ill.u.s.trated by the Westminster a.s.sembly's catechism. To all this they combined in a remarkable degree, acuteness of intellect, firmness of purpose, and conscientious devotion to duty.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Skene's "Chronicles of the Picts and Scots," p. 77.]

[Footnote 6: Stille, Life of Wayne, p. 5, says he was not Scotch-Irish.]

[Footnote 7: Dunlap's "Pennsylvania Packet," June 17, 1778.]