"John Rosbrugh was not a native born American but belonged to that sturdy class known as the Scotch-Irish, who have furnished so large a proportion of the brains, backbone and muscle which have been indispensable in shaping and maintaining our nationality. He was of the number of those who, for conscience sake, left Scotland and went to the North of Ireland, and who have made that part of Erin's Isle present socially, religiously and politically so marked a contrast with its more southerly portion. He was born in the year 1714, shortly before the family left Scotland, or shortly after they arrived in the North of Ireland, the exact date of the migration not being now attainable. Of the family to which he belonged we have no definite information further than that lie had an older brother, William. It seems that the same impulse which constrained the family to migrate from Scotland to the North of Ireland, impelled this William Rosbrugh, together with his brother John — though the latter was young in years — to take their departure for a land more inviting, beyond the sea, in America"... (1880 source here)
John Rosbrugh's Wikipedia page (link here) says he was born in Enniskillen, of Ayrshire parents. He graduated from the College of New Jersey at Princeton in 1761, along with David Caldwell, later of North Carolina, who would famously cite the ancestral memories of "Londonderry and Enniskillen" in a sermon in support of American independence. Back to Rosbrugh:
"... a call was presented to him to take charge of the Allen Township Presbyterian Church, in connection with Greenwich. Thus he was to be provided with a home in the Irish Settlement, Northampton county, Pennsylvania, among the Scotch-Irish, the stock from which he himself had sprung, as well as his wife. He was now called to the congregation in which his father-in-law, James Ralston, was an elder, and his wife's family were members".
Evidently this was also a Scots-speaking community:
"Mr. Rosbrugh, in making his pastoral visits, once came to a widow living alone. He found her at her devotions and did not disturb her until she was through. She read the Scripture, then lined a Psalm as she sang it, before prayer. He asked her why she lined the Psalm, as there were none to hear her when she was alone. "Ah!" said she, "it is sa quiet I fain would 'dight my gab twice wi'it."
A more accurate spelling might be "it's sae quate I fain wud dicht ma gab twice wi' it". In 1776, Rosbrugh's brother-in-law, John Ralston (link here), was appointed as a member of the Constitutional Convention for Pennsylvania. That same year, John Rosbrugh became Moderator of the Presbytery of Pennsylvania. Revolution was coming.
"These were Revolutionary times, and Mr. Rosbrugh was filled with the spirit of freedom. It was the heavy yoke, politically and religiously, which the Mother Country had imposed upon her people, that drove him and many of his class from the heather, hill and dale of Scotland, to their new homes in America. That the same yoke should be imposed upon them in their new home, seemed to him like the pursuit and oppression of the innocent..."
Rosbrugh became a military chaplain in the American revolutionary army. Aware of the risk, he wrote his last will on 18 December 1776. Less than two weeks later, on 2 January 1777, aged 63, during the Battle of Assunpink Creek, near Trenton, New Jersey, Rev. John Rosbrugh was stabbed to death. A total of 17 bayonet wounds ended his life – inflicted upon him after he had surrendered to a small company of British 'Hessians' who he encountered in a grove of trees. They gave him five minutes to pray. Apparently, he prayed for them (additional source here).
His body was buried near where he died by Captain John Hays, who according to one source had been born in west Donegal. He was later re-buried, some say in the Old First Presbyterian Church graveyard in Trenton.
Jane Rosbrugh raised their five children, with some financial support from the state of Pennsylvania. She died in 1809.
• Gravestone photo above from the excellent All Things Liberty website: "Once it was discovered that he was a Presbyterian minister, he was stabbed repeatedly and left to die".
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