I am thankful to Bruce Carlson of My History Can Beat Up Your Politics for posting this on Twitter earlier. I’m only 15 minutes into it and it’s really excellent - detailed, packed with content, a lot of which I had never heard before. Listen to it here:
This event next Saturday evening promises to be truly excellent. I'm especially looking forward to seeing inside historic First Presbyterian Church in Rosemary Street in Belfast, and to hearing Nigel and Dianna Boullier playing authentic old-time County Down fiddle tunes. Nigel is the author of the remarkable Handed Down: Country Fiddling and Dancing in East and Central Down (available here).
• Book your ticket online; the Foundation is a charity and donations are suggested at £25 per person. Click here.
I had expected some of this. I had met Stipe before, in Athens, Georgia, at the time when R.E.M. had just signed with Warner Brothers and was about to release Green. At the end of the conversation, he began studying my face. "You're Scotch-Irish, aren't you?" he said.
"No," I said. "I'm not."
"You have a very Scotch-Irish face."
"I'm not Scotch-Irish."
He reached out his hand and touched the back of it to my face. "You have Scotch-Irish cheekbones," he said. "I'll bet you have that somewhere in your background. I'm very good at figuring out where people came from."
(from this 2003 interview in Esquire magazine)
There are some drawbacks in the script, but the general approach is pretty good.
Lunsford Richardson II (1854–1919; Wikipedia entry here) is a name not many people know today. But his product is a world-famous brand. Here’s an article from the latest edition of the official North Carolina magazine, OurState.com. His original name – Richardson’s Croup and Pneumonia Cure Salve – was too long for the small jar, so he gave the honour to his brother in law, Dr. Joshua Vick.
Richardson’s son Jacob Henry Smith Richardson (1885– 1972) was a successful salesman for the firm, and he is said to have been "proud of his Scotch-Irish heritage” (source here). The Richardson-Vicks Collection is held at Greensboro Historical Museum.
Lunsford was a renowned advocate of African-American rights, borne out in October 1944 by the WW2 liberty ship S.S. Lunsford Richardson being named after him with a plaque affixed stating it had been at the "special request of the leading Negro citizens of North Carolina to honor the memory of a white friend." 71-year-old Watson Law, a Black friend of the Richardsons, was present at the official launch event at Brunswick, Georgia. Henry's attitudes seem to have been similar:
... Richardson was proud of his Scotch-Irish heritage and considered the South more "American" than other regions whose populations included more immigrants. He named North Carolina's racial heritage as one of its assets in an article about how the state could survive the Depression and improve its economy. His correspondence and writings contain numerous references to his racial attitudes, including a letter to the South African Information Service comparing apartheid to segregation in the American South ...
The Richardsons were of course Presbyterians, very involved in First Presbyterian Church in the town. According to this 1980 source, the first Ulster-Scots settlers in the Greensboro area arrived in 1753, a direct 'church plant' from Nottingham Presbyterian Church in present-day Maryland. Rev David Caldwell (bio here) was one of the town's outstanding historical figures - today an Historical Centre stands in his memory.
NB: Lunsford Richardson I (1808–56) had been a Democratic Senator in the North Carolina State Legislature for a time around 1854. He owned a mill on Little River in Johnson County, which was at risk of collapsing during a flood on 14 July 1856. He tried to save it but was drowned, a tragedy witnessed by his wife and daughter, and some men who were trying in vain to rescue him. A general biography of the family is included in Makers of America; biographies of leading men of thought and action which is online here. It traces the Richardsons to England and Scotland; the Scotch-Irish element must have been intermingled through the generations. The same book says this:
… the men have proven themselves capable, combining the shrewdness of the Scotch and the wit of the Irish. For two hundred years and more, the Scotch-Irish race has been a potential and beneficent factor in the development of the American Republic. All things considered, it seems probable that the people of this race have given color, to a great extent, to the history of the United States ...
The words have been attributed to Martin Luther, the other more familiar tune written by Ulster-born William James Kirkpatrick. Here are the wonderful Avett Brothers of North Carolina playing it. It is a bit of a cliché perhaps, like most Christmas songs it has been over-done and the familiarity can breed contempt. Yet underlying the schmaltz is a deep eternal truth - that through Jesus Christ, God provides what He demands. And through faith alone in Christ alone we are made right with God. He didnt come as a moral teacher. He came to be Mediator and Substitute. The Gospel is truly ‘Good News’ because the pressure is off. Christ has done it all. Amazing grace.
Duncan MacNab (also spelled McNab) was a Catholic missionary to the Australian aborigines. Born in Morven in the Scottish Highlands, nearly 100 miles north of Inverness, he arrived in Melbourne on 29 July 1867 along with the Archbishop of Sydney, John Bede Polding, on board the ship Chariot of Fame. McNab became a great champion for aboriginal rights and he features in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
His entry there gives a clue as to his departure from what had been 20 years of parish life in Scotland – "He dabbled in Gaelic literature and at Airdrie in 1862 fell foul of Irish parishioners, probably by arguing the Scottish birth of St Patrick”.
There is a huge full-page letter from McNab in the 28 June 1862 edition of the Glasgow Free Press newspaper where he lays out his case and counters his critics. Some weeks previously McNab had been accused in the pages of the paper by a fellow Catholic priest as follows – “I know well he hates everything Irish … [he is] a fair type of his Scottish order, in his contempt for, and opposition to, everything Irish: people, politics, habits, all except the Irish faith … an anti-Hibernian spirit in our Scottish friends? And yet where would they have a church today … were it not for the always open purse of poor despised and sneered-at Pat?" It is pretty rough stuff.
If the subject was controversial, McNab wasn’t going to lie down as he gave a lengthy ‘archaeological dissertation’ address on the subject in St Margaret’s schoolroom in Airdrie on 25 September 1865, which was published in Dublin by James Duffy the year after (online edition here). According to the history section of the church’s website, McNab had given a similar talk in Bathgate too.
Matters came to a head after he published a pamphlet to prove that St. Patrick was born in Scotland, and followed this with a lecture at Bathgate that was seen as being anti-Irish. Certainly rivalry between Scots and Irish Catholics was common at the time, among the clergy as well as the laity, and Father McNab was undoubtedly one of its victims.
There are some other brilliant stories about McNab there:
He dealt with repeated rumours that the Orangemen were preparing to attack his church and raze it to the ground, by letting it be known that he kept gunpowder in the house and would blow the church up rather than have it desecrated. It appears that this was no idle threat either, as Father Van Stiphout records that he found a small keg of gunpowder in a press in the house when he came there in 1893.
• A 1989 thesis about McNab can be found here.
• His Wikipedia entry is here.
I really do need to pull together all of the Patrick-related Scottish and Ulster-Scots material I have gathered up over the years and get it published as a booklet or online.
NB: Many other writers, before and after McNab (such as Professor James H Todd of Trinity College Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy, who was also a Treasurer of St Patrick’s Cathedral in the city) have agreed with him that Kilpatrick near Dumbarton is the most plausible birth place for Patrick. However, the birth place issue is just one small part of a larger collection of Scottish Patrick traditions which today’s storytellers and tourism initiatives choose to ignore.
Music travels. It turns out that around 1750 a Fermanagh man, William McKeague of the Sixth Enniskillen Fusiliers, composed a tune called “The March of the Royal Inniskillings”, probably based on an earlier Irish tune called “Squire Bumper Jones” from 1723. “The March of the Royal Inniskillings” was later picked up by John Stafford Smith in England and travelled across the Atlantic where it went on to become a world-famous anthem. Article here.
My Wilson ancestors lived in a wee house at Ballyrawer/Ballyraer outside Carrowdore for generations. It was sold out of the family and was bulldozed just a few months ago. My aunt Betty supplied me with these photos just a few weeks ago. One shows the house, photographed from just across the Woburn Road within the old Crommelin ‘plantin’ of Carrowdore Castle which I mentioned here before in this post, around 1930. My great uncle Henry Wilson (1923–2003) and his sister Rhoda Wilson (1927-201?) are standing at the front gate, then just weans. Also below are the Wilsons’ maternal grandmother, Lizzie Kerr (1889–1966, who married Hugh Wilson, 1886–1967) and her mother Mary Kerr (d. 1945), presumably photographed around the same time.
My thanks are due to distant relative John Blair from Ajax in Canada (he is a descendant of these same Kerrs) who was able to confirm for me the tradition of a generation of our ancestors living in the house at no rent for a generation. John has pinned that down to a timeframe from 1879 (the houses were described as 'free for 17 years) until at least 1930 (described as 'free').
I posted about these folks years ago, and have just recently been reminded of them thanks to Sandra McCracken's new album entitled God's Highway. She has an earlier song called 'Portadown Station', inspired by, yes, our very own Portadown railway station. In 2015 she released Psalms, a collection of her own reworking of some of the Psalms. She has a certain Iris DeMent or Emmylou Harris quality; she is one of the Indelible Grace collective, whose album Live at the Ryman Auditorium is absolutely superb. Listen to the whole 18 track concert here; documentary film is below.
I like having friends with all sorts of opinions. It is good to stretch a bit to listen to what others think. It's even more impressive when somebody leaves a former opinion and changes their mind. A high-profile person who has done just that recently is Glasgow-born economic historian Niall Ferguson - recent Boston Globe article here.
Back in September he intriguingly suggested that the incoming President of the USA should appoint a 'Council of Historians', because history is the only example we can learn from, and understanding history and culture is very very important - article here. People in high office in Northern Ireland would do well to pay attention.
Ferguson was pro-Remain, an advisor to the Remain campaign, but has now changed his mind and is publicly announcing that on reflection he should have supported 'Brexit', the campaign to Leave the European Union. Here are some video clips from YouTube.
Denis Kearney was a new name to me but the parallels are fascinating; Kearney's great rival in Irish-American Californian politics was Frank Roney, someone who has featured on this blog previously. Niall Ferguson is a man worth listening to.
After the circus that was the US Presidential election, here's a man with something to say. This might be the best speech I've heard from any American politician in a very very long time. Former Senator James Webb is the author of Born Fighting (2005) and has visited Northern Ireland on many occasions.
"...I think of a great friend of mine, a fellow marine named Mac McDowell, who served in my company in Vietnam. In fact, we were wounded on the same day. Mac has been very loyal to me, even though he was a conservative Republican. He runs a gun shop on a shooting range in Erie, Pennsylvania.When I decided not to continue the attempt at the presidency, he sent me an email. He said, “This guy Donald Trump,” he says, “the Republicans hate him, the Democrats hate him, the media hates him, I think I found my guy.”
His sentiment of uniting Scotch-Irish and African Americans will seem to some like pie-in-the-sky. That is until you read Carter G Woodson of course. And Barack Obama. And Rosa Parks. And Gianno Caldwell. And I suspect many many others. Values can unite above ethnicity.
Yes, that Rosa Parks. As this article from 1992 about her autobiography entitled Rosa Parks, My Story, states that her "Scotch-Irish great-grandfather was imported to Charleston, S.C., as an indentured servant". Similar comments are here in an article in The Washington Post in 1995.
He was James Percival (1832–1920), an indentured servant on the Wright estate of the town of Pine Level, Montgomery County, Alabama. He married African-American Mary Jane Nobels, who was a midwife and slave on the same estate. They had nine children.
Like everyone, Rosa Parks would have had 8 great-grandparents, of which James Percival was only one. Yet James Webb saw fit to mention her in his book Born Fighting, because, like Barack Obama, she apparently mentioned her Scotch-Irish ancestry in her own writings. That is surely significant. If anybody out there has the original source I would be very interested.
NB: There can however be an unhelpful 'elasticity' with the usage of the term Scotch-Irish, so it's always important to verify the sources. Sometimes it has been used too broadly, being used to mean someone whose ancestry was from either Scotland or Ireland, so not necessarily Ulster at all.
Emigration to America is a constant stream. People I went to school with live there, I have two cousins who live there. Obviously they emigrated within the past generation, not in the 1700s. They’ve never shot a musket or fought in a Revolution but they are just as important (maybe more important) than earlier migrations. We should try to connect better with those folk. I wonder if stats exist somewhere?
Outgoing President Barack Obama has re-stated his Scotch-Irish roots in a major interview in The New Yorker magazine. Here's the extract, and it's even more direct than the speech he ave back in the summer:
Obama will go down in history as the first African-American President, and he derives immense pride from that, but he never fails to insist on the complexity of his story. “I’m half Scotch-Irish, man!” he said. “When folks like Jim Webb write about Scotch-Irish stock in West Virginia and Kansas and so on, those are my people! They don’t know it, always, but they are.” (full article here)
Kansas is in the Mid-West, disparagingly described as 'flyover country' to the urban elites on the west and east coasts. Our people live there too. Below are two clippings reporting on a Portavogie man who was born around 1878 who emigrated to the USA around the turn of the century I assume, and lived in Kansas City. I am pretty sure my ancestors would have know him before he left. I wonder did Mahood ever encounter Obama's grandparents?...
In February 1634 our Eagle Wing minister Rev. John Livingstone and his former schoolteacher William Wallace travelled to Dorchester on the south coast of England to meet with Rev John White (1575–1648). White was an enthusiastic supporter of emigration to America and organised a number of voyages. Around 1623, just two years after the famous 'Thanksgiving' arrival tradition, White became actively involved with the 'Dorchester Adventurers'.
He secured a patent from King Charles I for a tract of land about 40 miles long, stretching from the Charles River at Boston up to and just beyond the Merrimack River at Newburyport, which is where later documents show Eagle Wing was bound for. In 1629 the Massachusetts Bay Company was formed, its shareholders including John Winthrop who would become the first Governor of the colony and whose son came to Ulster at least twice during 1635 to help with the planning of Eagle Wing, meeting with Livingstone & co at Sir John Clotworthy's castle in Antrim in October of that year.
The first ship White's company was associated with, the George Bonaventura, sailed in May 1629. A fleet of 11 ships was soon assembled. By 1640 about 10,000 people emigrated. So, rather than a one-off ‘solo run’ episode (which is how I have heard it described) Eagle Wing was in fact very carefully planned to be part of a large organised and successful wave of emigration from Britain to America.
White was one of those at the Westminster Assembly of 1643 and a firm advocate of the Solemn League and Covenant, a role which would have renewed his acquaintance with the Ulster ministers and Eagle Wing would-be emigrants.
• Dorset County Museum in Dorchester is near White's rectory, his church - Holy Trinity and St Peter's - is still in the town, and the doorway of his birthplace at Manor Farm in Oxford has his name inscribed above the doorway.
‘Literally Hitler’ has become the tired insult of 2016. Everybody who ‘progressives’ in particular don’t like is described in impassioned tone as ‘Literally Hitler’. Often for relatively minor things such as a difference of opinion, not the actual invading of neighbouring countries and suchlike. Whilst many are getting excited about ‘post-truth’ being the buzz-term of the year, for me it pales in comparison with this very worn-out Adolfian accusation. It is little more than Godwin’s Law 2.0. It’s pretty grotesque to belittle the slaughter of the millions who were rounded up, gassed and burned in ovens during the Holocaust in particular. I’ve been to Auschwitz and Birkenau.
Before the arrival of Hitler on the national and world stage in 1933, there must have been other commonly-understood personalities who were up until then regarded as the embodiment of unimaginable evil. For Lowland Scots and Ulster-Scots, the obvious one that springs to mind is John Graham of Claverhouse (1648–89), a.k.a ‘Bonnie Dundee’ by his supporters, and ‘Bloody Dundee’ by his opponents and victims. In Scots he was ‘Bluidy Clavers’.
He was the first Viscount Dundee, prior to which he had been the 7th Laird of Claverhouse. At some point in the 1680s King James II gave him military command of all of the King’s forces in Scotland. In James’ previous office as Duke of York he had announced that:
"there would never be peace in Scotland till the whole of the country south of the Forth was turned into a hunting field.” (source here)
Not hunting for stag or pheasants, hunting for humans - Covenanter Presbyterians. And Claverhouse got the job. His name occurs time and again on the gravestones of Covenanter martyrs across Scotland. A now-deceased friend of mine told me of having been at a folk music event in Wigtown in the south coast of Galloway some years ago, and a visiting singer began a rendition of the old Jacobite song in praise of Claverhouse called ‘Bonnie Dundee’. He told me that there was shall we say a heated reaction. No wonder.
Claverhouse was killed in the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689 when the Jacobites famously defeated the forces of King William III (William of Orange) which were led by General Hugh Mackay. Claverhouse was buried at the church of nearby Blair Castle. There have been attempts to rewrite Claverhouse as maybe not having been as bad as his legend has painted, but the legendary image has stuck. Of the many soldiers who were tasked throughout the 1661-1688 period to hunt down Covenanters, his name stands above them all - according to Professor Michael Montgomery's exhaustive research, even as far as County Tyrone and also America with the warning to errant children that 'the Clavers will get you' (source here). James Leyburn’s landmark volume The Scotch-Irish: A Social History has further examples of the same expression (see here).
In the early 1900s, Millisle-born missionary Amy Carmichael wrote of one of her maternal Dalzell ancestors, probably the notorious Thomas Dalzell of Binns, being “a friend of Claverhouse, who persecuted the Covenanters. My father’s people were Covenanters”. I know an elderly couple who live outside Portaferry, the wife of whom told me one night at a talk I was giving in Portavogie that her family tradition was that her ancestors had fled from Scotland to Ulster to get away from Claverhouse.
PS: I remember being on school Scripture Union summer camps in the picturesque town of Moffat on three occasions in the late 1980s (when I was 14, then 17 and finally 18) at a place now called the Well Road Centre, and being pretty horrified that the Black Bull Hotel had a plaque on the wall which told some of Claverhouse's story, a photo of which I’ve added below.
The Annals of Augusta County, published in 1902, has a very good summary of Ulster-Scots history. Its introduction is simply entitled 'The Scotch-Irish’ which in 15 pages sweeps through two centuries of history from the late 1500s up to the late 1700s when Ulster-Scots emigrant families - who he described on page 5 as ‘Ulster Scotch’ - were making an impression upon frontier Virginia. Page 8 includes a long footnote about the Covenanter slave/prisoner shipwreck of the Crown of London in 1679 (click here).
The author, Joseph A Waddell (1847–1925), claimed descent from one of the men who survived and fled to Ulster for refuge, a William Waddell. This biography says that the Waddells lived in County Down for three generations and emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1739.
Another account traces the family specifically to Newry where Rev James Waddell, known as ‘The Blind Preacher’ had been born also in 1739, presumably just before the family emigrated (Wikipedia entry here). James’ parents were Thomas Waddell (b 1707) and Janet Bruce (b 1710). The Covenanter William Waddell was Thomas’ father. Some of this genealogy is included in the Annals on page 329 (click here).
• The Annals of Augusta County is available online here
• Rev James Waddell was tutor to Donegal-born Rev Charles Cummings, the author of Virginia’s 1775 Fincastle Resolutions (see previous post here)
• Rev James Waddell had been tutored by Armagh-born Rev Samuel Finley at the famous ‘Log College’ (Wikipedia entry here)
• He was the subject of a story by William Wirt, who was fascinated by the power of his oratory (link here)
"... Guess my surprise, when, on my arrival at Richmond, and mentioning the name of this man, I found not one person who had ever before heard of JAMES WADDELL! IS IT NOT strange that such a genius as this, so accomplished a scholar, so divine an orator, should be permitted to languish and die in obscurity within eighty miles of the metropolis of Virginia! ..."
A tablet, containing the following inscription, in commemoration of the Rev. James Waddell, was erected in the Courthouse of Lancaster County, Virginia, in 1905:IN MEMORIAM Rev. James Waddell, D. D. Son of Thomas and Janet Waddell, of the County Down, Ireland. Born on the Atlantic Ocean, in 1739, when his parents emigrated to America. Died in Lousia County, Virginia, Sept. 17, 1805. Licensed as a Probationer April 2, 1741, by the old Presbytery of Hanover.
Resided on Corratoman River, Lancaster County, Virginia, in 1762, and had three preaching places, viz: Lancaster C. H., the Forest Meet- inghouse, and the Northumberland Meetinghouse.
In 1768 married Mary Gordon, daughter of Col. James Gordon, of Lancaster County, an elder in the church, and a member of the Court, and the maternal grandfather of Gen. William F. Gordon, of Albemarle.
Taught Meriwether Lewis and Governor James Barbour.
Was at one time minister of the Tinkling Spring Church, Augusta Co., Va., and as a patriot, in the Revolution, addressed Tate's Com- pany at Midway, Rockbridge County, Virginia.
Immortalized in Wirt's British Spy, when in a sermon of thrilling oratory and magic eloquence on the passion of our Saviour, he electrified his hearers by the beautiful and sublime quotation from Rousseau: "Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a God."
This tablet is presented to Lancaster County through the Circuit Court, by Capt. Geo, P. Squires, Ocran, Lancaster, County, Virginia.
It's about time that somebody started to make fun of what has happened to western culture. These are three recent videos which folk have been sharing online, and which I hope ware just the start of a tidal wave that sweeps all of the stupid away.
"... The anecdote of her in the sketch of Mrs. Wylie illustrates this trait of character. Major Kennedy, who is still living, mentions another. In the war of 1812, he wished to raise recruits for his troop of horse, and knowing that Mrs. White had a fine supply of sons, he rode to her house to make known his business. All her sons were in the field at work except the youngest, whom she called, and in her broad Scotch-Irish dialect, bade him "rin awa' ta the fiel' an' tell his brithers ta cum in an' gang an' fight for their counthry, like their father afore them." ..."
The content of this sermon is very grim. The appeal back to the times a century before of the Covenanters in Scotland is deeply significant. You can read more about the incident here, with the memorial monument shown above. A young Andrew Jackson was among those who tended to the wounded and mutilated survivors who were brought to the church:
'... At eleven o'clock precisely, the venerable form of Martin, the preacher, came in sight. He was about sixty years of age, and had a high reputation for learning and eloquence. He was a large and powerful man, with a voice which it is said might have been heard at the distance of half a mile. As he walked from the place where he had hitched his horse, towards the stand, it being customary, when the congregation was too large to be accommodated in the meeting-house, to have the service in the open air, the loud and angry words of the speakers must have reached his ears. The voices ceased as he approached, and the congregation was soon seated in silence upon the logs around the stand.
When he arose to speak, every eye was fixed upon him. Those who had been most noisy expected a reproof for their desecration of the Sabbath, for their faithful pastor was never known to fail of rebuking those whose deportment was unsuited to the solemnity of the day. But at this time he too seemed absorbed with the subject that agitated every bosom.
"My hearers," he said, in his broad Scotch-Irish dialect— "talk and angry words will do no good. We must fight! As your pastor—in preparing a discourse suited to this time of trial—I have sought for all light, examined the Scriptures and other helps in ancient and modern history, and have considered especially the controversy between the United Colonies and the mother country. Sorely have our countrymen been dealt with, till forced to the declaration of their independence—and the pledge of their lives and sacred honor to support it. Our forefathers in Scotland made a similar one, and maintained that declaration with their lives; it is now our turn, brethren, to maintain this at all hazards."
After the prayer and singing of the Psalms—he calmly opened his discourse. He cited many passages from Scripture to show that a people may lawfully resist wicked rulers ; pointed to historical examples of princes trampling on the people's rights; painted in vivid colors the rise and progress of the Reformation—the triumph of truth over the misrule and darkness of ages—and finally applied the subject by fairly stating the merits of the Revolutionary controversy. Giving a brief sketch of the events of the war from the first shedding of blood at Lexington, and warming with the subject as he went on, his address became eloquent with the fiery energy of a Demosthenes. In a voice like thunder, frequently striking with his clenched fist the clapboard pulpit, he appealed to the excited concourse, exhorting them to fight valiantly in defence of their liberties. As he dwelt on the recent horrid tragedy—the butchery of Buford's men, cut down by the British dragoons while crying for mercy—his indignation reached its height. Stretching out his hand towards Waxhaw—
"Go see," he cried— "the tender mercies of Great Britain! In that church you may find men, though still alive, hacked out of the very semblance of humanity: some deprived of their arms—mutilated trunks: some with one arm or leg, and some with both legs cut off. Is not this cruelty a parallel to the history of our Scottish fathers, driven from their conventicles, hunted like wild beasts? Behold the godly youth, James Nesbit—chased for days by the British for the crime of being seen on his knees upon the Sabbath morning!" etc.
To this stirring sermon the whole assembly responded. Hands were clenched and teeth set in the intensity of feeling; every uplifted face expressed the same determination, and even the women were filled with the spirit that threatened vengeance on the invaders. During the interval of divine worship they went about professing their resolution to do their part in the approaching contest; to plough the fields and gather the crops in the absence of the men—aye, to fight themselves, rather than submit. In the afternoon the subject was resumed and discussed with renewed energy—while the appeals of the preacher were answered by even more energetic demonstrations of feeling. When the worship was concluded, and the congregation separating to return homeward, the manly form of Ben Land was seen walking among the people, shaking hands with every neighbor and whispering in his ear the summons to the next day's work...'
- from The Women of the American Revolution. v.3 by EF Ellet (1848). All three volumes have tonnes of great Scotch-Irish material.
.........
• the quote in the post title is from an account published just 5 years later by David Ramsay in his History of the Revolution of South Carolina. Ramsay's parents were both from Ulster.
