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VOL. LXXXVn. RICHMI
The Beginnings and De\
Presbyterian Church in
I
PONS ET ORIGO.
The Presbyterian Church in North Carolina is
mainly the result of two streams of immigration
from Northwestern Europe?one from the North
of Scotland and the other from the North of Ireland.
Both streams were set in motion by the
oppressions of the British government. Both the
Scotch and the Scotch-Irish came to the New
World seeking the civil and religious liberty which
was denied them in the Old. The Scotch entered
by the port of Wilmington and occupied the Cape
Fear country in and around what is now Cumberland
county, and the Scotch-Irish entered mainly
by the ports of Philadelphia and Charleston and
occupied chiefly the Piedmont region farther west.
EARLIEST PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENTS.
To this day these two parts of the State are the
chief centers of our Presbyterian strength. Yet
it is an interesting fact that the earliest of the
Scotch-Irish settlements was not on the Yadkin
or the Catawba, but in Duplin county, where a
colony of Presbyterians from Ulster settled about
1736. Their principal place of worship was called
Goshen Grove, and was about three miles from
what is now Kenansville, and to this venerable
congregation the present Grove church at Kenansville
traces its origin. Farther down towards Wilmington,
in what was called The Welsh Tract, in
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new nanover county, was another early settlement
at first composed of Welsh emigrants, but
shortly afterwards reinforced by other families.
In the northern part of the State also (known
later as Granville, Orange and Caswell counties)
Scotch-Irish settlements began about 1738.
THE FIRST MISSIONARY, WILLIAM ROBINSON.
1742-1743.
The religious needs of all these scattered Presbyterian
settlements in North Carolina were met
in a measure for a number of years by missionaries
sent from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where
there was already a large and rapidly growing
Scotch-Irish population. The first of these missionaries,
and the first Presbyterian minister that
ever preached in North Carolina, seems to have
been William Robinson, who spent a part of the
winter of 1742 and 1743 among Presbyterian settlements
in this colony. His work as a missionary
in Virginia had been remarkably successful, but
the results of his labor in Carolina were very small.
We do not even know what the places were that
he visited in his tour, but as the Presbyterian set
uements in Duplin and New Hanover were the
oldest in-the State, it is probable that these were
among the places that he visited, as well as the
settlements in Orange and Granville.
HUGH M'ADEN'S MISSIONARY JOURNEY. ^
. . 1755-1756.
No such uncertainty attaches to the movements
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i North Carolina fog-w Semi
of the next missionary who is known to have
preached in these parts, Hugh McAden, for in a
full and interesting journal?which has happily
been preserved almost entire, and which i? the
most valuable document that has come down to us
from those early days?he describes in detail the
extended missionary journey through Virginia and
the Carolinas on which he was sent as a young
licentiate by Newcastle Presbytery in 1755 and
1756, a journey which occupied a whole year.
Traveling horseback and preaching as he went, he
passed through the Valley of Virginia from the
Potomac almost to the Peaks of Otter, hearing as
he came with sorrow and dismay the news of Braddock's
defeat, crossed the Blue Ridge, then the
Dan river, and entered North Carolina July 29,
1755. Without undertaking to enumerate all the
places at which he preached in homes or meeting
hniicoa a ffor nnlori n r? 4-Krv Cl-nfrt ? ?A-? -
wMivw vutvuug me ?jtaujj ici us Uiuiiiiuil &
few in order to get a general idea of his route:
Hico, Eno, Grassy Creek, Fishing Creek, Hawfields,
Buffalo, Yadkin Ford, Rocky River, Sugar
Creek (October 19th), the Broad River country
in upper Sout)i Carolina, the Waxhaws; then back
into North Carolina, revisiting some of the places
touched on his southward journey and including
Coddle Creek, Thyatira and Second Creek; then
east to the Highlanders on the Cape Fear, preaching
at Hector McNeill's (The Bluff), Alexander
McKay's (where Longstreet church now stands),
Bladen Courthouse, and other points; then to
Wilmington, where on February 15, 1756, he
preached in the morning "to a large and splendid
audience," but in the afternoon to only "about a
dozen," a slump which greatly surprised and depressed
him. The next two Sundays he preached
at Mr. Evans's, in The Welsh Tract, and the people
there took some steps towards raising a salary
and calling him as pastor. In March we find him
at the house of Mr. Dickson, the clerk of Duplin
county, where he preached to a considerable congregation,
most of whom were 'Irish," as he calls
them, meaning, of course, "Scotch-Irish." It must
.In,..,. 1 J A1..1. ? - " '
ain ajo m: icuicuiuonu umi uy mis name is meant
not a mixture of Scotch and Irish, but Scotch people
of pure strain who had lived for a few generations
in the North of Ireland. McAden pursued
his journey northward as far as Edgecombe; then
westward, coming again in April to the Granville
county region, which he had traversed the preceding
summer, and passed out of the State on his
homeward journey on May 6, 1756. On his re
turn to Pennsylvania he seems to have visited
James Campbell, a Scotch minister who was then
preaching in Lancaster county, in that State, and
turned his attention to the condition of his countrymen
on the Cape Fear, with the result that in
the following year (1757) Mr. Campbell moved
thither and became their minister.
4 l Presbyter/an t
hern presbyte&/a&
IE 5, 1913. No. 44^ 4 ^
the Centennial celebration of the Synod of
ina, in Alamance Church, October 17, 19/3,
, W. W. Moore. 'President of Union Tbeohary.
FUOM CULLODEN TO THE CAPE FEAR.
These Scotch settlements on the Upper Cape
Fear antedated those of the Scotch-Irish on the
Yadkin and the Catawba. Some Scotch families
are known to have been there as far back as 1729,
when the province was divided into North and
South Carolina; and when Alexander Clark arrived
with his shipload of emigrants in 1736 he
found "a good many" Scotch already settled in
Cumberland. But the great influx of the Highlanders
began ten years later, after the disastrous
Battle of Culloden, where their unworthy and illstarred
leader, Charles Edward, the Young Pretender,
was utterly routed, and after five months
of wanderings and hardships, aided by the heroic
Flora McDonald and others, escaped to France.
Hie misguided but devoted followers were hunted
down and slain in large numbers, their houses
burned, their cattle carried away, their property
destroyed, and their country ravaged with a ruthless
hand. Many were carried captive to England
and scores of them publicly executed there as rebels.
Finally, however, George II, with tardy clemency,
pardoned a great number of them on condition of
their taking the oath of allegiance. But even then
they were subjected to much petty oppression and
many indignities, being forbidden to own any
weapons or 10 wear tneir ancient national dress,
and being surrounded by armed men and spies of
the government. These were the conditions that
gave rise to the large settlements of the Scotch on
the Cape Fear. Hundreds df the Highlanders
sailed for the New World. In 1749, a company
of about three hundred, under the leadership of
Neill McNeill, landed at Wilmington and settled
in the region of which the community then known
as Crosscreek, afterwards as Campbelton, and now
as Fayetteville, was the center. These were followed
by other large companies of their countrymen
who wished to escape persecution and improve
their general condition, and so in time they spread
through all the territory now comprised in the
counties of Cumberland, Bladen, Sampson, Moore,
Harnett, Montgomery, Robeson, Hoke, Scotland,
Richmond and Anson.
THE FIR8T SETTLED PASTOR, JAMES CAMPBELL.
1757-1780.
These immigrants of 1749 brought no minister
with them, and, as there was here no established
Presbyterian Church", dividing the country into
parishes by civil authority, and no collection of
ministers' salaries by law, as in the old country,
and as the immigrants could not immediately invent
and introduce a new method, they seem to
have had no regular public services till the arrival
of James Campbell in 1757, after his interview
with McAden. We have already seen that, in the
preceding year (1756), McAden had visited these
settlements and preached at various places to the