Charleston Harbor.
It is believed that the migration of the Scots was through northeastern Europe, by Belgium and the North of France, to Ireland. They were in Ireland by the third century. During the sixth century, a colony of these Irish Scots migrated to North Britain and, settling in the County of Argyle, established there a kingdom, subjugated the Pictish tribes that were before them, and the ancient Caledonia was thenceforward the land of the Scots, known as Scotland. Thither went from Ireland, in the same century, Columba, surnamed Saint, and established what has been called his convent on the island of Iona, but which was much more a school, under something like presbyterial supervision, for training ministers and missionaries of the Cross.
One thousand years before Calvin was born, worshippers of God were the Culdees who held to the pure doctrines of God's Word and the Presbyterian government. Their light glimmered on amid the darkness that oppressed the nations, and it never wholly ceased till Wickliffe, the morning star of the Reformation, arose.
The voice of Luther awoke new echoes on those shores.
When Patrick Hamilton, a youth of royal lineage, of attractive, polished manners, and cultivated mind, a friend of Luther and Melancthon, whom he had visited at "Wittenberg, was burned at the stake, Scotland’s first martyr emerged.
Other martyrdom followed. Helen Starke, after witnessing the execution of her husband, was strangled in a pool of water.
George Wishart, a man of noble birth, before whom crowded audiences wept, glowed, and trembled as he preached, was burned at the stake.
John Knox would have accompanied him in his hour of danger, but "Wishart forbade him. " Go back to your pupils; one is sufficient for one sacrifice." This same Knox became the man of his age in Scotland, her great Reformer. He was the man, valiant for truth, of whom the Regent Morton, himself of the dauntless race of Douglas, as he looked thoughtfully into his grave, said, " There lies he who never feared the face of man." The noble prototype was he of his fearless countrymen, at whose return to Scotland from his exile, consternation seized the enemies of the Reformation. "John Knox! John Knox is coming! He slept last night at Edinburgh!" was the frantic cry announcing their plans' ruin.
The first covenant in this land of covenants was signed on the third of December, 1557, and the first General Assembly was held in 1560. Out of a weekly exercise, or prophesying, conducted by the ministers, exhorters, and educated men of the vicinity who met to expound the Scriptures, grew the classical Presbytery. The provincial Synod added to this, and the whole order of the Presbyterian Church stood at length revealed. James I was the first Presbyterian king of Scotland. The almost endless religious turmoil drove the Scots to the American shores.
The emigration of Scotch-Irish into the UpCountry of North and South Carolina was from Pennsylvania, either by gradual migration of families through the mountain valleys of Virginia and southward or by a direct removal.
Families from the North of Ireland commenced entering the American Colonies during the early 1700s, landing in Pennsylvania Buck’s County, northeast of Philadelphia, and stretching westward into Chester, Lancaster, and York Counties. Their ministers were nearly all of liberal education. Some had taken their degrees in Scotland, and some in Ireland. Among them were the Tennents, Blairs, Francis Allison, Beaty; and of American birth, educated in the Scotch-Irish schools and colleges, Drs. Stanhope Smith, Patrick Allison, and others; civilians also, Judges Breckenridge and McKean, Chief Justice Williamson, the historian of North Carolina.
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The emigration line from Pennsylvania was through Kittatinny Valley, west of the Susquehanna, to the Potomac, and through the valley of the Shenandoah, southward. To a large extent, Irish emigrants landed in Pennsylvania settlements and identified themselves in South Carolina using Pennsylvania names of Lancaster, York, and Chester. Hint: If your ancestors were in Chester County, South Carolina, the next place to search is Chester County, Pennsylvania
During the early eighteenth century, the Scots drifted down into South Carolina. Larger colonies arrived in 1735, spreading themselves over Sumter, Darlington, Marion, and Horry Counties.
The Scots, who arrived at the port of Charleston from Ireland, used wagons and pack-horses to continue their journey.
The earliest known settlement in South Carolina was The Waxhaws, named by a tribe of Indians who first occupied the tributaries of the Catawba River.
Another famous settlement was "The Long Canes," in a direction southwest of the other. The earliest date of the first of these settlements appears to have been 1745; the latter date is unknown. Two families, Gowdy and Edwards, were found in it by Patrick Calhoun and those who came with him in 1756. Gowdy was an Irishman and seems to have settled in the neighborhood of old Cambridge about 1750. Both of these names, " The "Waxhaws " and "Long Canes," were, in usage, of indefinite extent.
If we look across the State from the "Waxhaw settlement in a southwestern direction, we find, to the right of a line drawn to Gowdy's, in Abbeville, the present districts of York, Union, and Spartanburg, the more significant portion of Chester, the northwest part of Newberry, the whole of Laurens and Abbeville, and the newer districts of Greenville, Anderson, and Pickens.
Lancaster was settled first. Chester, Spartanburg, and Laurens were settled in 1749 or 1750; Newberry was settled by the Scots Irish in 1752. Union and Pendleton, in 1755; Abbeville, in 1756; York, in 1760; and Greenville, in 1766. The first very distinct notice of settlers on Waxhaw was in May 1751, when six or seven families came from the North. In the fall of the same year, a few more joined them, a considerable number early in 1752, chiefly from Augusta County, Virginia, and the back part of Pennsylvania.
On the western side of the Catawba, on the waters of Fishing Creek, settlements were made of Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania at nearly the same date—1748, 1749, 1750, and 1751—and Mr. John Brown preached the first sermon of which we have any record among this people, at Landsford, on the Catawba River, a point intermediate between them and the settlement on the Waxhaw. The Church here established was called, to distinguish it from another higher up the stream, and which was formed a little later, Lower Fishing Creek, and, subsequently, after its pastor, Richardson's Church, and is now known, its location having been somewhat changed, as Cedar Shoals.
The date of the settlement on Duncan's Creek. The Scotch-Irish. gave rise to another Church at Fishing Creek.
Its first planting was in 1751 and 1755 by Scotch-Irish emigrants from Pennsylvania who had lived under the ministry of Rev. Mr. Cathcart. Several heads of families, among whom were the names of Brandon, Bogan, Jolly, Kennedy, McJunkin, Young, Cunningham, Savage, Hughs, Vance, and Wilson, settled in these then-uninhabited wilds. They first lived in tents and then erected cabins.
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On the Pinckneyville road, a church was erected on Brown's Creek, about four miles from Unionville. This house of worship was intended to be used by Presbyterians and Episcopalians in common and hence was called "The Union Church." It seems to have been a place of some note since the name was transferred to the county and is now borne by the district and the village, which is the seat of justice.
Earlier than this, and parallel in point of time with the Fishing Creek and almost with the Waxhaw, was the settlement of the Scotch-Irish on the confines of the present districts of Spartanburg and Union upon the Fairforest, a tributary of the Tyger River. It elates its origin from the settlement of seven or eight families from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who migrated to this spot from the years 1751 to 1754. Between the two, there appears at one time to have been a middle Fishing Creek Church, which became afterward absorbed in Richardson Church Catholic Church, on Kocky Creek, to the right of our line, was settled in l758; organized in 1759 by Mr. Kichardson; called and settled James Campbell as their pastor in 1772 and enjoyed his ministry for a year and a half, in connection with the neighboring Church of Purity.
The Scotch-Irish. Joseph Tate, their pastor in Donegal, Lancaster County, whence they had emigrated. Outside of the limits of Union District, within the confines of Newberry, and yet connected with the waters of the Tyger and the Enoree Rivers, was an early Church, now, perhaps, almost forgotten, known as the Grassy Spring Church. Its founders also emigrated from Pennsylvania, were Scotch-Irish by race and of the Presbyterian faith, and settled on the Enoree, Indian Creek, and Tyger Rivers near each other in this part of the State. This settlement was made from 1749 to 1758, and from these various localities, they met at the Grassy Spring Church to worship the God of their fathers. Duncan's Creek, in Laurens (waters of the Enoree,) was not far off. The settlement was mainly made by Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania in 1758. They built a house of worship in 1763 or 1764. Little River Church, near the line between Laurens and Newberry, was organized in 1764. Bethel, in York, and Bethesda, are nearly the same date. Bullock's Creek, in the southwest corner of the same district, 1769 or 1770, and a few other Churches in the UpCountry date before the Revolution.
Among these Churches stands the Nazareth Church, whose boundaries are now assembled. Eight, ten, or twelve families settled here on the waters of Tyger River, near its source, between 1760 and 1765.
In the Spring of 1772, the names of Scotch-Irish families honored as the founders of this community were Anderson, Miller, Barry, Moore, Collins, Thompson, Vernon, Pearson, Jamison, Dodd, Ray, Penny, MeMahon, Nichol, Xesbitt, and Patton. These were the names of the settlers migrating, directly or indirectly, from Pennsylvania, where their first homes in America were. (1)
(1) MS. History of the Second Presbytery of South Carolina, prepared by a committee of the same, appointed in October 1808, consisting of Ecv. John B. Kennedy, Dr. Waddel, and Eev. Hugh Dickson. Minutes of Second Presbytery, October 1808, pp. 123, 124; April 1809, p. 134.
Source: The Scotch-Irish, and their first Settlements on the Tyger River and other Neighboring Precints of South Carolina by George Howe, D. D. (1861).