Among the immigrants who flocked into Virginia in 1729 and 1740 we
find individuals named Alexander Breckinridge, David Logan, Hugh
Campbell, William Graham, James Waddell (the "Blind Preacher"), John
McCue, Benjamin Erwin, Gideon Blackburn, Samuel Houston, Archibald
Scott, Samuel Carrack, John Montgomery, George Baxter, William
McPheeters, and Robert Poage (Page?), and others bearing the names of
Bell, Trimble (Turnbull), Hay, Anderson, Patterson, Scott, Wilson, and
Young. John McDowell and eight of his men were killed by Indians in
1742. Among the members of his company was his venerable father
Ephraim McDowell. In 1763 the Indians attacked a peaceful settlement
and carried off a number of captives. After traveling some distance
and feeling safe from pursuit they demanded that their captives should
sing for their entertainment, and it was a Scotswoman, Mrs. Gilmore,
who struck up Rouse's version of the one hundred and thirty-seventh
psalm:
"By Babel's streams we sat and wept,
When Zion we thought on,
In midst thereof we hanged our harps
The willow tree thereon.
"For there a song required they,
Who did us captive bring;
Our spoilers called for mirth, and said:
'A song of Zion sing.'"
In the following year Colonel Henry Bouquet led a strong force against
the Indians west of the Ohio, and compelled them to desist from their
predatory warfare, and deliver up the captives they had taken. One of
his companies was made up of men from the Central Valley of Virginia,
largely composed of Scots or men of Ulster Scot descent, and commanded
by Alexander McClanahan, a good Galloway surname. Ten years later
occurred the battle of Point Pleasant when men of the same race under
the command of Andrew Lewis defeated the Shawnee Indians.
In January 1775, the freeholders of Fincastle presented an address to
the Continental Congress, declaring their purpose to resist the
oppressive measures of the home government. Among the signers were
William Christian, Rev. Charles Cummings, Arthur Campbell, William
Campbell, William Edmundson, William Preston and others. Several other
counties in the same state, inhabited mainly by Scots or people of
Scottish descent, adopted like resolutions. During the Revolutionary
war, in addition to large numbers of men of Scottish origin serving in
the Continental army from this state, the militia were also constantly
in service under the leadership of such men as Colonels Samuel
McDowell, George Moffett, William Preston, John and William Bowyer,
Samson Mathews, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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