Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical: Illustrating Principally the Revolutionary Period of Mecklenburg, Rowan, Lincoln and Adjoining Counties, Accompanied with Miscellaneous Information, Much of It Never before PublishedHunter, C. L.
History
Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical: Illustrating Principally the Revolutionary Period of Mecklenburg, Rowan, Lincoln and Adjoining Counties, Accompanied with Miscellaneous Information, Much of It Never before Published
Hunter, C. L.
Burke County (N.C.) -- History; Cabarrus County (N.C.) -- History; Cleveland County (N.C.) -- History; Gaston County (N.C.) -- History; Iredell County (N.C.) -- History; Lincoln County (N.C.) -- History; Mecklenburg County (N.C.) -- History; North Carolina -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783; Rowan
At the commencement of the Revolutionary War, one of the worthy and
patriotic citizens of the little town of Charlotte, in Mecklenburg
county, N.C., was Patrick Jack. He was a native of Ireland, and
emigrated to America, with several brothers, about 1730. He married
Lillis McAdoo, of the same race, who is represented to have been, by
all who knew her, as "one of the best of women," having an amiable
disposition, frequently dispensing charities to the poor, and truly
pious. Her Christian name, _Lillis_, in subsequent years, was softened
into _Lillie_, by many of her descendants in adopting it. The descent
of Patrick Jack is traceable to noble ancestors, one of whom was a
ministerial sufferer in the reign of Charles II, in 1661. In that
year, that despotic monarch, who, according to one of his own
satirists, "Never said a foolish thing, nor ever did a wise one,"
ejected from their benefices or livings, under Jeremy Taylor, thirteen
ministers of the Presbytery of Lagan, in the northern part of Ireland,
for their non-conformity to the Church of England. The Puritans of
England were called to the same trial, in August, 1662, and in the
following October, the same scene of heroic suffering was exhibited in
Scotland.
Among the honored names of these thirteen ejected ministers, were
Robert Wilson, ancestor of the Rev. Francis McKemie, who, twenty years
later, was the first Presbyterian preacher that had ever visited the
Western Continent, and near relative of George McKemie, of the Waxhaw
settlement, and a brother-in-law of Mrs. Elizabeth Jackson, the mother
of General Andrew Jackson; Robert Craighead, ancestor of the Rev.
Alexander Craighead, the first settled pastor of Sugar Creek
congregation, the early apostle of civil and religious liberty in
Mecklenburg county, and who ended his days there in 1766; Thomas
Drummond, a near relative of William Drummond, the first royal
Governor of North Carolina; Adam White, ancestor of Hon. Hugh Lawson
White, a native of Iredell county, and William Jack, ancestor of
Patrick Jack, of Charlotte, Charles Jack, of Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania, and others whose descendants are now found in ten or
twelve States of the American Union.
In the list of tax-payers for Chambersburg, Pa, during the latter half
of the last century, the "Chief Burgess," or Mayor of that place,
informs the author the name of Jack (especially John, James, Charles,
and William) is of frequent occurrence; but, at the present time, not
one of the name is to be found there. One of these, (James) probably a
nephew of Patrick and Charles Jack, served five years with distinction
in the Revolutionary army, and others are traditionally spoken of as
actively engaged in the same patriotic duty. Several of the elder
members of the family are buried in the graveyard of Chambersburg,
others in Williamsport, Md., and elsewhere in western Pennsylvania.
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