Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant — John Shaqi
Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the ElephantHolt, Mathew Joseph
History
Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant
Holt, Mathew Joseph
Kentucky -- Fiction; Kentucky -- History
They tiptoe into the other room and to her bedside, trying hard not to
make a noise, though the thick oak floor boards seem to creak as never
before. She holds out a hand to each. Her husband, trembling, bends and
kisses her quivering lips. She draws down the covers and he looks upon a
little red and wrinkled thing, that might almost sleep in comfort in his
hands—his boy! his only son!
For the first time he calls her “mother,” saying: “Mother, we shall call
him McDonald Campbell, using your family name, he is more yours than
mine.”
“No, neither by my name nor after you, Archibald, but John Calvin. He is
our first born; and the nurse says is without mark or blemish.”
And the boy was called John Calvin Campbell.
————
Prior to the Rebellion, Donald McDonald of the McDonald Clan, had lived
in the vicinity of Fort William. At its close, with his family, a wife
and two daughters, he moved to a small fishing village on the North
Channel in Ulster, to which point most of his congregation had been
transported.
His son-in-law, Archibald Campbell, was born in Argyllshire, in 1740. In
1766, disregarding the protest of his family he married Mary McDonald,
whereupon his father sent word: “In this marriage you have disregarded
my advice and disobeyed me. Your wife, the daughter of Dissenter
McDonald, will not be received as one of my family. You are welcome to
come home when you wish; but it is hardly probable that you will visit
where your wife is not an honored guest.”
In the spring of 1766, Donald McDonald and family, with some twenty
members of his small and more or less persecuted congregation, emigrated
to the Virginia Colony; and after several weeks spent in the Tidewater
country, moved westward and settled in the western foothills of the
Virginia Valley, in the vicinity of Jackson River Meeting House.
As Archibald Campbell’s family continued to treat his wife as a stranger
and her friends and relatives, except a sister, had gone to America, she
found it very lonely. Seven months after her father and mother sailed
she received letters from them telling how satisfactory they found the
new life and what pleasant prospects the new country offered; and from
that day she persistently importuned and finally prevailed upon her
husband to sell their farm and join the colony.
The day before sailing they sent the effects they intended taking aboard
ship, including a young cow, two heifers and a coop of chickens,
surrendered possession of their home and were just leaving for the inn,
when Mr. Campbell’s father, who had been watching them, drove up in the
family carriage and made them go home with him. There his son’s wife was
at last received as a daughter. His mother and sisters met her at the
door and cried when they kissed her. They remained over night and when
the time came for sailing, the whole household accompanied them to the
ship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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