01412Parke Rouse, Jr.,

The Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia to the South

(New York: McGraw-HillBook Company, 1973).

[page 29]Close behind the wave of Germanic people which began to sweep over the Warriors' Path came the bold,adventurous Scotch-Irish. From the port of Belfast, in northern Ireland, many a shipload of hopeful ScottishProtestants sailed after 1725 for the Great Opportunity which beckoned from Philadelphia.Like the Germans who emigrated from the Palatinate, the Scots who poured into America from Ulster were hardy middle-class farmers and craftsmen who suffered in the Old World from their industriousness and their religious beliefs. They came from the poor, rural countries of northern Ireland

Antrim, Armagh, Cavan,Donegal, Down, Firmanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone, where English rule had grown increasingly severe.The Scottish emigrants were offspring of lowland Presbyterians who had moved out of their ancienthomeland after 1607, in response to English inducement to colonize Ireland and grab up cheap farmlands.For nearly a hundred years before 1700, Scotsmen had emigrated from their country to Ireland, buildingup profitable linen and woolen manufactures there. Then, in 1698, English wool producers persuaded Parliamentto suppress the exportation of Irish woolens. The subservient Irish Parliament agreed, and Scotch-Irish woolgrowers were forbidden to sell their product to any buyers except the English.Besides this, Church of England bishops who sat in the Irish Parliament persuaded the government in1692 to require all Irish officeholders to partake of the Lord's Supper three times a year in the Established Church.Penalties were imposed on any Scottish Presbyterian minister who preached against the rule by bishops.Outvoted by Irish landholders, who generally upheld the Church of England, the Ulster Scots were persecuted both in politics and business. Not even the tolerant King William and Queen Mary, who had achievedofficial toleration of England's dissenters on their accession in 1689, were able to moderate the militant zeal of Ireland's Anglican conformists. In countless ways, they made life difficult for the followers of John KNOX,[page 30]Discouraged by the treatment they received from the English and Irish, the younger sons and daughters of transplanted Ulster Scots began to move in small numbers to America. The exodus began about 1718. Ten yearslater, a bishop of the Church of England noticed that "above 4200 men, women, and children have been shipped off from hence for the West Indies, within three years." By this time, many of the 200,000 Presbyterians in the Synodof Ulster were on their way to America. So were many of their 130 ministers.When famine struck Ulster in 1740, the stream of emigrants reached 12,000 yearly. "Thus was Ulster drained of the young, the enterprising, and the most energetic and desirable classes of its population," moaned aScottish chronicler. "They left the land which bad been saved to England by the swords of their fathers, andcrossed the sea to escape from the galling tyranny of the bishops whom England had made rulers of that land."Touring Ireland in these same years, Arthur YOUNG painted a gloomy picture:The spirit of emigrating in Ireland appeared to be confined to two circumstances, thePresbyterian religion and the linen manufacture. I heard of very few emigrants except amongmanufacturers of that persuasion. The Catholics never went, they seem not only tied to the country, butalmost to the parish in which their ancestors lived. As to emigrating in the North, it was in error inEngland to suppose it a novelty, which arose with the increase in rents. The contrary was the fact; it hadsubsisted perhaps forty years, insomuch that at the ports of Belfast, Derry, etc. the passage trade, as theycalled it, had long been a regular branch of commerce, which employed several ships, and consisted incarrying people to America. The increasing population of the country made it an increasing trade; butwhen the linen trade was low, the passenger trade was always high . . .Boarding ship at Belfast or Derry, the Ulster families brought with them to America only the few clothes,tools, kitchen implements, and books which they could pack in their wooden sea chests. Huddled below deck inthe dark and stinking ship's hold, they endured a rough voyage which lasted eight weeks and often more.Last year one of the ships was driven about the ocean for twenty-four weeks [noted a Pennsylvanian in1732], and of its one hundred

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[page 31]and fifty passengers, more than one hundred starved to death. To satisfy their hunger, they caught mice,and rats; and a mouse brought half a gulden. When the survivors at last reached land, their sufferingswere aggravated by their arrest, and the exaction from them of the entire fare for both living and dead.Few vessels in these early years were of more than 150 tons, and passenger space was limited. TheUlstermen huddled below deck on straw mattresses or hammocks at night, avoiding the rheumy night air. By daythey were permitted abovedeck, crowding the rails to watch the gray seas while the square-rigger beat her way ateight or ten knots across the 3,000 miles of sea which separated Ireland from the American coast.Many emigrant vessels were stormbound or lost at sea, even though they avoided the tempestuousequinoctial storm months. A Philadelphian in 1732 described this ordeal:One of the vessels was seventeen weeks on the way and about sixty of its passengers died at sea.All the survivors are sick and feeble, and what is worst, poor and without means; hence, in a communitylike this where money is scarce, they are a burden, and every day there are deaths among them . . . Whenone is without the money, his only resource is to sell himself for a term from three to eight years or more,and to serve as a slave. Nothing but a poor suit of clothes is received when his time has expired. Familiesendure a great trial when they see the father purchased by one master, the mother by another, and each of the children by another. All this for the money only that they owe the Captain.And yet they are only too glad, when after waiting long, they at last find some one willing to buythem; for the money of the country is well nigh exhausted. . . . If ready to hazard their lives and to endure patiently all the trials of the voyage, they must further think whether over and above the cost they willhave enough to purchase cattle, and to provide for other necessities . . .Young and able-bodied persons, who can do efficient work, can, nevertheless, always find someone who will purchase them for two, three or four years; but they must be unmarried. For young married persons, particularly when the wife is with child, no one cares to have. Of mechanics there are aconsiderable number already here; but a good mechanic who can bring with him sufficient capital to avoid beginning with debt, may do well, although of almost all classes and occupations, there are already morethan too many . . .[page 32]The mad rush of Scotsmen to leave Ulster at length disturbed the Irish landowners, and they introduced a bill in the Irish Parliament in 1735 to restrict emigration. As a result, hundreds of families rushed to board shipsthe next spring before the threatened cutoff occurred. A thousand migrant families crowded into dockside Belfastearly in 1736, pleading for passage to America.When the landlords learned this, they tried to intimidate shipmasters into canceling their advertisedvoyages. A Dublin ship captain, John STEWART, wrote a letter of complaint to Thomas PENN, son of Pennsylvania's founder, whom be addressed as "Knight Proprietor of Pensilvania, now in London." STEWARTreported on May 3, 1736, that ten ships lay at anchor in Belfast harbor because Irish landlords had issued warrantsagainst any captain who attempted to load and sail.STEWART appealed to PENN's cupidity with a postscript, pointing out the financial benefit of thisemigration to Pennsylvania's proprietors:Of those ten Ships there is eight bound for Dalour [Delaware] & verry counciderable with them .. . there will be in a vessall that I bought last year in Margos Hucke [Marcus Hook] near Chister in or about seven hund. pounds Sterl. mostly in Speece [specie], if this [Irish action] does not prevent themfrom getting over alltogether.Fortunately, Ireland's courts denied to permit landlords to halt their tenants' emigration, and the GreatExodus continued.Because of Pennsylvania's reputation for religious toleration, most of the Ulster Scots made their way to ports along the Delaware River. Besides Philadelphia, these were principally Lewes and New-Castle, which stood

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on the western bank of the Delaware in the southern part of Pennsylvania which later became Delaware. All threetowns had Presbyterian congregations, and they received the emigrants with open arms, offering them help and afriendly roof until they could begin their trek westward.Philadelphia in these years shone as a beacon of hope to many of the 200,000 Scotch-Irish

a third of allthe Scotsmen then in Ireland

who came to the American colonies before the American Revolution. Along thewharfs at Market Street docked an endless procession of merchant vessels, bringing settlers from Europe. Therethe emigrant Benjamin FRANKLIN had arrived from Boston on a[page 33]Sunday morning in 1723, while most of the town was at church. There the produce boats brought crates of fruitand vegetables from the Jersey farms across the river, and there the fishermen sold their catch, on a hill betweenthe wharf and the present Water Street. So many emigrants entered the American colonies at this point thatMarket Street has been called "the most historic highway in America." From it, the Great Philadelphia WagonRoad eventually led southward into the American heartland. By the time of the Scotch-Irish emigration,Philadelphia had become a town of some 20,000 people, the largest in the American colonies. Gabriel THOMAShad lauded it in a 1698 account as "This Magnificent City" and noted that:It hath in it Three Fairs every Year, and Two Markets every Week. They kill about Twenty FatBullocks every Week, in the hottest time in Summer, for their present spending in that City, besides manySheep, Calves; and Hogs.Laid out in orderly squares, unlike earlier Jamestown in Virginia or Boston in Massachusetts, Philadelphiawas well on its way to becoming the "green country town" to which William PENN had aspired when he designedit. Early frame houses were being replaced by handsomer brick ones, "all Inhabitated," Gabriel THOMASobserved, "and most of the Stately ... after the Mode in London." Not far away to the northeast stood WilliamPENN's ambitious country house, largely abandoned since the great Quaker had returned to England in 1701 anddied there in 1718. This "Great and Stately Pile," as Gabriel THOMAS termed it, "he [William PENN] call'dPennsbury-House."Emigrants coming off their ships at Philadelphia found a cluster of inns and ordinaries near the dockside,ready to refresh any who had money enough to afford it. These rough-hewn structures were proclaimed by colorfulhanging-signs: Blue Anchor, Crooked Billet, Pewter Platter, and Penny-Pot. Built a little later and more tidilywere Seven Stars, Cross Keys, Hornet and Peacock, and others of brief or longer span.Once ashore, the Scottish emigrant faced bewildering choices: Whom could be turn to? Where must hesettle? Who had the best and cheapest land? For help, they turned to those who had come before, Presbyteriancongregations in the favored regions to the west and south were helpful. In the growing Philadelphia hinter-[page 34]land, a healthy single man or woman had no trouble finding work with a household or a craftsman. A family thathad a little money in the purse would probably do best to buy a packhorse to haul their few household goods andstart westward toward cheaper lands.Typical of the Scots was the family of Andrew PICKENS, who came into Philadelphia before 1720 fromUlster. Encouraged by fellow emigrants, they first went westward to Paxton Township, near the later town of Harrisburg. There was born the second Andrew PICKENS, one of several members of the family to becomefamous, who was to command South Carolina forces in the Revolution. Like many emigrants, however, theycontinued to be attracted by lands to the south, which were farther removed from the ominous threat of the Iroquoistribesmen north of Pennsylvania.Accordingly, the family pulled up stakes in the 1730s, loaded their horses with the family goods, andstarted south over the Warriors' Path toward the cheaper lands in Virginia. Crossing the Potomac River byWilliams' or Watkins' Ferry, near the later site of Williamsport, they followed the narrow footpath along theShenandoah River. Past occasional clearings in the forest of the Valley of Virginia, they came after many days' journey to a gap in an earlier trail, named Buffalo Gap. There, seventeen miles southwest of the valley way stationwhich grew into the town of Staunton, the PICKENS family cleared land and farmed for nearly twenty years.When the colony of Virginia introduced government in the Valley in 1745 and created Augusta County,