FAMILY RECORD BIOG Rapl1y

FAMILY RECORD BIOG RAPl1Y. COMDILE:D BY LEANDER JAMES MCCORMICK. CHICAGO: 1396. Copyrighted, 18¢. BY L. J. McCORMICK, To the memory ef his belovedfather, Robert JicCormick, Inventor ef the Reaper, this volume is affectionately in scribed by THE AUTHOR. JIIcCormi'ck ramily. A SCRAP OF HISTORY. S the ancestors of the McCormick family were of "Scotch Irish" lineage and in their rdig-ious belief were strict Pres A byterians, it is considered pertinent to the subject to preface it by a cursory glance at Scotch-Irish history, showing what trials they undoubtedly endured in their native land by reason of religious persecutions, which causes were mainly instrumental in inducing them to leave their country for a frontier life among the American Indians, in what were then the outskirts of civilization. Referring to those who migrat.:.d hither from the North of Ireland, who were chiefly Presbyterians, Dr. Williamson, in his History of Xorth Carolina, says: "The greater number of those people, or their ancestors, had formerly removed from Scotland. The Earl, of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, in the Province of Ulster, having conspired against the government in the reign of James the First, fled from the kingdom to escape punishment. The two Earls were attainted by a process of outlawry, upon which their vast estates, about five hundred thousand acres of land, escheated to the crown. King James resolved, if possible, to improve a country that was covered by woods, desolated by war, infested by robbers, or inhabited by ignorant adherents to the Romish Church. For this purpose he divided the escheated lands into small tracts, and those he gave to adventurers, who were to settle them within four years with a certain number of sub-tenants. According to his advice, the preference was 6 Gellealogy. given in distributing the lands to adventurers from the West of Scotland. They were Protestants from his own country; they were industrious people, and the passage being ,·ery short, they might with the greater ease settle the land according to their contracts. The establishment of prelacy in Scotland in the year 1637, and after wards in the year 1661, among people who had adopted the more simple form of Presbyterian worship, became the additional cause of numerous emigrations from that kingdom to the North of Ireland. The superior knowledge, industry and temperance of the Scotch farmers in a short time enabled them to supplant the natives among whom they lived, and six of the northern counties, by the end of the seventeenth century, were chiefly inhabited by the descendants of Scottish emigrants or the remains of Cromwell's ar~y, but they were treated like aliens and strangers, with marks of distrust in their civil capacity, while they were depressed in their religious capacity by the spirit of intolerance, because they were not of the Established Church of Ireland. Men, who were thus degraded and vexed by incapacities and burdens, migrated in thousands to Pennsylvania, a province where the principles of civil and religious liberty had their full operation. The arbitrary measures of James II., together with the apprehen sions of a general massacre by the Papists, emboldened as they were by the undisguised partiality of the king, caused such multi tudes, despairing of safety, to fly to foreign climes, that trade declined and the revenue languished. Successive emigrations from the North of Ireland continued to pour into Pennsylvania in such numbers, that by the year 1705 there were sufficient Presbyterian Churches in that province, in conjunction with those of the provinces contiguous, to constitute a Presbytery." As early as I 730-31, Irish and Scotch emigrants crossed the Sus quehanna at Paxton, and settled in Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, though the land was not, until I 736, purchased from the Indians by e 1tfcCormick ramify. the proprietors of the province. The Indians had many towns and wigwams in various parts of the Cumberland Valley, yet the settlers conciliated them, and for a time natives and foreigners dwelt peace ably together. By the year 1736, when the lands of that beautiful valley were opened by the government for settlement, the homes already established by the advance guards dotted its entire length from the Susquehanna to the Maryland line. Dr. Hawkes, in his lecture on The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, delivered before the New York Historical Society, Dec. 26, 1852, says, concerning the Scotch-Irish emigrants: "They reached the place of their settlement by two different avenues of approach, the one portion came into America by the Delaware Rfrer, landing at Philadelphia, and the other touched our shores at Charleston, in South Carolina. These latter struck at once· into the fertile forests of the upper country, and approached their future homes from the South. The others occupied first the desir able localities in Pennsylvania, east of the Alleghanies, until finding need for increased room for their numbers, they passed down first into Virginia, and then into Carolina, and met the wave of emigra tion from the South. Sometimes the hut lifted its humble head from the dale, and seated on the sunny side of the hill, surrounded by the evidences of culture, it told in an unpretending way its little story of homely comfort and quiet seclusion. At first the log cabins, which betokened civilization, stood often in solitary seclusion. Eight, ten, fifteen miles were deemed distances that constituted quite a near neighbor, but scattered as were the people, there was an artificial feature in the landscape, which showed itself from the beginning. If you sought it in the spot most convenient to all, you were sure to find the meeting-house for the worship of God. It was, of course, at first an humble structure of logs, buried in the deep stillness of the forest, where it might be overshadowed by the brave old trees, and near it was commonly to be found, in some shaded little dell, or 7 Geneak1gy. bursting from the hillside, the full and gushing fountain of water that nature had provided. Even to this day, the mouldering ruins and foundations of some of these rustic temples remain, and around them, protected commonly by a stone wall, are the green mounds and hillocks of the graveyards where 'the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.' Of the people, the most prominent feature in their general character was the intensity of their religious feeling. They seem to have united the impulsive ardor of the Irish with the keen and cool intel lectual perception and shrewdness of the Scotch. The one tempered the other, they were eminently zealous, and at the same time eminently practical. They chose to understand a subject first, no matter whether it were religious or civil liberty, and when the mind once apprehended what they thought to be true and right, they threw themselves into the support of it with body and soul. They were as stern enthusiasts as the old Covenanters, but they knew better the ground of their enthusiasm. They lived more under the paternal direction of their spiritual instructors than under the control of the colonial govern ment. And these guides were worthy of the place they filled; they were educated men, they established schools for their children, they taught the people faithfully, they were universally venerated, because they were unspotted in character; their opinion settled what was right or wrong, and no man better understood the principles of rational liberty. When the final struggle came, every one of these spiritual guides, to a man, was on the side of an oppressed people. Some of them bore arms, and their voices sent out among these hardy moun taineers with clear full sweep of a trumpet's tone the sentiment, that the cause of national freedom was the cause of God and humanity.'' 8 The McCormicks Among the Early Settlers of Pennsylvania. Relationship Unknown. AicCormick Family. From the county records of Cumberland County, PennsylYania, and from various other sources, it has been learned that there were a number of families, bearing the name of McCormick, residing in that county and its vicinity, prior to 1750. Although no relationship has been traced between them, yet they were doubtless all of the same stock, as a North of Ireland nativity and a Presbyterian faith were common to them all. John and Samuel McCormick paid taxes in East Pennsboro' Town ship in I 750. They were near neighbors of Thomas McCormick ( 1st), and may haye been his brothers, but this relationship is only a matter of surmise. In Rupp's "History of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania," there may be found a copy of a letter, dated August 24, 1756,addressed to the Secretary of the Colony in Philadelphia, advising him of the "melancholy state" in which the colonists found themselves by reason of the savage Indians. This letter was signed, among others, by John and Samuel McCormick. In Rupp's History, mention is also made of" McCormick's Fort" at Conodoguinet, and again of the fact, that, by an Act of the Assembly of Jan. 27, 1750, John McCormick and four others, as trustees for the County of Cumberland, were authorized to purchase a piece of land in the said county, and thereon build a court house and a prison. The name of John McCormick, with forty others, is also found signed to a document, bearing date June 27, 1768, guaranteeing to Re,·. John Steel, "then minister at the Silvers Spring Church," his yearly stipend. This John McCormick died in 1782, and his widow, Jane, in 1788. From her will it appears that they had five children, namely: John, Margaret, who married Hugh Quigley, Elizabeth, who became Mrs.

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