Pioneers of the Old Southwest | Page 7

offices of the land
companies were not then open for the sale of these remote regions. But
by 1753 there were not less than four thousand Gaels in Cumberland
County, where they occupied the chief magisterial posts; and they were
already spreading over the lands now comprised within Moore, Anson,
Richmond, Robeson, Bladen, and Sampson counties. In these counties

Gaelic was as commonly heard as English.
In the years immediately preceding the Revolution and even in 1776
itself they came in increasing numbers. They knew nothing of the
smoldering fire just about to break into flames in the country of their
choice, but the Royal Governor, Josiah Martin, knew that Highland
arms would soon be ceded by His Majesty. He knew something of
Highland honor, too; for he would not let the Gaels proceed after their
landing until they had bound themselves by oath to support the
Government of King George. So it was that the unfortunate
Highlanders found themselves, according too their strict code of honor,
forced to wield arms against the very Americans who had received and
befriended them--and for the crowned brother of a prince whose name
is execrated to this day in Highland song and story!
They were led by Allan MacDonald of Kingsborough; and tradition
gives us a stirring picture of Allan's wife--the famous Flora MacDonald,
who in Scotland had protected the Young Pretender in his
flight--making an impassioned address in Gaelic to the Highland
soldiers and urging them on to die for honor's sake. When this
Highland force was conquered by the Americans, the large majority
willingly bound themselves not to fight further against the American
cause and were set at liberty. Many of them felt that, by offering their
lives to the swords of the Americans, they had canceled their obligation
to King George and were now free to draw their swords again and, this
time, in accordance with their sympathies; so they went over to the
American side and fought gallantly for independence.
Although the brave glory of this pioneer age shines so brightly on the
Lion Rampant of Caledonia, not to Scots alone does that whole glory
belong. The second largest racial stream which flowed into the Back
Country of Virginia and North Carolina was German. Most of these
Germans went down from Pennsylvania and were generally called
"Pennsylvania Dutch," an incorrect rendering of Pennsylvanische
Deutsche. The upper Shenandoah Valley was settled almost entirely by
Germans. They were members of the Lutheran, German Reformed, and
Moravian churches. The cause which sent vast numbers of this sturdy

people across the ocean, during the first years of the eighteenth century,
was religious persecution. By statute and by word the Roman Catholic
powers of Austria sought to wipe out the Salzburg Lutherans and the
Moravian followers of John Huss. In that region of the Rhine country
known in those days as the German Palatinate, now a part of Bavaria,
Protestants were being massacred by the troops of Louis of France,
then engaged in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13) and in
the zealous effort to extirpate heretics from the soil of Europe. In 1708,
by proclamation, Good Queen Anne offered protection to the
persecuted Palatines and invited them to her dominions. Twelve
thousand of them went to England, where they were warmly received
by the English. But it was no slight task to settle twelve thousand
immigrants of an alien speech in England and enable them to become
independent and self-supporting. A better solution of their problem lay
in the Western World: The Germans needed homes and the Queen's
overseas dominions needed colonists. They were settled at first along
the Hudson, and eventually many of them took up lands in the fertile
valley of the Mohawk.
For fifty years or more German and Austrian Protestants poured into
America. In Pennsylvania their influx averaged about fifteen hundred a
year, and that colony became the distributing center for the German
race in America. By 1727, Adam Muller and his little company had
established the first white settlement in the Valley of Virginia. In 1732
Joist Heydt went south from York, Pennsylvania, and settled on the
Opequan Creek at or near the site of the present city of Winchester.
The life of Count Zinzendorf, called "the Apostle," one of the leaders
of the Moravian immigrants, glows like a star out of those dark and
troublous times. Of high birth and gentle nurture, he forsook whatever
of ease his station promised him and fitted himsclf for evangelical work.
In 1741 he visited the Wyoming Valley to bring his religion to the
Delawares and Shawanoes. He was not of those picturesque Captains of
the Lord who bore their muskets on their shoulders when they went
forth to preach. Armored only with the shield of faith, the helmet of
salvation, and