Early Ulster-Scots in America

The early Ulster-Scots on the frontier

James McCullough left Belfast in 1745 and landed at Newcastle on the Delaware. He was a weaver by trade but then....'I began to plow corn June ye 23'. Then the first clouds began to gather: 'July ye 12 was put to flight by a fals Alarm from ye Ingens'. The Indian raiding parties were now coming across the Appalachians into the Cumberland Valley. At first their attacks were by night,then they became bolder and struck even in the middle of the long summer days.Behind McCullough's terse entries lies a story of offical blundering and cowardice and of terrible suffering endured by the people of the Cumberland Valley. The British commander General Braddock had been killed and the headlong flight of his troops left the frontier settlers without protection,and for the next two years McCullough records with monotonous regularity the murder and kidnapping of friends and neighbours: 'Robert Clogston his son and Betty Ramsey her son was killed.....Nov ye 9th John Wood and his wife and mother in law and John Archer's wife was killed and 4 children carried off....Alexander Miller killed and 2 of his children taken.' The diarist leaves to the imagination the gruesome details of these events.
McCullough's intelligence,humour and his stocial acceptance of the situation comes though his laconic prose. But then on 26 July 1756 came McCullough's personal tragedy: 'John and James McCologh was taken Captive by ye ingens.' These were his two sons,aged eight and five. ( McCullough was inconsisent in the spelling of even his own name) The boys were snatched while playing in a ravine close to their home. Beside the date of the capture McCullough transcribed a quotation from the Book of Jeremiah: 'Weep not for the dead....but weep sore for him that goeth away,for he shall return no more,nor see his native country.'
In the case of the younger boy the words were prophetic; James disappeared comepletely. But,after years of agonizing search,the father found John at an Indian camp. The boy could no longer speak English and wept bitterly when he was taken from his Indian family. He had to be tied up for the journey home.

This happened with other families too, and as mentioned some were never seen again The movie The Light In The Forest is loosely based on James McCullough's son