USA > South Carolina > Williamsburg County > History of Williamsburg; something about the people of Williamsburg County, South Carolina, from the first settlement by Europeans about 1705 until 1923. > Part 3
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HISTORY OF WILLIAMSBURG
Priscilla Campbell; John and Elizabeth Kelly; John and Elizabeth McDonald; Thomas and Dorothy Jenkins; Richard and Elizabeth Jones; John and Philadelphia Turbeville; John and Margaret Lee; Stephen and Eliza- beth DuBose; John and Rebecca Hodges; John and Mary Singleton ; William and Sarah Purvis; John and Arabella Scott; Lodowick and Anne Hudson; Daniel and Susannah McGinney ; William and Jane Green; John and Elizabeth Dozier; John and Hannah Davis; James and Mehitabel Boyd; John and Mary Britton Sinkler; William and Sarah Tompkins Dinkins; Moses and Hester Jolly Britton ; Alexander and Elizabeth Ball Davidson; Charles and Susannah Sanders Turbeville; Moses Britton; Daniel and Elizabeth Hyrney Britton; George and Hannah Saunders; and Peter and Isabel Tamplet.
These people settled along Black River from the point where it turns abruptly Northward, just after entering Georgetown County from Williamsburg County, and along the present Williamsburg-Georgetown County line to the Pee Dee River. This settlement was called Winyaw, and this was the first part of the present County of Williams- burg that was inhabited by white people. Some of these people lived there in 1710. They organized Prince Fred- erick's Church in 1713.
Reverend William Screven and his Congregation of Dis- senters from the Church of England were the first per- manent settlers in the Winyaw section. They were granted a large part of the territory on both sides of that section of Black River flowing through ancient Winyaw. While Mr. Screven was a militant Antipaedo-Baptist, many of the Dissenters who came with him were of the Presby- terian faith.
The names of some of these Baptist and Presbyterian Dissenters who settled in Winyaw along Black River and Black Mingo from 1700 to 1736 were: Reverend William Screven, and his sons, Elisha, Robert and William; John
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ORIGINAL SETTLERS
Peter Somerhoeff, Dugal MacKeithan, John Nesmith, Wil- liam Brockinton, John Godfrey, Jonah Collins, Sabrine Burnett, Alexander McGuinness, David Fulton, Dr. Thomas Potts, William Shepard, Dr. James King, John Hendlin, Samuel Commander, Joseph Commander, John Commander, Joshua Green, Samuel Vareen, Thomas Wood, Jeremiah Vareen, Jonathan Westberry, Nathaniel Pygott, John McNally, Joseph Chandler, James Armstrong, Isaac Brunson, Thomas Boone, James Hoole, Joshua Jolly, John Wallace, Thomas North, Dr. John A. Fincke, William Davis, Sr., Francis Futhy, William McFarland, Ebenezer Jones, James Cunningham, Samuel Jenkins, Charles Bax- ter, William Fraser, George Powell, Dr. John Cantzor, David McIver, Abraham Giles, Daniel Myers, and William Daniel.
From the South from 1720 to 1737, there crossed over the Santee River at Lenud's Ferry into Williamsburg many French Huguenots, who had fled in 1685 from their native land after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes to Charleston and had gradually gone Northward. Among these were John Leger, Peter Lequex, John Perret, Noah Sere, Henry Bedon, James Sinclair, Abraham Perdreau, Henry Mouzon, Francis Lesesne, Abraham Michau, Paul Jaudon, Peter Gourdin, Theodore Gourdin, James Ferdon, Daniel Bluset, Abraham Lenud, Paul Bonneau, and Rene Richbourgh.
There were a large number of settlers who came to Wil- liamsburg during the period from 1737 to 1775. Among them were John Gregg, John Boone, John Burgess, Wil- liam Burgess, William Byrd, John Cameron, James Ken- nedy, Charles Cantley, Benjamin Capell, George Chandler, William Cockfield, Arthur Cunningham, Daniel Epps, James Ferguson, Henry O'Neal, Ebenezer Bagnal, James Conyers, Charles F. Gordon, William Gordon, David Gor- don, Dr. John Graham, John Grant, James Harper, Drury Harrington, Daniel Holliday, William Holliday, Samuel
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HISTORY OF WILLIAMSBURG
Haselden, George Mccutchen, Andrew Patterson, William Reagin, William McDonald, Jeremiah Rowell, Peter Sal- ters, Richard Singletary, Matthew Singleton, William Douglas, John and Mary Dickey, James Dickey, Charles McCallister. These were nearly all Scotch-Irish, coming here, in most cases, from the Scotch-Irish settlement in Pennsylvania. Some of them, however, came directly from Ireland.
While there were among these original settlers in Wil- liamsburg men and women of English, Scotch, French, Irish, Welsh, German, and Danish descent, most of them came to this district from Ireland. The Scotch-Irish ele- ment, largely influenced by the French Huguenot, soon gained the ascendency, and has remained the dominant element in the life of Williamsburg.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PEOPLE WHO SETTLED WILLIAMSBURG.
The history of the Scotch-Irish for more than two thou- sand years is one continuous story of hardihood made splendid by heroism. Some students think they were descendants of the Gog of Magog, of whom Ezekiel writes, and connected with the Scythians whom Alexander fought and failed to conquer. Others believe they were the back- bone of the warlike tribe of Sahi that so disturbed the Assyrian King Asurbanipal (668-626 B. C.)
It is generally accepted that these Scotch-Irish were the same nomad tribes that worked their way eastward along the shores of the Black Sea, by the Danube through Swit- zerland and France and Spain, from whence they went into Ireland before the days of Saint Patrick. After spend- ing six centuries in Ireland, some of them crossed over the Irish Sea into North Britain. Here they fought the Picts continuously for hundreds of years. After remain- ing in Scotland for almost a thousand years, during which time they gave this land a name and made it a "thing of the soul," in the seventeenth century, they turned again home into Ireland, and settled in Counties Down and Antrim, along the northern shores.
In his wars on the Roman Catholics in Ireland, James I destroyed almost all of the people who lived in the northern portion of Ireland, Counties Donegal, Londonderry, Tyrone, Armagh, Antrim, and Down. This part of Ire- land was left a wilderness after his forces had completed their conquest.
There were, in Scotland, at this time, a great many men of influence and power who were Roman Catholics, and who continuously made the lives of these Presbyterians burdensome and their condition intolerable. After this northern part of Ireland had been cleared of Roman Cath-
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HISTORY OF WILLIAMSBURG
olics and their property confiscated, the English Govern- ment induced a great many of these Scotch Congregation- alists, living in Argyll, Sterling, Renfrew, Glasgow, Lan- ark, Ayr, and Bute, to cross the North Channel into Counties Antrim and Down, Ireland, and there repopu- late the country. These Scotch were made fair promises, both as to the ownership of the land and as to permission to enjoy their own religion. They came in great numbers. When William of Orange ascended the throne of England, it seemed that these Congregationalists, or Presbyterians, in Scotland, and especially in Ireland, would enjoy the right to work out their own spiritual salvation according to their own notions. It was at this time that most of the Scotch, who later came to Williamsburg, migrated into the Counties Down and Antrim, Ireland.
For about thirty years, the Scotch, who had gone into the north of Ireland, thought that they had found the promised land. They understood they had received abso- lute titles to the lands on which they lived and went to work immediately to develop them. They were industri- ous and frugal by nature. Later, after they had trans- formed a wilderness into a pleasing place for human habi- tation, they realized that they had been tricked when they were forced to submit to the imposition of enormous rents imposed by absentee landlords.
Many of these Scotch-Irish, as they then had begun to be called, chose to leave the foundations which they had laid in Ireland, and migrate to America. Many of them about 1720 came to the New England States, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, but most of the original settlers in Wil- liamsburg elected to remain in Ireland until about 1735, when they came direct to Williamsburg Township. A few of them had come to this section between 1725 and 1732 and had settled on Black River.
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PEOPLE WHO SETTLED WILLIAMSBURG
Many of these original Scotch-Irish settlers can trace their lineage until pleasing records run into beautiful tra- dition. The following are taken as types :
John Nesmith settled North of Black Mingo in Williams- burg in 1725. He was the progenitor of all the Nesmiths of this section. He was born on the shores of the River Bann in the North of Ireland in 1670 and died in Wil- liamsburg in 1750.
The Nesmiths have owned land on the Tweed since the thirteenth century. Twelve miles from Glasgow are two ancient homes of the family, one at Hamilton and another at Auchingraymont. The name is said to have originated in this way : Between September 8, 1249, when Alexander III, of Scotland, was crowned King, and March 16, 1286, when he died, the story goes, an aide-de-camp of the King on the eve of a battle was required by him to mend his armor. Though a man of powerful physique and a brave warrior, he was unsuccessful as a mechanic. For his prowess, great daring, and achievements in the battle, he was knighted by the King, with this laconic saying, "Although he is nae smith, he is a brave gentleman." The armorial bearings of the family refer to this remark: A drawn sword between two war "martels" broken, with the motto in old Scotch dialect, "Not by knavery, but by bravery."
John Scott settled at the King's Tree on Black River November 1, 1732. From that day until this, March 7, 1923, there has lived a John Scott at the King's Tree in Williamsburg. The original settler was born in Galloway, Scotland, in 1665, migrated to County Down, Ireland, in 1690, and died in Williamsburg in 1749.
Legend says two brothers of Galloway, banished for participation in a rebellion, retired to Rankelburn in Ettrick Forest, where the keeper received them gladly on account of their skill in the chase. Soon afterwards, Kenneth MacAlpin, King of Scotland, came to hunt in this
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HISTORY OF WILLIAMSBURG
royal forest and pursued a buck from Ettrick to the glen now called Buccleuch. Here the stag stood at bay on the top of a steep hill, and the King and his attendants were thrown when attempting to reach the object of that chase. John, one of the brothers from Galloway, had followed the hunting party on foot; and, coming in, ran up the hill, seized the buck by the horns, threw him across his shoul- ders and ran about a mile to Cracracross, where Kenneth had halted, and laid his prey at his sovereign's feet. Ken- neth then said :
"And for the buck thou stoutly brought To us up that steep heuch, Thy designation ever shall Be John Scott in Bucksleuch."
This line of Scotts is one of the most illustrious and ancient in Scottish history. As well at Flodden as on other famous fields, the banner of the Scotts has ever shone in the far flung battle line. The coat of arms is thus described in Burke: Gold on a bend a mullet of six points two crescents gold ; Crest, a stag proper horned and hoofed gold.
John Witherspoon settled on Boggy Swamp in Williams- burg in 1734, and died in 1737. He was the first person buried at the Williamsburg Meeting House. He was born near Glasgow in 1670, moved to County Down, Ireland, in 1695, from whence he came to this country.
He was the great grandson of John Knox and his sec- ond wife, Margaret Stuart. From his Stuart great grand- mother, he drew some of the blood of Robert Bruce as well as that of other Scotsmen of great strength and power -even from the Laird who became Shakespere's Banquo's Ghost.
Witherspoon is an old Scottish name and is frequently mentioned in accounts of ancient battles. A description of the coat of arms may be found in Burke's Armory. The
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PEOPLE WHO SETTLED WILLIAMSBURG
cross and crescents thereon indicate crusader ancestry and the engrailed cross denotes possession of landed estates.
Dr. John Witherspoon, President of Princeton, member of the Continental Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, was a nephew of the John Witherspoon, original settler in Williamsburg.
John Gregg settled on Cedar Swamp in Williamsburg in 1752. He was a son of Captain David MacGregor of the army of William of Orange. After the war, Captain MacGregor settled in Londonderry, Ireland, where later he was massacred by Irish Roman Catholics. John Gregg's mother migrated with him and his three brothers to Bos- ton in 1717. As an old man, he finally came to this town- ship.
The Gregg family is one of the most ancient and most honorable of the Irish-Scots. A Celtic proverb says, "The mountains, the MacGregors and the Devil are coeval." Another Highland saying runs, "Where MacGregor sits, that is the head of the table." Gregg, or Gregory the Great, as he is known in history, was the fourth King of the Alpin line and reigned from 876 to 893. He was of mixed Scottish and Pictish descent. The next Gregg King of Scotland was ninth in line after Gregory the Great. His grand daughter, Lady Gruoch, was the Lady MacBeth of history and of Shakesperian drama. A description of the Gregg crest and coat of arms may be found in Burke's Peerage. The ancient motto of the family was "S'rioghail Mo Dreahm," (My race is royal.)
Much romantic interest attaches to the Gregg clan. It lived under act of attainder for about three centuries, during which time it was unlawful to name a child Gregg or MacGregor. They called themselves outwardly Drum- mond or Murray, but every Gregg knew his name. Notwith- standing this terrible ordeal of attainder for such a long time inflicted by their government, and even though they could not call themselves by their own name, when Charles
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HISTORY OF WILLIAMSBURG
II sought to regain the throne of England from the younger Cromwell, every member of the clan, by whatsoever name known, promptly enlisted under the banner of the man who had the royal blood. The Greggs remembered that they had occupied the throne, and it was then the Stuart's turn. For this supreme evidence of loyalty, Charles II, immediately after the Restoration, removed the attainder from them and they used their rightful name.
Probably one half of the white people of present day Williamsburg have in their veins some of the blood of one of these four original settlers, John Nesmith, John Scott, John Witherspoon, and John Gregg. All of their descen- dants seem to have believed in marrying early and as often as the law allowed. Their tribes have increased.
It is an old Scotch custom which seals the lips of elders everywhere but around their own firesides. No Nesmith, nor Scott, nor Witherspoon, nor Gregg, of the "straitest sect," would tell the foregoing tales of royal lines and loyal service, save to his own sons, when a look would seal the story within the family circle. Centuries of severe struggles as non-comformists have taught these Scotch- Irish or Irish-Scots many things, not the least of which is the value of keeping within yourself what little con- cerns only yourself.
This habit of concealing within the family as much as possible of its history has made tradition in Williamsburg exceedingly rich. Further, the effect of these tales told by fathers in sacred secrecy to sons has made a wonderful morale among these Scotch-Irish. Follow down the years the several Scotch-Irish names on the roll of original set- tlers in Williamsburg and some uncanny force will be felt calling all generations to answer the first roll call to war and to respond effectively in every emergency.
The French Huguenots who came to Williamsburg were strikingly like the Scotch-Irish in fundamental racial traits and instinct. It is believed that the Huguenots were
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PEOPLE WHO SETTLED WILLIAMSBURG
derived from the same nomads that passed through France on their way to Scotland, some of these having elected to remain along the Rhone. The easy union of the sons of Francis Lesesne, Theodore Gourdin, and Henry Mouzon, who dwelt along the North bank of the Santee, with the sons of Samuel Montgomery, John McCullough, and Hugh McGill, who lived at the King's Tree, in all es- sential pioneer matters, notwithstanding the fact they spoke different languages, shows much to the student.
History tells no more pathetic tale than the story of these French Huguenots,-how persecution, in the name of the merciful Fisherman, drove them from the citron groves and sunny vineyards of France into the wilderness of America. A traveler in this Santee country in 1721 wrote most vividly of what he saw among these people and of how bravely and uncomplainingly they were strug- gling with famine and fever in this strange land. They won. Sacred fire, older than the Caesars, still burns in their bosoms.
Another distinctive race out of which Williamsburg has come was the English that settled along Black Mingo and Black River. Among these, when they came, there were two distinct and well defined factions, to wit: Those who were communicants of the Church of England and those who were Dissenters. Each of these two classes showed factional differences. The stricter sectarians of the Church of England along Black River, of whom An- thony White and Meredith Hughes are selected as typical, struggled along for years with the ever increasing Dissen- ter forces and finally abandoned Prince Frederick's Church and the community. The other element of these adherents of Prince Frederick's Church, of whom Edward Plowden, James Gamble, and Thomas McCrea are representative, finally joined the Dissenters becoming members of the Presbyterian Congregations of Black Mingo and of Indian-
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HISTORY OF WILLIAMSBURG
town. This element has remained in Williamsburg to this day.
The two elements among the original Dissenters of the Winyaw country were the Presbyterian and the Antipaedo Baptists. Typical of the Presbyterians were Alexander McKnight and David McIver. Their descendants sup. ported the ancient Black Mingo Church until it failed and then united with other Presbyterian Congregations. This class were Scotsmen of the ancient faith and tradi- tions. The Antipaedo Baptist Dissenting element was dom- inated by Elisha Screven and his brothers. This element was composed almost entirely of the Screven family and the descendants of the retainers that the Reverend William Screven had brought with him into Carolina.
The Reverend William Screven was the Father of the Baptist denomination in South Carolina and his influence on the religious history of the South has not been less than that of Roger Williams in the North. In his youth, he was educated for priesthood in the Church of England. Later, he was overcome by the idea that immersion was the only authorized form of baptism and dissented from the Church of England. He married Bridget Cutt, daughter of the Governor of Jamaica, whose mother mar- ried a Champernown the second time, and hence became connected with some of the oldest and most distinguished families of England. On account of his faith in immersion and of the feeling of his wife's Church of England rela- tives against him for preaching to dissenting congrega- tions, he migrated to Kittery, Maine, where he had ex- pected to preach the Gospel according to his own notion, and without let or hindrance. But, even in this wild, un- settled Colony of Maine, the Church of England still per- secuted him; and, for some of his preaching, the Eccle- siastical Courts had him arrested and placed under bond not to preach the Antipaedo Baptist doctrine in Maine.
PEOPLE WHO SETTLED WILLIAMSBURG 35
In 1696, be brought with him from Kittery, Maine, his congregation to Charleston, South Carolina, obtained a grant of land in what is now Berkeley County, and settled there on his plantation, "Somerton". A few years later, Mr. Screven abandoned his Somerton plantation and moved to Charleston, where he organized the first Bap- tist Church in that city. Afterwards, about 1705, he se- cured land on Black River and there located as the first English settler in the Black Mingo country. He saw the future for a seaport, about twenty miles down the River from his Winyaw plantation, and there planned to lay out Georgetown. He died, however, in 1713, before that work had been done.
Mr. Screven was a strong man. It seems that one drop of his blood will make a deep water Baptist, even two centuries after his death. An excellent illustration of this is found in the Mccullough family of Williamsburg. John Mccullough, original settler in 1736, was a Presbyterian of the severest type. He married a daughter of William James, herself a Presbyterian of the same kind. All of the Mcculloughs were Presbyterians until one of them married a woman of Screven blood. All generations of the Mc- Culloughs descended from this woman have been Baptists. One of them now living in Williamsburg, John Graham Mccullough, is a leader of his denomination in this section.
The Reverend Elisha Screven was a director of both tem- poral and spiritual affairs in Winyaw. In 1734, he made a deed of trust to two hundred seventy acres of land for the city of Georgetown, granting plots for the necessary public buildings and for the churches of all religious denomina- tions then represented in the Colony of South Carolina.
The people of Williamsburg were strikingly alike, al- though born of many nations. Probably no part of the American continent began its existence with a more homo- genous colony. They were known as "poor Protestants,"
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HISTORY OF WILLIAMSBURG
those who had been reduced to poverty on account of the politico-religious wars of the seventeenth century.
During the seventeenth century, there were three great Church factions in Great Britian continuously warring for supremacy. These schemes were called by Green Popery, Prelacy, and Presbyterianism. While each one claimed that it, only, knew and offered the way, the truth and the life from this world to a better one, students of history know full well that the leaders of each one of these three great Church systems were seeking more for tem- poral power and dominion than for spiritual grace and salvation. The fact is, in the seventeenth century, Popery and Prelacy and Presbyterianism were simply three great relentless political parties that worked for success and counted not the cost of human suffering and human woe.
It may be said, however, that the party denominated Prelacy did not use such fearful means for promoting its ends as did Popery or Presbyterianism. By Prelacy is meant the scheme of the Church of England. The Pres- byterian idea and the Papal idea had been, up to this time, the two great warring Church factions. The Church of England grew out of an attempted compromise between the other two uncompromising schemes. It essayed to appropriate the body of Roman Catholicism and to breathe into it the breath of Presbyterianism.
The severities practiced by the Roman Catholic Church and by the Presbyterians in the name of the merciful Nazarene were limited only by the mental abilities of their leaders. Both Papacy and Presbyterianism used the gib- bet, the rack, the torch, the screw, and the cross, in Eng- land and in Scotland and in Ireland, whenever they had opportunity, up to the time of Oliver Cromwell. Oliver Cromwell and his Ironsides made the English speaking world realize the inhumanity and the absurdity of both Roman Catholicism and of Presbyterianism at that time.
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PEOPLE WHO SETTLED WILLIAMSBURG
Oliver Cromwell was the first man who applied the rule of reason to the Christian religion in England.
It is true that much of the absurdity in Puritanism grew out of his labors; but when he made the average man in England realize that neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the Presbyterian Congregations controlled the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, he made a great contribution to the world. He hated alike Roman Catholicism and Presbyterianism, and cared but little for the compro- mise, the Church of England. John Milton, his Latin Secretary, recorded that he said, "Presbyter is but priest writ large." Cromwell punished alike the criminal priests and the presbuteros, who were violating the principles of humanity in the names of their political religions.
It was out of these fierce religious wars that the settlers of Williamsburg came. Many of them had lost their fathers in Scotland and Ireland, when, incited by their religious leaders, their own tribes had undertaken to ex- terminate a settlement of Roman Catholics or a force of Roman Catholics had attacked them.
The deepest desire of every one of the original settlers, who came to Williamsburg, was to be let alone by every- body and by everything, from his nearest neighbor to the King of England; and every settler in Williamsburg Township realized that every other settler was dominated by the same desire. Each man built his pioneer hut as far away from the blazed trails, called roads, as was pos- sible, and where it was most inaccessible from these beaten ways. They found abiding peace in these wilds of Wil- liamsburg.
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