VIII

From The South Up To Kentucky

The Real Cradle Of The Pioneers

American history tells us that the Scots-Irish came to Pennsylvania and moved south – although this is not very evident in our While many American historians like to point to Central Pennsylvania as the birthplace of the western moving immigrants ancestry, except for the Boones – and they were Welsh. History also tells us that the Highlanders came into North Carolina and who would later become known as the Pioneers, I’d prefer to see more study on the “Four-State” area of Virginia, Kentucky, moved North into the mountains. In our family, the Scots came from both north and south, and were Highlanders, Lowlanders, Tennessee, and North Carolina – especially the area consisting of the land between the Holston and the Yadkin Rivers, and and Scots-Irish. The Campbells – Lowlanders – settled in North Carolina, where the histories tell us mostly Highlanders landed.

including Moccasin Valley; the same land that was called in part or in total at one time or another: Augusta County, Fincastle John Patrick Campbell came from Ireland to North Carolina. Born in Ireland (1730), he was probably from Scots Lowlander County, Washington County, Russell County, and the adjoining counties in North Carolina and Tennessee as well.

ancestry. He married Elizabeth James (b. prob. 1750), and his son William Campbell (1765 -1820) moved to and died in Kentucky.

The early European population of these counties is estimated at around 5,000 (around 1790) at a time when the U.S. popula-John Patrick could have been the subject of the Fugate family arrival story of stepping onto North Carolina territory into a bee’s tion was a thousand times that. Bottled up on the eastern slopes of the Appalachians, settled around “forts” – mostly fortified log nest.

“stations” – the population collected for a generation and mixed and mingled until after the Revolution and the cession of the There is another candidate for the bee’s nest story, however: Lachlan or Peter McIntosh – both from a Scot’s family near Trans-Appalachians to the United States by England.

Glasgow. Peter (b. 1755, Scotland) who evidently had made quickly for western Virginia after their landing in Georgia, and thence It was in this fertile area of rolling hills and rich river bottoms where German, Scots, Welsh, English, Irish, Scots Irish immi-without haste to the Kentucky border with the Boss’s Daughter he married, Margaret Turner. Their daughter Tabitha, married grants met after their treks down The Great Wagon Road from the north, and their wanderings from the few ports in Albermarle Henley Fugate, Benjamin’s son-Ben being the first Fugate to settle near Lost Creek, Kentucky. It could have been a McIntosh area of North Carolina in the south, and their subsequent movement inland to the north and northwest.

who stepped into the bee’s nest.

The cap was kept on the bottle for approximately 30 years, and wasn’t lifted until after Lord Dunsmore’s War against the Many of these immigrants came into Kentucky because of Revolutionary War grants. The colonies could not afford to pay Indians, after the Battle of King’s Mountain against the Loyalists, after the Revolution against the English, and after the estab-their veterans in cash, so they issued promissory notes for the lands the new states now controlled in their “reserves.” Most of lishment of a pattern of pioneer settlement that involved “long hunters” like Daniel Boone, who would leave their valleys and these were snapped up by speculators who “bundled” them into larger tracts and then sold them to settlers.

their wives and children for a year or two at a time – leave them close to defenseless when Indians raided, when (like the Boone Others titles were kept by the veterans who moved to these places and populated them. This also reinforces what the his-family and the Fugates) they would often be forced to retreat north of The Great Wagon Road until the trouble with the Indians tory books tell us about the movement and settlement patterns: Connecticut veterans tended to move to Connecticut’s “Western in southwest Virginia abated.

Reserve” in northern Ohio; and to this day, many of the villages carry Connecticut village names (Hartford, Canton, Fairfield, The list of forts established along the courses of the Powell, the Clinch, the Holston and the Yadkin Rivers is impressive, and etc.). Virginia veterans, many of whom had served under Washington (at Valley Forge, and crossing the Delaware with him), and their names preserve the names of many of the names of the early pioneers, including ancestors and relations such as the Fugate, others from more local forces (such as the Campbells who fought at Kings Mountain), moved into the western Virginia lands Bush, Ritchie, Morgan, Campbell, and Martin.

which became Kentucky. So there is a Staunton, VA, and a Staunton, KY; and so there is a Lexington, VA and a Lexington, KY

Among the pioneers who were to become part of American history were the Austin, Boone, Houston, and Crockett familes

(both named after the Lexington in Massachusetts of Minuteman fame).

(the latter three, along with the Collinsworths would go on to settle in Tennessee and Texas. Collinsworths went on to settle in the As would be expected, not everybody who settled in the new states were Revolutionary War veterans, and because the coun-first fort at Nashville and their descendants also continued to Texas with the Crocketts and the Austins. Collinsworths are listed in ties they moved to were themselves split up into smaller counties later, the pattern of settlement is not always easy to follow, the First Family associations of both those states; but our Collinsworths stayed in Eastern Kentucky – as Collins’).

whether in Kentucky or earlier, in Virginia. One way or another, the fact remains that they got there, and within the 20 year period Much is made in Fugate family history about their residence on the Holston River and along the Clinch. The Holston River from 1790 to 1810.

was named after Stephen Holstein, a Swiss immigrant from the Delaware settlements, who built one of the first cabins there in 1746. The Fugates are usually associated with what is now Castlewood, Virginia, which itself was named after an earlier immigrant: Jacob Castle, Sr. (born Abt. 1717 in Lancaster County, PA; died April 01, 1789 in Holston River Area, VA., the son of Peter 19

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