The 1754 Will of Charles McDowell

In 1754 Charles McDowell,* the father of "Hunting John" and daughters Ann, Rachel, Mary, Hannah, and Elizabeth, died at age fifty-seven in Anson County, North Carolina. He had emigrated along with many other family members and friends from Ulster, Ireland, in the early 1700s, first settling in western Pennsylvania. Following the Great Wagon Road along the Shenandoah Valley, they lived for a time in Virginia before finally making their permanent home on the Carolina frontier. Charles knew his time was coming soon as he wrote this will, the first ever recorded in the Anson County courthouse.

In the name of God Amen. I Charles McDowell of Anson County in the Province of North Carolina being sick & weak of body but of Perfect mind & memory thanks be to almighty God for the same and calling to mind the mortality of life and knowing that it is appointed for all men once to die have made and constituted this my Last Will and Testament in form and manner following Revoking all other wills and Testaments whatsoever by me made and appointed I doo allow this and no other to be my last will and Testament.

Impremis. First of all I recomment my soul in the hands of God that gave it & my body to the Grave to be Buryed in a Desent Christean Burial.

Item. I Doo appoint & Constitute my well beloved wife Rachal McDowell Executor of this my Last Will & Testament & I Doo appoint my Good friend and neighbour George Cathee of the County & province aforesaid to be her assistant in the Executorship.

Item. I Doo Give and bequeath unto my well beloved wife Rachal McDowell one third part of my Estate to be at her own Descression and a free property to her Mairs and Coults that she has always clamed as Her own for to be at her own Disposull & farther it is my willl and desire that my wife Rachal McDowell may make her home with her daughter Hannah Caller if she scease cause.

Item. I doo Give & Bequeath to my well beloved son John McDowell Ten pounds Current money of Virginia to be paid by my Executors.

Item. I Doo Give & bequeath to my Well beloved Daughter Rachel Eagan of Augusta County in the Colony of Virginia Two Hundred acres of Land lying & being on Broad river in North Carolina in Anson County to her & her heirs Execus. admins. or assigns for Ever.

Item. I Doo Leave unto my well beloved Brother Josp McDowell of Frederick County in Virginea one brown broad Cloath Coat & one beaver Hat & and one pare of Shoe bootes.

Item. and all the rest of my personal Estate after my Lawfull debts are paid to be Equally Divided between my four Daughters Anne Evans Elizabeth Barns Mary McPters & Hannah Caller to be in Joyd by them and their heirs for Ever.

In Witnes whereof I have inter Changeable set my hand and affixed my seal this twenty fourth day of January and in the year of lord God 1754.**

*Charles McDowell, born about 1697, was the son of Joseph McDowell and Ann Calhoun. He preceded his brother Joseph J. McDowell to the Carolina frontier from Virginia. 

**His will was probated 4 June 1754.

The Scots-Irish Migration

The McDowells were among devout Presbyterian Scots who, beginning in the late 1500s, migrated from the lowlands of Scotland to Ireland. Religious persecutions in the reigns of James VI of Scotland (who later became England’s James I) and Charles I of England provoked many Presbyterians to leave Scotland, particularly in the aftermath of the Ruthven Raid, during which several Protestant noblemen staged an audacious coup d’etat. In August 1582, those nobles met up with James VI while the teenaged King of Scots was out hunting, and invited him to join them at nearby Ruthven Castle. James accepted their invitation and was subsequently held hostage for ten months during which time William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, ruled Scotland. After James’s escape in June 1583, Protestants became prime suspects regarding their allegiance to Scotland’s king. Though brought up in the Protestant Church of Scotland, he had been baptized in a Catholic ceremony at Stirling Castle. And he was, after all, the only child of Mary, the devoutly Catholic former Queen of Scots, who had been held in England by Queen Elizabeth I since 1568.
Meanwhile, during this time, the Presbyterian McDowells were still in Galloway, the descendants of Prince Fergus, born around 1095. Nearly five hundred years later in 1575, John McDowell, great-grandfather of the first Joseph McDowell of the line, was born in Galloway. (John's father Uchtred, 1oth of Garthland, had been a suspect in the Ruthven Raid before his summons was deleted by royal warrant in 1584.) By 1595, John emigrated to Ireland as a political exile along with others who would become called Scots-Irish, Scotch-Irish, or Ulster Scots. However, within a few generations Ireland, too, would become unsafe for Presbyterians such as he.

In 1661, at the re-establishment of Episcopacy in Ireland, the newly appointed bishops, with Jeremy Taylor as their leader, turned all the Presbyterian ministers out of their charges upon the ground that they had never been ordained. This ignoring of Presbyterian ordination carried with it a denial of the validity of any official act performed by a Presbyterian minister. For instance, the validity of marriage, involving the questions of legitimacy and inheritance. This wrong was not corrected until 1782. Second, In 1704 the Sacramental Test Act was passed, which required all persons holding any office, civil or military, or receiving any pay from the sovereign to take sacraments in the established church within three months after their appointment. This, of course, excluded all Presbyterians from civil and military offices of every kind.

—Rev. W.A. West

A reason to emigrate arose again, this time coinciding with the rising power and impending rebellion of the American colonies. Calvinists in Ireland in the late 17th and early 18th centuries were caught between an Anglican elite and a burgeoning Catholic majority. They found themselves exploited and discriminated against by landlords, and increasingly taxed by churches to which they did not belong. Under the 1704 Test Act, Presbyterian marriages were no longer recognized, dissenters were denied job opportunities, and, all too often, they were not even allowed to bury their dead unless a funeral service was held within the “Established Church.” 

Archbishop Boulton sent to the Secretary of State in England, a “melancholy account,” as he calls it, of the state of the North. He says the people who go complain of the oppressions they suffer, as well as the dearness of provisions. The whole North, he says, is in a ferment, and the humour has spread like a contagion. “The worst is,” says the Archbishop, “that it affects only Protestants, and reigns chiefly in the North, which is the seat of our linen manufacture.” Writing in March, 1729, he says: “There are now seven ships at Belfast, that are carrying off about 1000 passengers thither”—to America.*

During the same time period, there had also been drought, disease, poor harvests, and industry downturn. Those negative factors could happen anywhere, of course. America would be full of unknowns, especially on the frontier. Many chose to take the risk. McDowells, their families, and friends gathered at the ports and boarded the ships. They disembarked in a new world.

*Source: Joseph A. Waddell, Annals of Augusta County, Virginia, 1901, C. Russell Caldwell, Staunton, Virginia

The Josephs McDowell & Kin

In 1631 Thomas McDowell, son of Alexander, was born in the village of Glenoe, a settlement on the plain above the larger towns of Larne and Carrickfergus in County Antrim, Ulster, Ireland. Thomas became a blacksmith, and he married Anne Locke around 1668. They named the first of their five sons Joseph. He was the first “Joseph” of this McDowell line. Their other four sons came in succession: John, Alexander, Ephraim, and William. Two daughters, Esther and Sarah, followed.
Joseph would become grandfather and great-grandfather of the two American cousin Josephs McDowell who later became the subjects of much confusion in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War. He married Ann Calhoun of Corkagh, County Donegal, Ulster. (Her father Robert was a Scottish immigrant born in Dunbarton, and maintained for himself the Gaelic surname spelling of “Colquhoun.” Ann’s sister Mary wed Huguenot Andrew Lewis, whose son John was a primary settler in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and a northstar for his McDowell relatives.) Joseph and Ann had four children together, all sons: Charles, Robert, William, and Joseph J.
Charles, Joseph’s oldest son, was born about 1697. He married Rachel, who gave birth to one son and five daughters. Son John, born about 1717, made the journey from Ireland to America as a teenager. In the American wilderness he earned renown for his skills as a hunter, and would ever after be called “Hunting John” McDowell. Hunting John, like his father, would have but one son, born in 1758: Joseph “of Pleasant Gardens,” one of the McDowell cousins of the Revolution.
Joseph J., the youngest of Joseph and Ann’s sons, was born 27 February 1715, nearly twenty years after his oldest brother Charles. Young Joseph J. was raised to become a weaver in Ireland’s textile industry, but he instead emigrated to America shortly after taking the thoroughly Irish Margaret O’Neill* for his bride. As a grandson of Scottish lowlanders, Joseph J. McDowell had allegedly offended his wife’s Irish relatives by marrying one of their own. Margaret was, after all, a member of Ireland’s revered O’Neill clan, descended from a Gaelic dynasty that ruled much of Ireland in the early Middle Ages, particularly in the north. They were fierce nativists and did not take kindly to clouding their pure Irish gene pool with outsiders. Rather than tempt a tragic fate, Joseph J. McDowell and his bride Margaret fled Ireland for the American colonies, and their eight children would all be born there. The youngest, born in 1756, would be named Joseph, and later in life became known as “Quaker Meadows Joe,” the other McDowell cousin in question. 
The children of the first Joseph McDowell did descend from lowland Scots, the target of native Irish discrimination. But they were also nephews of Ephraim McDowell, who, at age 16, helped defend Londonderry against the approach of Jacobite Alexander MacDonnell at the beginning of the Williamite War in Ireland in December 1688. Ephraim also served in the successful defense of Ireland at the tide-turning Battle of the Boyne two years later against England’s deposed King James II. In 1729, though, Ephraim left with his children  and grandchildren to live the rest of his years in America. He continued a life of service, and was a member of the Virginia militia until age 70, when he was deemed too old to serve. (He nevertheless lived another 30+ years.) He was progenitor of the McDowells in the colony of Virginia, as well as in the territory that became Kentucky, on the far side of the mountains. Indeed, he is also said to have built the first road across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Ephraim McDowell was an exceptional man and set an example for the generations that followed. 

*Margaret O’Neill, daughter of Samuel O’Neill (c. 1680-), was born about 1717 at Shane’s Castle on Lough Neah in County Antrim, Ulster, Ireland. Built in 1345 by a member of the O’Neill dynasty, the castle was originally called Eden-duff-carrick. Shane McBrian O’Neill (c. 1530-1567), known by historians as Shane the Proud, renamed it for himself. Numerous additions were made to the castle complex throughout the centuries. Shane’s Castle has been used extensively as a set location in all seasons of HBO’s award-winning series Game of Thrones.

McDowells, from Galloway to America

The monks of Holyrood in Edinburgh, where he lived his last days, called him “Prince” Fergus. They were alluding to his marriage with Princess Elizabeth, one of the many illegitimate children of King Henry I of England. Elizabeth’s mother was likely Princess Nest ferch Rhys of Wales, known to have also borne a son named after Henry.*

Fergus, Lord of Galloway, had been named the first such lord by Scotland’s King David I, whose sister Matilda happened to be Henry I’s wife. Fergus and David shared family ties to the English king and they would remain faithful in their support of him as long as Henry occupied the throne. Fergus and Elizabeth's offspring gave rise to the clan of Dougall, anglicized Dowell, known by the 13th century as MacDowell. Their oldest son Uchtred,** second Lord of Galloway, had a son named Dowall (or Duegald, in Gaelic). It was from Dowall that the McDowell name branched forth.

Galloway was unique within Britain during the early Middle Ages. Geographically, it occupied the southwest coastal border of Scotland, with Ireland in view from points along the sea coast. For four generations, beginning with Fergus, the Lords of Galloway were an independent dynasty within Britain. Royal charters during that time were addressed: “To all good men, French, English, Scots, and Galwegians.” Over generations, though, power ultimately changed hands and allegiances shifted. After the death in 1234 of Alan, the fourth Lord of Galloway, King Alexander II of Scotland forced the leadership of Galloway to be partitioned between Alan's three surviving legitimate daughters. (There had been no legitimate sons.) Alexander’s goal was to secure Galloway under Scottish rule and he was successful. Galwegian independence was no more.

John McDowell, born in 1575 to Uchtred MacDowell, 10th Lord of Garthland in Galloway, initiated the McDowell family's migration westward from Scotland. By 1595, John was living in County Antrim, Ulster, Ireland, as a political exile. He had settled in Glenoe, in the parish of Raloo near Larne, where he met and married Irish native Mary Wylie. Grandson Thomas, son of their first-born Alexander and his wife Margaret Hall, was father of Joseph, John, William, Alexander, and Ephraim, some of the earliest McDowells to survive the Atlantic crossing and make America their new home. 

*“Nesta” had been taken hostage by England during the relentless border wars with Wales. England became her home. The King, already married to Matilda, the sister of Scotland’s David I, married Nesta to Gerald FitzWalter of Windsor, the Constable of Pembroke. She would notably become the female progenitor of the FitzGerald dynasty in Great Britain and Ireland.

**Fergus’s son Uchtred was called a cousin of Henry II, King of England, by 12th century English chronicler Roger de Hoveden. Henry II was a maternal grandson of Henry I, and this would support the genetic link to Princess Elizabeth.

Origin of the McDowells

From History of the McDowells and Connections, by John Hugh McDowell, pub. 1918, C. B. Johnston, pp. 381, 383:

ORIGIN OF THE McDOWELLS.

By William McDowell. The McDowells are of Pictish origin and natives of Scotland, and away back about 200 B. C. one of them, the first that I can find anything about, had a duel with one of the Kings Habakon. You will find another William McDowell—was governor-general of Scotland in 1293, and had charge of Sterling Castle. You are further aware that this name is as old as the Creation. They are not of Celtic origin, they are not Irish; but the best blood that ever landed upon the American continent. They were early settlers in America. A great many of the McDowells that are in America are from Ireland. They went over there the time of the Cromwell settlement, in Ulster. You will find a great settlement of the McDowells near Belfast, along the Legon River, about fourteen miles from Belfast. You can find out there where the McDowells came from that landed there; some in the County Derry, County Monaghan—all over the north of Ireland. You likewise will find out that in Renfrewshire, Scotland, there are a great many, and in Ayrshire, and in Dumfrieshire, and in Gallowshire; there would be very little difficulty of finding out all about the McDowells in America—the McDowells that came later from Scotland. Sometimes the name is spelled McDowall, but after the Scotch Revolution the settlers in Ireland spelled it McDowell. They are all of Presbyterian, Covenanter origin.

Ephraim McDowell (1673-1777)

My 7x great-grandfather Ephraim McDowell migrated to America with his children and grandchildren after the death of his wife Margaret Irvine in County Antrim, Ulster, Ireland. Not all survived the arduous transatlantic voyage. They disembarked at the Quaker port city of Philadelphia and, like many early Scots-Irish immigrants, soon settled in western Pennsylvania.
In the fall of 1737, with his son John, daughter Mary Elizabeth, and son-in-law James Greenlee, Ephraim left Pennsylvania to go to John Lewis, a cousin who had left Ireland some years before and about 1732 had settled on the Middle River in the Shenandoah Valley near present-day Staunton, Virginia. It was their intention to locate near him. While on their way, when in camp on Lewis' Creek, a tributary of the South River, Benjamin Borden, Sr, joined them one night. He offered a thousand acres of land to anyone who would conduct him to his grant of land. The offer was promptly accepted by Ephraim's son John McDowell, a surveyor by trade. The three men conveyed their families to the home of John Lewis and then piloted Borden to what has since been known as "Borden's Grant." In consideration of a liberal share of the claim, the two McDowells and James Greenlee then undertook to assist in carrying out Borden's contract for him, and before the close of the year removed their own families to the grant, where they permanently settled—the first three settlers in that part of the valley. Ephraim McDowell’s homestead, "Timber Ridge," ranged 42,000 acres lying east of the Great Wagon Road through present-day Lexington, Virginia. He served in the Augusta County militia until 1743, when he was exempted from further service due to his advanced age (70 years). Still, Ephraim, who had defended the gates of Londonderry and fought in the Battle of the Boyne, would live another 34 years.

More re: Ephraim McDowell & the Migration

From Historic Families of Kentucky, by Thomas Marshall Green, pub. 1889, R. Clarke:

Ephraim McDowell, who fought at Boyne river, as well as at Londonderry, was already an elderly man, when, with his two sons, John and James, his daughters, Mary and Margaret, and numerous kinsmen and co-religionists, he emigrated to America to build for himself and his a new home. In his interesting "Sketches of Virginia," Foote states that he was accompanied to Virginia by his wife, and that his son John was a widower when he left Ireland; but, as in the deposition of Mrs. Mary E. Greenlee, the daughter of Ephraim, her father, her brother John, her husband, and herself, are designated as composing the party emigrating to Virginia from Pennsylvania, and no mention is anywhere made of her mother, Mr. Foote is probably in error; and the uniform tradition of the family is more likely to be correct—that the wife of Ephraim McDowell died in Ireland, and that John McDowell had never been married until he came to America. The exact date of his arrival in Pennsylvania is not known. The journal of Charles Clinton—the founder of the historic family of that name in New York—gives an account of his voyage from the county of Longford, in the good ship "George and Ann," in company with the "John of Dublin," having many McDowells aboard as his fellow passengers. The "George and Ann" set sail on the 9th of May, 1729. On the 8th of June, a child of James McDowell died, and was thrown overboard; several other children of the same afterward died; also a John McDowell, and the sister, brother and wife of Andrew McDowell. The ship reached land, on the coast of Pennsylvania, on the 4th day of September, 1729. Whether or not the conjecture that Ephraim McDowell was a passenger with his kindred on board this ship at that time is correct, it is certain that about the same time he and his family, and numerous other McDowells, Irvines, Campbells, McElroys, and Mitchells, came over together, and settled in the same Pennsylvania county.
In Pennsylvania, Ephraim McDowell remained several years. There his son, John, was married to Magdalena Wood, whose mother was a Campbell, and, as tradition has it, of the noble family of Argyle. There Samuel, the eldest son of John and Magdalena McDowell, was born, in 1735. There, too, probably, Mary, the daughter of Ephraim, met, was beloved by, and married James Greenlee, a Presbyterian Irishman, of English descent, and said to have been remotely descended from the Argyle Campbells.

The 1729 Voyage of the George and Ann

Excerpt from the Journal of the Voyage of Charles Clinton from Ireland to America, 1729:

"I took my Journey from The County of Longford, on Friday the 9th day of May; came to Dublin ye 12th ditto. Entered on shipboard the ship called the George and Ann, ye 18th. Sett sail the 20th.
Came to anchor at Glenarm on the 24th, where Matthw. McClaughry and his wife and two of his family went on shoar and quit their voyage.
Set sail from Glenarm on ye 25th and came to anchor at Green Castle, in the Lough of Foyle, the 26th, where we stay'd till ye 29th; then sett sail in company with the John of Dublin bound for Newcastle in the same country.
Ditto. Came in sight of Loughsuly [Lough Swilly] ye 30 th. Sail'd by Tory [Tory Island] and Horn-head.
On the 30th, at night, a strong wind arose, ye continued to ye first of June at evening which Loosened our Bowsprit with Hazard of our masts.
June 2d we had a fair breeze for our westerly course.
On the 3d ditto my daughter Catharine and son James fell sick of the measles.
A strong gale of westerly wind continues to ye 10th ditto.
James Wilson's child died ye 5th.
On the 7th met ye Mary from Pennsylvania from which she sail'd to us in 5 weeks and 5 days.
On the 8th ditto a child of James McDowel's died and was thrown overboard.
On the 10th ye wind came to East and be South.
On ye llth changed more Easterly and continues fair and seasonable.
On the 12th the wind blew North and be East, a fresh gale bywhich we sail'd 40 leagues in 20 hours, and found we were in 49 degrees 20 minutes North Latitude by observation.
My son James, on ye 28th of August, 1728 at 7 In ye morning.
A son of James Majore's.
A brother of Andrew McDowell's.
Two daughters of James McDowell's.
A daughter of Walter Davis's.
Robert Frazer.
Patt McCann, servant to Tho. Armstrong.
Will Hamilton.
James Greer, servant to Alex. Mitchell.
Widow Gordon's daughter.
James Mondy died Thursday,llth of September.
A servant of Mr. Cruisels.
A son of James Beaty's.
Fran. Nicholson
A sister of Andrew McDowell's.
A daughter of John Beatty's.
Two of Mr. Cruise's men servants.
Margarey Armstrong. [daughter of Thos. Armstrong]
A servant of Mr. Cruise's.
Two of John Beatty's children.
Jamei Thompson's wife.
James Brown.
A daughter of James McDowell's
A daughter of Thos. Delap's.
A servant of Mr. Cruise's.
A child of Widow Mitchell's.
John Oliver's wife.
James Majore's eldest daughter.
John Rook, a sailor.
Joseph Stafford.
John McDowell.
John Beatty.
Andrew McDowell's sister.
James Wilson's wife.
James McDowell's wife.
Sarah Hamilton, Will Hamilton's sister.
Thos. Armstrong, died Monday ye 29th of September.
John Beatty's wife.
Isabella Johnston.
Edward Norris.
Margaret McClaughry.
Widow Frazer's daughter.
Andrew McDowell's brother.
Joseph Mclaughry.
Mattw McClaughry.
A young sister of Andrew McDowel.
Thom Delap. and his daughter Catherine.
James Barkly.
Discovered land on ye Continent of America ye 4th day of October, 1729."

___________________________
In May 1729, the George and Ann set sail from Ireland for the American colonies. The trip, at the time, averaged four weeks of sailing. The journey of the George and Ann took over four months. The passengers and crew—those who survived—made first landfall at Cape Cod rather than their intended destination of Philadelphia. At least eighty-six of the ship’s 168 passengers died during the Atlantic crossing. Eleven of those lost were McDowells.

(Journal of the Voyage of Charles Clinton from Ireland to America, transcribed from The Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries, by John Austin Stevens, Martha Joanna Lamb, Henry Phelps Johnston, and William Abbatt, 1877, A. S. Barnes & Company. A copy of Charles Clinton’s journal is reportedly preserved in The New York Public Library.)