Medlin, William F. Quaker families of South Carolina & Georgia ([Columbia? S.C.] : Ben Franklin Press, 1982)
Apparently Quakers were quite a presence in early SC, much more influential than their numbers would lead one to assume - but they left in droves after the Rev, in despair over slavery. One meeting, Cane Creek in Union County, moved practically en masse to Miami, Ohio (Ceasar’s Creek MM)
The meeting I suspect our Robertses might have belonged to - IF they had been Quakers - was the Gum Swamp meeting - located on Gum Swamp, near the Marlboro-Dillon line and the NC border - may have existed before 1750 - still meeting in 1830
reported first to Cane Creek NC - then to Pee Dee meeting, after 1801 to Piney Grove, after 1816 to Black Creek NC --->
ALL RECORDS FOR THIS MEETING ARE LOST.
There is a list of (some) members of various meetings:
Roberts, Elizabeth d 1722 Charleston meeting (the oldest meeting in SC - est bef 1675)
Jonathan 1789 Cane Creek (aka Tyger River) Union C
John 1788 CC
Joseph 1800 CC
Richard 1798 CC Spartanburgh Co
Thomas 1786 CC/Bush River (=largest in SC at one time 1770-1822) Union Co
II 1788 BR Newberry
III d 1787 BR Edgefield
Walter ~1780 BR Union
II 1797 CC Union
Then at the end, there’s a bit of genealogical info
Roberts, John - from VA 1788
ch Thomas m 1790 Hannah Rendel
Lydia
Roberts, Walter - m Rebecca
ch Walter (called Thomas) m 1786 Ann Whitson
Jonathan m 1789 Mary Whitson
Roberts, Thomas (born Walter) - m 1786 Ann Whitson
ch Rebecca 1787
Walter 1789
David 1792
- to Miami Ohio
Roberts, Thomas III - d 1787
ch William, Thomas, John, Amos, Absalom
Mary m Justice, Elizabeth m Upton, Rebecca m Nobles, Rachel m Nobles
St. James Santee, plantation parish : history and records, 1685-1925 by Anne Baker Leland Bridges, Roy Williams, III. (Spartanburg, S.C. : Reprint Company, Publishers, 1997)
The first French minister known to have officiated at St. James Santee was the Rev. Pierre Robert (1656-1715), a refugee of Swiss birth, who came to the province in 1686 with Captain Phillippe Gendron and settled on French Santee.
According to tradition Mr. Robert was the first person in the Santee frontier settlement to own a horse, which enabled him to cover the distances through the forest to the homes of his congregation.
Note 15 - one of his descendants was Henry Martyn Robert (1837-1923) - Robert’s Rules of Order
Note 16 - Rev Robert was the son of Daniel and Marie Robert. The register of the old Huguenot church in Basle, Switzerland, recorded the baptism of his son Pierre, May 9, 1675, and his ordination, February 19, 1682. His wife’s name was Jeanne Broye.
Holcomb, Brent H. Saint David's Parish, South Carolina : minutes of the vestry, 1768-1832, parish register, 1819-1924. (Easley, S.C. : Southern Historical Press, 1979)
Ruth Roberts - sponsor at baptism - 1915
16 May 1784
Ordered that Thomas Davis, a poor man, be allowed £5 starling for his maintenance one year from the above date and that his sons Thomas Davis and Frank ? Davis be obliged to ppay 21 sh stg each into the hands of the Church Wardens for the further support of said Davis.
Kennedy, Billy. The Scots-Irish in the Carolinas. (Belfast ; Greenville, S.C. : Causeway, 1997)
Rowan Co = central point (launching pad) - est 1753 to bring some order to a wooded wilderness which was rapidly filling up with immigrants heading down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania & Virginia. Scots-Irish mostly settled western fork of Yadkin, Germans (PA Dutch) eastern. All = Calvinist
p. 107 By the 1730s, land had become scarce in Pennsylvania, and expensive, while in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and North Carolina it was cheap and in bountiful supply. The cost of a 50-acre farm at Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1732 was £7 10 shillings, wile in the Granville district of North Carolina (the Piedmont) a farm could be purchased for five shillings, regardless of the acreage.
Although there were a few settlers in the Rowan area by 1745, the largest numbers began to arrived (sic) in 1749 and listed among the Scots-Irish contingent of that year were: James Carter, Edward Hughes, Thomas Gillespie, Thomas Bell, John Davidson, Adam Carruth, William Sherill, John Dunn, John Withrow and Morgan Bryan, whose daughter Rebecca married Daniel Boone.
Edward Hughes was the first trustee for Rowan County and its main township Salisbury . . .
p. 109 Scots-Irish Presbyterians came into neighbouring Guilford County, North Carolina under the shelter of a church formed company. The Nottingham Company, that had earlier performed the same function for settlers in the Pennsylvania and Maryland settlements.
p. 152 A series of meetings at Jonesborough , representative of the three western North Carolina counties - Washington, Sullivan and Greene, authorised the establishment of a new state of Franklin and its first General Assembly met in March, 1785. The state was named after American statesman Benjamin Franklin; the first governor was John Sevier, the hero of Kings Mountain and the secretary of state was Landon Carter, son of early Watauga pioneer, John Carter. Franklin was effectively the successor to the Watauga Association, with the Holston, Watauga and Nolichucky settlements all represented. North Carolina refused to recognise the new state . . . by 1789 it had disappeared completely . . . North Carolina finally decided to cede its western lands . . . this land was referred to as “The Territory of the United States of America South of the River Ohio.” It included Kentucky county which was under the control of Virginia until 1792, when Kentucky became a state, and the region that today is Alabama and Mississippi. There was also the area which today roughly coincides with the boundaries of Tennessee.
Chapter 25 - Scots-Irish loyalists in the American Revolution by Dr Bobby Gilmer Moss
Scots-Irish contributed the greater number of individuals to the ranks of the loyalists when the Revolution began. - Ironically, it was the Ulster-Scots group that also supplied the largest number of soldiers to the patriot side during the war.
Beginning shortly before 1760, the Ulster-Scots swarmed into the back-country. In 1759 the development . . . was interrupted by the Cherokee Indian War. From 1763, until . . .(1780), the migration was annually greater than during any other period previously. It was also in the time period that large numbers of migrants from the North of Ireland began to arrive in Charleston, SC, bound for the back-country.
. . . the shattering of the peace in the back-country. This occurred whtn the leaders of the rebels began an association in which all who signed the document refused to import or buy British goods and refused to sign an allegiance to the Crown.
Immediately, there was a serious disaffection . . . . The mere isolation of these regions prevented the frontier settlers feeling British wrongs as did coastal city dwellers or planters in constant contact with the restrictive policies. The most alarming resistance to the association was among the Scots-Irish between the Broad and Saulda Rivers . . .
[So the rebels sent a delegation to get people to join. Winnsboro - John Phillips (arr 1770) convinced people not to sign.] These Ulstermen, many of whom had recently arrived in America, were enjoying unprecedented freedom and substantial economic independence compared to what they had lived under in Ireland.
Alexander Chesney and many of his neighbours chose to remain faithful to King George III, who they perceived to be a benevolent benefactor. In Addition, their pride had been deeply wounded earlier by the disdain and contempt with which they were often treated by the coastal settlers.
Nov 1775 - Battle of 96 - they won, but dispersed when they learned a superior force was on the way. Chesney led many of the loyalists to the home of his father and secured them in caves along the river. From this time on many of these men served under Chesney and Col Phillips.
p 158 Some estimate that as many as 25,000 South Carolina loyalists, the majority fo whom were Scots-Irish, at some time during the war bore arms against the rebels.
Though many were loyalists, it must be understood that the Scots-Irish fought on both sides. Sometimes father against son, brother against brother, and neighbour against neighbour were in battle. Ironically, some changes sides more than once as they conducted a bloody partisan civil war within the Revolution. . . .
When the war was over, some of the Scots-Irish evacuated with the British from Charleston in December, 1782. They went first to Florida or an island in the South Atlantic and from there to Nova Scotia. A small number left the cold North East and either returned to the South or went to England. A few, such as Chesney returned directly to Ireland . . . .
The majority of the Scots-Irish loyalists did not evacuate with the British forces. Instead, they chose to remain in South Carolina and returned to their homes and land on the frontier. There, providing they had not committed barbarous war crimes against their fellow man, they were allowed to resume their place in society. Some were imprisoned, others burnt out, but a large number managed to mend fences with their neighbours. No one has yet been able to explain this phenomenon: men, who once had undertaken extreme measures in attempts to kill each other, once the war ended, lived together thereafter in close harmony.
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