Presbyterian Emigrations from Ulster to South Carolina; the Cahans Exodus from Ballybay to Abbeville in 1764

 http://www.magoo.com/hugh/cahans.html#abbeville

Emigrations from Ulster to America of segments of Presbyterian congregations, either led or accompanied by their pastor, occurred with some regularity between 1718 and 1775. See A History of Ulster by Jonathan Bardon (Blackstaff Press 1992), especially pages 176–179. These Presbyterians either followed their ministers, or took them along. Identifying the churches in America that these emigrants formed or joined often helps identify the place in Ulster from which they came.

This page discusses the Cahans exodus from Ballybay, county Monaghan, in 1764, and some similar movements of Presbyterians from Ulster to America in the second half of the eighteenth century. This information may shed some light on the origins in Ireland or Scotland of Robert McGough, his wife Sarah Matilda Carson, and their children, who emigrated from Newry to Charleston, South Carolina. See my web page: A Scots-Irish John McGough—A Seattle Connection; Emigration of Presbyterian McGoughs in 1773.

I have given attention mostly to Seceder Presbyterian congregations in the Piedmont area of North and South Carolina, especially counties surrounding Charlotte, North Carolina, and Abbeville, South Carolina, because those are the areas to which the original McGoughs emigrated in 1773, or in which they settled in the decades following their original emigration.

Cahans Exodus

A group of Seceder Presbyterian families from Ballybay, county Monaghan, Ireland, sailed on the "John," from Newry, county Down, Ireland, on May 10, 1764, and arrived in New York on July 28, 1764. The emigrants were part of the congregation known as the Ballybay New Erection. They sailed under the leadership of their pastor, Reverend Doctor Thomas Clark. By 1767, the majority of the emigrants had settled on farmland acquired for them by Doctor Clark in New Perth (after 1788, Salem), New York. Others settled in Abbeville, South Carolina. In 1779, Dr. Clark visited the members of his Ballybay congregation who had settled in Abbeville. In 1780, he organized them into the congregation of Cedar Springs and Long Cane in South Carolinas. At the same time, McGoughs began to move to Abbeville from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. (See A Scots-Irish John McGough— A Seattle Connection — Emigration of Presbyterian McGoughs in 1773). In 1782 (or perhaps 1786), Dr. Clark permanently joined the part of his Ballybay congregation that had settled in Abbeville. He died suddenly of an epileptic seizure in Abbeville on December 26, 1792.

This emigration from Ballybay is known as "The Cahans Exodus." The story is told in At the Ford of the Birches: The History of Ballybay, its People and Vicinity, by James H. Murnane and Peadar Murnane (Murnane Brothers 1999), at page 174–196. The story of the exodus is told on the Internet at The Cahans Project. In his book, Full Circle - A Story of Ballybay Presbyterians (Cahans Publications 1999), the Reverend David Nesbitt devotes Part 2 to Cahans (pages 194–327).

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After Clark's wife died at the end of 1762, he considered emigrating to America. Partly because the Anglican ascendancy in Ireland treated Scots-Presbyterians as second-class citizens, there had been a trickle of Scots Presbyterian immigrants from Ballybay to American for almost fifty years. A call reached Dr. Clark from Volintown, Rhode Island, and a second call came from near Albany, New York. The Albany group petitioned to the Presbytery, who granted the petition and appointed Dr. Clark to go and supply them for one year. At about this time, in the Spring of 1763, Doctor Clark wrote Doctor Harper of King's College, New York, with a list of one hundred families who desired to move to America.

Doctor Clark resigned his charge in Cahans and sailed from Newry on May 10, 1764, aboard the ship John. The ship reached New York on July 28, 1764. The New York Gazette of August 6, 1764, reported:

"Last week, in the Ship 'John', from Newry, Ireland, ... there arrived about three hundred passengers, one hundred and forty of whom together with Dr. Clark, embarked on the 10th, with their stores, farming and manufacturing utensils, in two sloops for Albany, from whence they are to proceed to the lands near Lake George which were already surveyed for them. Their principal view is to carry on the Linen and Hempen manufacture to which they are all brought up. Doubtless, they will meet with the good graces of every friend of this Province, especially at this juncture when their encouragement is so absolutely necessary and it is said that many others will soon follow their laudable example."

The Murnane brothers (page 184) tell us:

"While immigrants were resting in New York, preparatory to moving up the Hudson to the land that had been reserved for them, it would appear that an agent for land developers in South Carolina prevailed on a number of the Cahans congregation to separate from the main body and transship to the Abbeville area in South Carolina, where they eventually settled at Cedar Springs. It is thought that a number of passengers disembarked at Delaware before reaching New York."

Genealogy

Early Church History