Black, a Scottish Highlander, emigrated here from Jura, an isle in the Hebrides, seeking a better life. Black was among thousands of Highlanders impacted by the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite Army at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. To punish the rebels, the crown disbanded the centuries-old Scottish clan system. Many were driven off their land. Those remaining were forced to pay exorbitant rents. Facing starvation, a large proportion of Highlanders sought a fresh start in America. And the king, desirous of encouraging settlement in the colonies, was willing to pardon past offenses and permit the Highlanders to leave provided they pledged an oath of allegiance vowing never to take up arms against the sovereign. Those signing acknowledged that breach of the oath would cause them to be “cursed in all . . . [their] undertakings and family.” Abiding by the oath was considered a religious necessity. In his 1854 treatise, “The Old North State in 1776,” Rev. Eli Caruthers remarked that most Scots’ mindset was that “they must not violate their oath, for that would be giving themselves to the devil at once.” The trickle of Scots immigrating to this region was accelerating rapidly when Kenneth Black arrived sometime around 1765. He and wife Catherine settled on a 100-acre allotment near the Little River just south of Carthage. Sometime after 1772, he acquired a 50-acre plot near present-day Southern Pines and constructed a home where the Residence Inn is now located. Residing nearby were several brothers with the surname of Black who likewise migrated from Jura. There is disagreement among historians regarding the relationship of the brothers to Kenneth, but they were certainly kin in some way and good friends. Other Scottish- born families like McNeill, Buchan, Paterson, Buie, Blue and Stewart soon arrived in the area. Descendants of these families still populate Moore County today.
T
he most celebrated arrival was undoubtedly Flora MacDonald. She achieved everlasting fame after the Culloden debacle, when she aided Bonnie Prince Charlie’s escape to the Island of Skye by disguising him as an Irish spinning maid. She paid for her assistance to the Jacobite cause with imprisonment in the Tower of London for several months. In 1750, she married Allan MacDonald, ironically a captain in the British Army. They lived on Skye until emigrating to North Carolina in 1774. The Highland Scots destined for North Carolina assumed they were leaving behind a civil war that had rendered their lives unbearably difficult. It must have been alarming to arrive here to find rebellion in their midst once again. They wanted no part of it. Aside from their irrevocable oaths to King George III, other practicalities mitigated against supporting the cause of independence. England had easily crushed the Jacobites at Culloden. What would prevent the greatest military power on earth from quelling an American rebellion? There was commerce to consider too. Many of the Scots, like Kenneth Black, had become successful farmers. The longleaf pines on their estates produced naval stores of pitch and turpentine marketed to the mother country. And there was cotton. War would interrupt that trade. Why rock the boat? Thus, notwithstanding any lingering resentments the Highlanders harbored toward England, they resisted the revolutionary fervor spreading through the colonies. Once the “Shot Heard Round the World” was fired in Lexington on April 19, 1775, war was suddenly at hand. One month later, patriots (also known then as Whigs) in the Charlotte area, galvanized by events in Boston, adopted the Mecklenburg Declaration, which is said to be the first formal action by any group of Americans to declare independence from Great Britain. When word reached Royal Gov. Josiah Martin that the Whigs’ Safety Committee in New Bern was poised to seize him, he fled the Royal Palace and took refuge in a British ship offshore. With astonishing alacrity, the Whigs orchestrated a takeover of the reins of government. In August 1775, a convocation of Whigs was held at the “Hillsborough Provincial Congress.” This assembly took up the question of raising troops to defend the colony against anticipated British invasion. Two regiments were authorized (known as the “Continental Line”) , but lack of funding meant that the majority of Patriot fighters during the war were militia members.
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While those favoring independence in North Carolina were in the majority, the Highland Scots provided a formidable counterweight favoring allegiance to the king. They were joined by remnants of the Regulators movement. The Regulators were western North Carolina settlers who had rebelled against the fraudulent imposition of fees and taxes by conniving public officials. This brouhaha had led to the Battle of Alamance in 1771 — a devastating defeat for the Regulators. The movement collapsed, and its surviving members were forced to swear their own oaths of allegiance to the king. In the early stages of the Revolution, the Whigs sought to lure the Highland Scots and Regulators (collectively referred to as “Tories”) to the revolutionary cause with various inducements. But when those offers were rejected, the Whigs resorted to coercion in the form of arrests, banishments, estate confiscations and tax penalties. Seeking to restore royal rule, the embattled Gov. Martin made his own overtures to recruit the Highlanders to join the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment (“the Highland Regiment”), promising 200-acre grants to all who enlisted. Martin, not above threatening reprisals against recalcitrant Scots, proclaimed those refusing service risked having “their lives and properties to be forfeited.” Martin’s recruitment efforts met with some success. On February 2, 1776, 1500 Highlanders and a smaller number of Regulators gathered at Cross Creek near Fayetteville to join the Highland Regiment led by Gen. Donald MacDonald. Flora MacDonald’s husband, Allan, served as an officer in the Regiment. Flora herself is said to have made a fiery oration urging valor in upcoming battles to her fellow Highlanders. The plan was to march the Highland Regiment to Wilmington to link up with British forces led by Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis, who was scheduled to be arriving shortly by sea. But Patriots led by Col. James Moore and Richard Caswell rushed to block the Regiment at Moore’s Creek, eighteen miles north of Wilmington. Realizing that the Regiment would be crossing Moore’s Creek Bridge, Moore and Caswell removed most of the bridge’s planking, greased its support rails with tallow, and awaited the Regiment’s appearance. When the Highlanders arrived and attempted a charge across the bridge, they were welcomed with deadly cannon and rifle fire. It was a rout. Fifty Scots perished on the bridge, and the majority of the Regiment was captured and imprisoned. Allan MacDonald was among them. Those that escaped hastened back to their farms and laid low. When Cornwallis finally arrived in Wilmington in May 1776, there were no Highlanders to greet him, only a chagrined Gov. Martin, whose foolproof plan to take back North Carolina had backfired. With no fighting Tories around to augment his own army, Cornwallis chose to sail for Charleston with the intent of attacking the Patriot stronghold of Fort Moultrie. With the Tories in disarray, armed resistance to the Patriots in North Carolina melted away. In short order, the Whigs cemented their hold on government by adopting a new constitution, electing Richard Caswell as governor of the new state, and levying property taxes. While there was a hiatus on military engagements in the state, the Highlanders’ troubles continued. Flora MacDonald’s home at Cheek’s Creek was ransacked and seized. Poor Flora! Once again, she had cast her lot with the losing side. Now age 54, homeless, separated from her husband, and a pariah, she appealed to Kenneth Black for help. He allowed Flora to hide at his Little River property, where she remained until reuniting with Allan after his release in a prisoner exchange. In 1779, the couple left America and returned to Skye. Kenneth Black himself ran afoul of the four-fold tax that the authorities imposed on those who refused to take an oath to the new state. This led to an altercation reported by Caruthers in his treatise. In the fall of 1778, an unintimidated Black rebuffed the efforts of two tax collectors for the county who came to his home. “ . . . Black, like a true loyalist, refused to pay, and said that the taxes belonged to the king.” Subsequently the taxmen brought in reinforcements, who promptly seized “a negro man, a stud horse, and a good deal of other property, amounting in all to seven or eight hundred dollars.” Black offered no resistance. Caruthers offered the view that given the rough treatment afforded Black, “a man in good circumstances, and of much respectability in his neighborhood . . . we may suppose it was worse with men of less property and influence in the commu-
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