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Frontier Country
Starting off the month of June right… audiobook #75 is released, #76 is being recorded, and #77 is under contract.
Did you know there was a shootin’ war between Pennsylvania and Maryland before the Revolution? More than one, actually. That’s why Parliament sent over Mason and Dixon to draw the line.
Frontier Country is a study of colonial Pennsylvania politics from the standpoint of the people on the frontiers, largely from their own words. “Frontier” had a different meaning in those days. We think of a frontier as a place where adventure and expansion can take place, as in “Space: the Final Frontier.” To a colonial, a frontier was not a place you wanted to be. It was a conflict zone, a place where you needed protection and support from your colonial government or everything you worked for could be wiped out in hours…and not necessarily by Native Americans. Colonial settlers often had excellent relationships with native groups, from whom they bought land and with whom they had an active trade. It was a fragile thing, however, and outsiders from another colony could easily destroy any comity and pick up the pieces afterward. The English government was too far away and generally too disinterested to help. Colonial governments were often ineffective. Pennsylvania was unique in that the proprietors, the Penn family, had to contend with a legislature full of Quakers who didn’t want to raise militias to protect the frontiers. Settlers felt cheated; they were supposed to get protection in return for their loyalty (and taxes). A lot of these disputes didn’t get settled until the Continental Congress fixed the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Connecticut, and set up the Northwest Ordinance.
As always, I would love to send you a promo code for a free download of this or any of my other titles. Send me a private message if you’re interested.
Published in General
My Thompson ancestor settled in the Carlisle, Cumberland County area in the 1720s. The Ulster-Scot settlers did some of the work required to defend the Pennsylvania frontier because that’s just what they did.
You bet. Scots-Irish were encouraged to homestead in troubled spots because they had a reputation. Few were willing to mess with them.
Really interesting bit of history. I too had ancestors ( Scot but I am not sure Ulster-Scot) who settled in Pennsylvania in the 1740’s.
You’d enjoy this book. It has a lot of material from letters and diaries of the colonists, almost all settlers rather than just the big shots.
What has been interesting for me, as I work on my family history, is in the specific cases of the Scots-Irish immigrants from this period of the 18th century to Pennsylvania, quite a few eventually migrated southward along the Appalachians., I suspect mostly to Virginia and the western Carolinas. Mine, for example, settled first in Morganton, NC where they lived throughout the period of conflict with Great Britain from early 1760s until 1790 when they migrated to Madison County, GA.
This seemed to be somewhat of a pattern for there are a number of early families in that part of Georgia who came that route. Many say that’s just the typical Scots-Irish and lowland Scots movement pattern.
My kind of book!