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McCurdy ascendancy Ireland & Scotland**Allied Family Links within these pages, Relevant  to  American McCurdy Line**Relevant Links  outside these pages
ALL Surnames by Appearance America
The Irish Emmigrants in Our Lines, with Map of Irish Residence for McCurdy
To our 1st McCurdy in  America:
[James McCurdy of Lancaster Co, Pa]
Germans and Scotch Irish in Pa
The Scotch Irish of Lancaster Co., Pa
The Marsh Creek Settlement
[The Manor of Maske
in Now Adams County, Pa
[pertains to 2nd generation America
Robert McCurdy] and the Relevance of Piney Creek Presbyterian Church to this study
About the Penn Family Manors of which Maske was one
McCurdy ascendancy 
in Ireland and Scotland:
  • Map of Ireland; Our Irish Heritage

  • involving several lines
    [Includes the  Williamsons and their 
    allied surnames;  the Logans , and; 
    the McCurdys]
    Maps relevant to European 
    McCurdy Ascendancy
  • Map of County Antrim, 

  • Northern Ireland
  • Map of Buteshire 

  • in context of position to Scotland
  • Map of Isle of Boot 1594 by Bleau
  • Map of Parishes 

  • of Buteshire, Scotland
    with relevant links attached
    Allied Family Links Within These Pages Of Relevance  to 
    Our American McCurdy Line:
       
    Relevant Geneological Links 
    Useful To McCurdy Research:
     
    Our European McCurdys
    [European Ascendancy, under construction.] 
    Our American McCurdys
    [To 1st Generation America McCurdy, James McCurdy /Polly COOKE]

    THE MCCURDY LINE

    Our McCurdy's are abundantly studied being members of a large clan with many offspring. First mentioned associated with the Isle of Bute, Scotland, and frequently purported to align directly with one Chief Gilchrist of that place, the ascendancy of  any McCurdy lines purported to arise to this leader involve far more [often regurgitated] romanticism than fact. What we do know is that our McCurdys did come from Bute, that in their ascendancy is the death of a father and son in battle with the Cameroons in 1600, and that in one generation and in the year 1666, several McCurdy brothers left their ancestral home in Buteshire  resolutely aiming for Northern Ireland owing to longstanding instability and warfare resultant of the reformation and civil wars in England spilling into the Scottish arena.  In the spring of the year of their emmigration there ocurred an uprising destined to failure against the stregnth of the royal army.  The situation was so grievous, final, and mortally dangerous  that the McCurdy boys hurriedly  left in an open boat and blinding snowstorm aiming, they hoped, for the shores of Ireland.

    The grandson of our direct among these siblings left his Irish homeland in a boat as well, this time bound for America and the Pennsylvania colony within it. Despite the short stay of our direct McCurdy line in Ireland, we have countless distant McCurdy and allied cousins in northern Ireland today as that forebear had some siblings who remained as did his father and uncles. Progeny is known. 

    The term Scotch Irish is generally removed from both Scottish and Irish direct history, and involves the desire of  American, Canadian and Australian protestants with ancestors embarked from Ireland to distinguish and distance themselves from the mostly later arriving catholics leaving that same country. Although the McCurdy ascendancy is clouded, the Stewart ascendancy gained through the McCurdy marriage in Ireland year 1667 yields an interesting and far reaching twist. This ascendancy takes us back  to the first Stewart King, Robert II  of Scotland in his [illicit]  liason with Moira Leitch or Leith. Robert II's own ahnentafel involves the emmigration of a group of Irish to Scotland known to history as the Dalriadan Scots, and the earliest person in those portions of his line who can be considered reasonably certain is in the form of the leader Fergus Mor Of Dalriada who left Ireland for Alba [Scotland] in the sixth century. This tribal group, although then foreign to what we call Scotland today, is the source of the name for that country. They left their native Ireland in the mists of history and settled  in a land they eventually conquered through warfare and made peaceful through royal marriage with the more native Picts in the mid 9th century. In this way, the group we call Scotch Irish would be better termed Irish Scotch Irish, and, if one takes the archeological study of the Celts into account as coming from the mainland east to settle Irish shores, could better yet be termed European Celtic Irish Scotch Irish. This is the beauty of geneology; The garnering of a large frame of human reference in which to hold ourselves embodied: The ability to claim many historical aspects despite the existence of territories, warfare, and later borders seperating them but ultimately uniting us;  the ability to gain great human unity from regional historical fragments. 

    Our  first McCurdy to reach America  was James McCurdy, who, with his wife Polly Cooke [of whom no more is known] left  in a boat meant for gateway to Pennsylvania but due to poor weather was forced to landing  further south and on the river James. Still, this family managed to find their way to Salisbury township, Lancaster County, Pa in the 3rd decade of the 18th century and shortly after arrival. At the time of the McCurdy immigration, another direct ancestor James LOGAN was secretary and surveyor general for William Penn  and James Logan was arguably the most powerful man in the 13 colonies, his employer long since returned to England. Our second generation McCurdy in America served in the American Revolution, and later settled on land squatted by the Scot-Irish in now southern Adams County, Pa in the region of the Marsh Creek Settlement called The Manor of Maske. one of many Penn Family Manors, some of which involved our forebears of several lines. Like all the Manors, this land involving Maske had been set aside by Penn's agents for the Penn family private use; Specific to its history is the threat of bodily force against Penn surveyors  by the Maske squatters,  70 of some strong of which went to meet the surveyors and deter them from their task.  Struggles in the Penn Family Manors occured also at Springettsbury [now York and its environs, and relevant to our SPANGLER and allied lines]  but the struggles involving the Manor of Maske, and Digge's choice [in what is now Littlestown and Hanover, Pa [similarly set aside for the use of Lord Digges by Maryland and relevant to our SWOPE and HOKE lines] , perhaps hold larger historical context as the history of Maske and Digges Choice have been cited by some as holding the pivotal  action against, and  absolute withdrawal of America from,  the feudal concept of land ownership still practised in Europe of the time.  The sqautters believed and  were willing to sacrifice themselves succesfully  to the concept that he or she who works the land should own it.  Although not an original squatter but buying his land there from an original while the land involved in the Manor of Maske was still in some [albeit less anxious and more formalizing] dispute in the midst of the American Revolution,  Robert McCurdy, James and Polly's son, like many of the Scotch Irish of  the new world and owing to their antipathy towards the English crown, had early and willingly taken up arms against the English to fight for the concept of self governance and against any interference with personal will. He is our McCurdy patriot, and represents [with Daniel Troxell or Trachsel of Littlestown] the southernmost of our substantial Adams County Lines, in the region of now Adams County known as the Marsh Creek Settlements and to which many Scotch Irish were compelled. Robert McCurdy's  precense in the county preceeded that of our direct Swopes of the region with whom his grandaughter would intermarry, and  followed that of our BENDER direct Jacob who died near the town that bears his and his brother's name.  At that time, the region we would come to call Bendersville was distant indeed , far to the north of Robert McCurdy, and it was settled mainly by Germans; congealing in the tree the relationshipp of  Germans and Scotch Irish in Colonial Pennsylvania often marked by dischord but often maintaining just a close geographical but great social distance. That Robert McCurdy's grandaughter married an American fully 100% German in asenddancy  was unusual for the time, but can be seen as a time of change in immigrant attitude relevant to these two most vital ethnic forces in European Pennsylvania history. 


    To James McCurdy, first direct line McCurdy in America
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