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Our European McCurdys
[European Ascendancy, under construction.]
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Our American McCurdys
[To 1st Generation America McCurdy, James McCurdy /Polly COOKE]
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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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