for Hugh McMillan and thousands of others like him, leaving northern Ireland and emigrating to this country around 1750, and by so doing, according to Theodore Roosevelt in his book “The Winning of the West,” made one of the most significant contributions to our early American history. “These people,” said the author, “the Scotch-Irish, stern and virile, became the vanguard of our civilization.” “These are the men who first declared for American independence.” the McMillans in south Carolina Hugh McMillan, the first representative of the family in the new world, must have been a hard-pressed immigrant. We are told that when he left Ireland he was 36 years of age, and that he had been married eleven years. This would indicate that he had sought to make a go of it in Ireland before coming to the new world. He must have failed, for he came to America alone. Like Abraham of old, he came scarcely knowing his exact destination. We learn that after landing at Charleston, South Carolina, he first settled at Camden, but later, learning that there were some of “his own people” further inland, in the Chester district of the same state, he pushed on there. From some brief historical notes left by his oldest son, we glean these additional facts: It was only later that he was able to send for his wife and children, probably saving money for their passage. In settling in the new world, he emulated another of the Old Testament patriarchs by working seven years on the farm of one John Rock, quite possibly as a day laborer, or until he obtained sufficient money to purchase a farm of his own. This man, whom we are proud to call our forebear, though he came to this country a penniless immigrant, and died at the age of 66, having lived in this country only 30 years, yet was able to become one of the outstanding men of his community, not only becoming financially independent, but succeeded in educating two of his sons to become distinguished ministers of the Gospel, and to rear a family of God-fearing men and women whom their descendants have reason to remember with pride and gratitude. As the story of the Hugh McMillan family is so largely a religious history, and as the McMillans in Chester, South Carolina have always occupied a relatively large place in our thinking, and 12
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