Ohio, to reestablish the church of their fathers, and contend for that larger freedom our nation was founded to preserve. Nancy Wright is the third in the list of maternal forebears. She, too, is one of our ancesters to whom we owe much. She was the daughter of Covenanting parents who came from Ireland to South Carolina in 1750 for religious reasons. There is ample evidence of her strong faith and earnest piety. She was the mother of twelve children, all of whom were trained to live godly lives. One of her sons, Gavin Riley, entered the Gospel ministry. It is probably to Nancy Wright that her descendants owe the greatest debt for their physical well-being, since our family history reveals that on the average her children and grand-children have lived a decade or more longer than the children of Hugh and Jane Harvey McMillan. It is Martha Elizabeth Murdock, wife of James MacMillan, who will awaken for her children the greatest interest, for hers is the life we know best, and to whom we feel the deepest debt of love and appreciation. No one who knew her would consider it fulsome flattery to say that in her rich personality she possessed a large measure of those qualities which we have seen to be a part of the common heritage from our maternal forebears. We know that she had the fortitude of the unknown wife of John MacMillan, who lived and labored and reared a family in the ‘‘Killing Times” in Scotland. She had the romance of the Scotch- Irish bride of Hugh McMillan, and the courage which for the sake of her children caused her to cross the ocean and begin life anew in a strange land. She had much of the physical stamina and vigor of Nancy Wright, and demonstrated as few others were called upon to do in like degree, the ability to carry on without faltering, in spite of mounting difficulties and at times heartbreaking discouragement, to make a home for her family and to provide for the education of her children, that they might be ready to assume their place in the world. The life of Martha Murdock, however, with all its burdens and vexing problems, was not to be without its thrills. These experiences were to come at the beginning and near the end of her life. The diary which she kept reveals that the early years of her married life while not exciting, were filled with much happiness and contentment. Then there is the record of the long years of days filled with burdensome duties. Near the end of the diary, 45
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