Page:The McClure Family.djvu/36

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22
McCLURES IN VIRGINIA.

ley during 1755, together with Gen. Braddock's defeat July 9th of the same year, leaving the settlers unprotected from the Indians, caused him to move temporarily to South Carolina where other friends and relatives had settled. "The consternation was universal, and many of the settlers on the western frontier fled across the Blue Ridge, and even to North Carolina."—Annals of Augusta County, p. 109.

"Tylor" probably should have been written, "tailor," indicating that in addition to his farming he followed a trade.

His two older sons who had families in Augusta County certainly did not accompany him. He doubtless returned to Augusta previous to his death, 1761. His grave is probably among the many unmarked around Tinkling Spring Church.

The following is from The Watchman of the South, June 7, 1844:

"The settlers of the great Valley of Virginia congregated in neighborhoods, and laid their dead side by side, near their places of worship, unless some hard necessity turned them to another place of sepulture. * * * * * You may find the resting place of the Pioneers of the Valley by following the footsteps of the immigration as it advanced from the Potomac to the Catawba. ***** Often, very often, in the midst of the forest of graves, you cannot tell where rest the men and women who had courage to lead the way in settling beyond the mountains, and give what Governor Gooch desired for his province, a line of defence against the savages, buying immunity in their religion, by the freedom from fears and alarms and massacres, their bravery conferred, at their own peril, on the settlers below the Blue Ridge.

In some few spots you are among the ancestors. Were the graves to give up their dead, and the dust be fashioned into bones and sinews and put on flesh like the forms that mouldered there, you would gaze on the determined visage of the men and the calm decision of the matrons—the toil-