By 1720
these settlers had reached the mouth of the Susquehanna, and three
years later the present site of Harrisburg. Between 1730 and 1745 they
settled the Cumberland Valley and still pushing westward, in 1768-69
the present Fayette, Westmoreland, Allegheny, and Washington counties.
In 1773 they penetrated to and settled in Kentucky, and were followed
by a stream of Todds, Flemings, Morrisons, Barbours, Breckinridges,
McDowells, and others. By 1790 seventy-five thousand people were in
the region and Kentucky was admitted to the Federal Union in 1792. By
1779 they had crossed the Ohio River into the present state of Ohio.
Between the years 1730 and 1775 the Scottish immigration into
Pennsylvania often reached ten thousand a year.
SOME PROMINENT SCOTS AND SCOTS FAMILIES
Lord Bacon expressed his regret that the lives of eminent men were not
more frequently written, and added that, "though kings, princes, and
great personages be few, yet there are many excellent men who deserve
better fate than vague reports and barren elegies." Of no country is
this more true than the United States. An examination of the
innumerable early biographical dictionaries with which the shelves of
our public libraries are cumbered, will show that the bulk of the life
sketches of the individuals therein commemorated are vague and
unsatisfactory. In nearly every case little or no information is given
of the parentage or origin of the subject, and indeed one work goes so
far as to say that such information is unnecessary, the mere fact of
American birth being sufficient.
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