Irish Presbyterians

The following data is extracted from David and Margaret Mitchell Genealogy.

President Roosevelt in his tribute to the Irish Presbyterians says, they were a bold and hardy race (which) is proved by their at once pushing past the settled regions, and plunging into the wilderness as the leaders of the white ad this; all others have merely followed in the wake of their predecessors. But, indeed, they were fitted to be Americans from the very start; they were kinsfolk of the Covenanters; they deemed it a religious duty to interpret their own bible, and held for a divine right the election of their own clergy. For generations their whole ecclesiastic and scholastic systems had been fundamentally democratic. In the hard life of the frontier they lost much of their religion, and they had but scant opportunity to give their children the schooling in which they believed: but what few schoolhouses there were on the border were theirs. The Irish schoolmaster was everywhere a feature of early Western society. * * * The creed of the backwoodsman who had a creed at all was Presbyterianism. (The Winning of the Vest, Vol. I, Ch. 5).

Our first American sire was all this and more. He was not only of kin to the Covenanters, but was, himself, an ardent professor of their faith. Instead of losing his religion in hi hard life on the frontier, he consistently maintained it to the end of his days, as may be judged from the story of his life and writings.

Source: David and Margaret Mitchell Genealogy

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