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Martha Elizabeth WATT was b 13 Feb 1829 Anderson Dist., SC (not MS), d 9 Dec 1883 Perry Co., AR, m Jan 1845 Anderson Co., SC, Winder Hillman McGEE, b 30 Apr 1824 Anderson Dist., SC, d 22 Nov 1862 Vicksburg, Warren Co., MS. Note this obit:
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Death & Marriage Notices, Volume II: 1866-1888, page 63f
Associate Reformed Presbyterian, March 6, 1884
"Died at the residence of her son-in-law, Mr. W. H. Young, in Perry County, Ark., on Sabbath, December 9th, 1883, Mrs. Martha Elizabeth McGee in the 55th year of her age.... daughter of John and Sarah (Turner) Watt and was born in Anderson District, S. C., February 13th, 1829… joined Associate Reformed church of Little Generostee in 1844. In [p.64] January, 1845, she was married to Mr. W. H. McGee and removed to Tippah County, Miss in 1847. When Bethany church was organized, June 5th, 1852, Mrs. McGee was one of the little band of twenty one white members who entered into that organization. Her husband also joined that church. He entered the Confederate service, was captured at Perryville, Ky., and died in Vicksburg, Miss., November 22d, 1862, just after he had been exchanged from a Federal prison. For more than twenty years she was a widow with a family of daughters… and her daughters grew up, married and all now live west of the Mississippi. On December 20th, 1882 … she left her Mississippi home and removed with her youngest daughter to Perry, Ark. …she was the mother of six children, four of whom survive, all married and living in Texas and Arkansas."
Of her six children, five are named in the 1850 and 1860 Tippah Co. censuses: Louisa H., b abt 1847, d bef 1910 TX or OK; Chalmers b abt Aug 1850, d bef 1860; Serfelia S., b abt 1851; Eliza A. "Addie," b abt 1855; and Martha E., b abt Mar 1860, d aft 1883; all b in Tippah Co., MS. The six child must not have been alive at the time of the censuses. Youngest dau Martha E. would be the one who m W. H. Young. Eldest dau m abt 1870 in Tippah Co., MS, John Newton HADDON, b 7 Jan 1848 Abbeville Co., SC, d aft 1910 prob in OK (he is listed as a widower in the 1910 Garvin Co., OK, census). By 1876 John N. and Louisa H. HADDON had moved from Tippah Co. to nearby Prentiss Co., per the following notice:
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Death & Marriage Notices Volume II: 1866-1888 Compiled by Lowry Ware Scmar Columbia, South Carolina 1998
"Died at Prentiss County, MS, February 13th, 1876, Lula Ceralvo Haddon, child of John N. and Lou Haddon. Aged 4 months and 24 days."
In 1878, this young HADDON family, in the company of serveral other intermarried neighbor families, migrated from northeastern MS to Johnson Co., TX, included in the group described below by Rev. Samuel A. Agnew, pastor of Bethany Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Lee Co., MS:
"In 1878 several church families moved to Johnson Co, Texas, near Alvarado. In 1879 they were organized into an Associate Reformed Church named Prairie Valley." Besides HADDON and McGee, near family connections of persons involved in this move include the surnames TURNER, WATT, WILLBANKS, ACKER, PRESSL(E)Y, AGNEW, MATTISON, YOUNG, et al.
Interconnected families, sometimes whole congregations, moved from Ulster to America, including a great many in to the ports of debarkation in and around Philadelphia and, later, Charleston. Whether down the Great Wagon Road through the Valley of Virginia or via the sealanes and a trek inland, many Scots-Irish, including a good many Seceder (Associate Reformed, or ARP) and other Covenanter Presbyterians, settled along the Carolina Piedmont. Eventually, the ARP folks centered much of their shared religious life in the town of Due West [originally named for nearby DeWitt's (Duett's or Duets) Corner], Abbeville Dist. (later Co.), SC, where they establilshed Erskine College and Seminary. In the two decades preceding the Civil War, a goo many of these SC coreligionists, again as intermarried families, moved out to TN, AL and MS, with a sizeable contingent locating in northeastern MS in Tippah (now Union), Pontotoc (now Lee), and other nearby counties, forming several ARP churches, Ebenezer, Hopewell and Bethany among them. Hopewell ARP Church was founded by a "group which came in 1844, almost in a body, from Old Shiloh Church in Anderson County, SC, to what is now known as the Hopewell Community in Union County, MS. [then in Pontotoc Co.]. . . . The congregation, with the help of neighbors and friends, built their first chuch building in 1853."
Again, in 1878 the pattern was repeated, as a number of members of Bethany ARP Church, Lee Co., MS, migrated to near Alvarado, Johnson Co., TX, and formed the Prairie Valley ARP Church in the Pleasant Point community. One of Martha Elizabeth WATT McGEE's daughters was among them, as was her husband, John Newton HADDON, the slightly older brother of my wife's ggmother, Mary Etta "Mollie" HADDON, whose father, John, Jr., was an elder at Bethany ARP Church. Mollie m 6 Oct 1870 Union (or Lee) Co., MS, James Edward "Jim" McCARLEY in a ceremony conducted by the same Rev. Samuel A. Agnew named above, longtime pastor of Bethany church. For a marvelously detailed glimpse into that ARP culture in northeastern MS in the middle of the Civil War, see the published portions of Rev. Agnew's diary online at <http://docsouth.unc.edu/agnew/agnew.html>, in which many of the family names mentioned here may be found.
Here ends this recitation of selected Scots-Irish social and migratory patterns from Ulster to SC to MS to TX.
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