Joseph and Mary Cathcart [Miller], my father and mother, after marrying in 1844, settled one mile south of our house. They were married by Rev. P. Bishop of Presbyterian Church, who was at that time pastor of Ebenezer, a great and good man. My father and mother had four children: W. J., Mary Jane, Eugenia, and S.? W., who died at 16 years of age. I was born at where we now live at Grandmother Cathcart's, but was raised at my father's old home until I was near 16 years old.
The Cathcart family came to this country in 1792?; also landed at Charleston, SC. There were three brothers that came with their families. John settled in Kershaw County; Joseph settled on Catawba River in Lancaster County; Hugh Cathcart (my Great-grandfather) settled in York County about one mile south of my won home, on what was then part of the Catawba Indian Reservation. Parties of White settlers would rent from the Indians on long terms at very cheap rates. Some years after this the State Government seeing that the Reservation 40 miles square was being taken up by the White people, took the land back, all but a small area where the Indians now live on the Catawba River and sold the land to the settlers and gave the Indian tribe annually $300. Hugh Cathcart, my great-grandfather, bought the land he was living on from the State government and we still hold this same land and id was never owned by any other.
Hugh Cathcart's wife (whose name I have never been able to learn) had two sons and one daughter: William, Harvey and Nancy. The Cathcarts came from Scotland, where they had lived in a small village near Glasgow. They were Covenanters in their church relations. (As should have been stated, the Miller family from Ireland were Associates, there being very little difference; both at that time sang Psalms and hold close Communion.)
Hugh Cathcart and son William were members of a Covenanter Church in Chester County on Rocky Creek, there being no church of that faith nearer and it is said attended very regularly for the distance. The Covenanter pastor of Rocky Creek Church would come up to the Cathcart home and preach and baptize the children. Only came in warm weather and then preached out in the grove in front of Hugh's or William's home. There was a large mulberry tree that stood in the grove at my father's in my boy days that Capt. Fairis, an old neighbor, said he had heard several long sermons preached under by a Covenanter preacher by the name of Donaly, and also says Rev. Donaly (1) baptized my mother under the same tree. (NOTE: On Aug. 6, 1958 I located a very old mulberry tree just below the well-house which is apparently the one referred to here. M. Spenser.)
William Cathcart, my grandfather, married Jane Black (whose parents came from the State of Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War and settled where the Town of Rock Hill now stands.)
The first Black...
to be continued more family data and a long talk about his service in Civil War!
My notes: