They had in their midst for eight years (1758-66) the Reverend Alexander Craighead, a Presbyterian minister who, for his "republican doctrines" expressed in a pamphlet, had been disowned by the Pennsylvania Synod acting on the Governor's protest, and so persecuted in Virginia that he had at last fled to the North Carolina Back Country.

There, during the remaining years of his life, as the sole preacher and teacher in the settlements between the Yadkin and the Catawba rivers he found willing soil in which to sow the seeds of Liberty.
* See Hoyt, "The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence"; and "American Archives," Fourth Series.

vol.II, p.

855.
There was another branch of the Scottish race which helped to people the Back Country.

The Highlanders, whose loyalty to their oath made them fight on the King's side in the Revolutionary War, have been somewhat overlooked in history.