And perhaps some trader's tale, told when the caravan halted for the night, kindled the youth's first desire to penetrate the mountain-guarded wilderness, for the tales of these Romanies of commerce were as the very badge of their free-masonry, and entry money at the doors of strangers.
Out on the border's edge, heedless of the shadow of the mountains looming between the newly built cabin and that western land where they and their kind were to write the fame of the Ulster Scot in a shining script that time cannot dull, there might sit a group of stern-faced men, all deep in discussion of some point of spiritual doctrine or of the temporal rights of men.

Yet, in every cabin, whatever the national differences, the setting was the same The spirit of the frontier was modeling out of old clay a new Adam to answer the needs of a new earth.
It would be far less than just to leave the Back Country folk without further reference to the devoted labors of their clergy.

In the earliest days the settlers were cut off from their church systems; the pious had to maintain their piety unaided, except in the rare cases where a pastor accompanied a group of settlers of his denomination into the wilds.

One of the first ministers who fared into the Back Country to remind the Ulster Presbyterians of their spiritual duties was the Reverend Hugh McAden of Philadelphia.

He made long itineraries under the greatest hardships, in constant danger from Indians and wild beasts, carrying the counsel of godliness to the far scattered flock.