[From mongraph "Some Days Before Yesterday" by William Adolphus Carrigan 1909 - 1976.
Born 1714, Cootehill District astride Cavan - Monaghan border, Ireland. Died, 17 December 1792, Cabarrus County, North Carolina. Married ISABEL BROWN, Cootehill native of Scots-Covenanter descent. In 1754, accompanied by their two infant daughters and JAMES'S younger brother, WILLIAM, they immigrated to North America, sailing from Cork, and arriving at Newcastle, Delaware Colony. Settling first at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, next Autumn they moved southward to Orange County, North Carolina, En route, WILLIAM was drowned attempting to cross a swollen stream in Virginia. He was unmarried, and records of him are meager.
According to tradition James had attempted to establish himself as a schoolmaster at Lancaster --unsuccessfully. In the Carolina Piedmont community called 'the Hawfields' he did somewhat better, As a combination schoolmaster-scrivener- small farmer he managed to earn a subsistence for his rapidly Increasing family.
In 1772, JAMES and ISABEL relocated a second time, to a small, though fertile farm some eighty miles southwest, on Coddle Creek, in Cabarrus [then Mecklenburg] County, There he appears to have prospered modestly, and in twenty years was to die. A tradition persists among several lines of JAMES'S descendants that he served briefly in the North Carolina Militia during the Revolution, This study has been unable to verify such service from known records. This, of course, does not mean that he did not so serve, and this writer hastens to assure his several cousins that he does not presume to impugn their sources of information.
Born in 1726, ISABEL was a staunch Presbyterian all her life: There is a story that she had influenced JAMES'S faith strongly, perhaps even altering it. That she was both vivacious and with strong character seems clear. Her grandson, WILLIAM ADAMS CARRIGAN, remembered her when he was a small boy. She was a lively, talkative, little woman, he told his son, ALFRED, with red streaks still in her white hair. He remembered her sparkling stories, and especially her account of passing through Kilkenny on their trek from Cootehill to Cork, to take ship.
ISABEL died in 1801, and lies beside JAMES in the little burying ground on Coddle Creek. [Coddle Creek ARP Church]
[
