ample room for their communities, for the West
was as yet but sparsely tenanted. No inconsiderable number,
penetrating far into the interior, settled eventually about the
headwaters of the Potomac and the James. This highland region was the
debatable ground of the United States. So late as 1756 the State of
Virginia extended no further than the crests of the Blue Ridge. Two
hundred miles westward forts flying French colours dominated the
valley of the Ohio, and the wild and inhospitable tract, a very
labyrinth of mountains, which lay between, was held by the fierce
tribes of the "Six Nations" and the Leni-Lenape. Two years later the
French had been driven back to Canada; but it was not till near the
close of the century that the savage was finally dispossessed of his
spacious hunting grounds.

It was on these green uplands, where fight and foray were as frequent
as once on the Scottish border, that John Jackson and his wife, a
fellow passenger to America, by name Elizabeth Cummins, first pitched
their camp, and here is still the home of their descendants.

January 21, 1824.

In the little town of Clarksburg, now the county-seat of Harrison,
but then no more than a village in the Virginia backwoods, Thomas
Jonathan Jackson was born on January 21, 1824. His father was a
lawyer, clever and popular, who had inherited a comfortable
patrimony. The New World had been generous to the Jacksons. The
emigrant of 1748 left a valuable estate, and his many sons were
uniformly prosperous. Nor was their affluence the reward of energy
and thrift alone, for the lands reclaimed by axe and plough were held
by a charter of sword and musket. The redskin fought hard for his
ancestral domains. The stockaded forts, which stood as a citadel of
refuge in every settlement, were often the scene of fierce attack and
weary leaguer, and the nursing mothers of the frontier families were
no strangers to war and bloodshed. The last great battle with the
Indians east of the Ohio was fought in 1774, but the military
experience of the pioneers was not confined to the warfare of the
border. John Jackson and his sons bore arms in the War of
Independence, and the trained riflemen of West Virginia were welcome
recruits in the colonial ranks. With the exception of the Highlanders
of the '45, who had been deported in droves to the plantations, no
race had less cause to remain loyal to the Crown than the men of
Ulster blood. Even after the siege of Londonderr