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“Our ancestors were real pioneers. All this section between North Buffalo and Reedy Fork Creeks was heavily covered with oak, chestnut, hickory, and poplar timber and thick underbrush. Even as late as 1781, after the Guilford Court House battle. General Greene, in reporting that battle to Congress, says: ''The greater part of this country is a wilderness, with a few cleared fields interspersed here and there."
Their first job was to clear the land and build their homes. Only a few acres could be cleared per year, and their first homes were the rudest log cabins. Their food must have been very plain and without any variety. They were having a hard time those first few years.
We have no local history describing their living conditions, but we have John Hill Martin's history which gives a minute description of the early living conditions of the first settlers in Pennsylvania. He relates that their homes were small one-room log cabins with one door and one small window and the window had no glass, just a wooden shutter. The cabins were covered with thatch or clapboards. The chimneys were usually built of sticks and mud. The floors were dirt. Their food, to a large extent, was the flesh of wild animals, and that without salt most of the time. Both men and women usually wore clothes and hats made from the skins of wild beasts. Their shoes were made from raw hides. Their furniture was hand made from rough materials. The coverings for their beds were usually the pelts of deer, beavers, bears, and wolves. No doubt this is a pretty good description of the living conditions of our ancestors for the first few years after they settled here in a wilderness. We do know their cabins were very crude and that the floors were dirt.
Wild animals were numerous, and they could secure their meat by killing buffaloes, bears, deer and squirrels. Wild fowls were plentiful, such as turkeys and quail; and also wild geese and wild pigeons in their season. Even as late as one hundred years ago the wild pigeons were still so numerous in their migration season that in passing over, they would at times hide the sun like a big cloud. The creeks were well stocked with fish. This would have been a veritable paradise for sportsmen, but our ancestors hunted and fished more for their food supply than for sport.
Their patches of wheat were cut with a small hand sickle, flailed from the straw, then separated from the chaff by pouring it from a platform on a windy day; and both wheat and corn were pounded into meal, or ground with a small hand mill, like our old coffee mills. With such crude methods of harvesting and handling wheat they could raise only small patches. Wheat bread was a rarity to be enjoyed only for breakfast on Sunday morning. Corn was the main crop and supplied bread for the family and feed for the stock.⁵

Penn’s New Castle Warrants records 200 acres to Bryan Mac Donald on Nov. 1, 1689. There was also record of a deed to him for “354 acres and 19 acres over’ on Red Clay Creek, dated December 20, 1703. This shows that he was of the better class of immigrants and had money to buy land. Many settlers at this date had insufficient money to pay passage over and bound themselves for a certain length of time to the person who furnished the passage money.³

"Alexander, 12th Chief of Macdonald of Glencoe was late in taking his oath of allegiance to King William. As a result, it was decided to make an example out of the clan. A plan was hatched and on February 13, 1692. Alexander along with 37 other clan members were murdered by the Earl of Argyll's Regiment of Foot under the command of Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon. ... He was to spare none below the age of seventy. The resulting massacre is remembered not just for its premeditated brutality but for its violation of an unwritten code of conduct: the perpetrators of the deed had enjoyed the hospitality of their victims for twelve days before turning on them. In 1688 the removal of James II and VII in favor of William of Orange had led to the first ever Jacobite uprising. Its leader, Viscount Dundee, died at the battle of Killiecrankie and the rebellion broke up. All that remained was to pacify the Highland chiefs who had joined the enterprise. To this end a proclamation was issued in August 1691 requiring clan chiefs to take the Oath of Allegiance to King William by Hogmanay that year. By the accident of reporting to the wrong official at the last possible moment, Clan MacDonald of Glencoe missed the vital deadline. Secretary of State James Dalymple, Master of Stair, was no friend to the MacDonalds. This was the excuse he had been waiting for. The order for the massacre went ahead. The chief, 33 other men, 2 women, and 2 children were killed. In defiance of his orders Robert Campbell spared the nearly one hundred women and children from slaughter and chose instead to drive them into the dark of a winter nights storm. Of which, all but a few were able to survive."⁵

Penn’s New Castle Warrants records 200 acres to Bryan Mac Donald on Nov. 1, 1689. There was also record of a deed to him for “354 acres and 19 acres over’ on Red Clay Creek, dated December 20, 1703. This shows that he was of the better class of immigrants and had money to buy land. Many settlers at this date had insufficient money to pay passage over and bound themselves for a certain length of time to the person who furnished the passage money.²