![]() ![]() They eked out a living and brought five sons into the world. In the spring of 1735 Thomas McCormick and his wife Elizabeth Carrutli disembarked there and set out to make a new home in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Like many a Shenandoah saga, this begins not in the lonely valley, but in crowded Philadelphia. This is the story of a Scotch-Irish family that came, and one member of it who changed our agricultural history. Settlers could stand on the crest of the Blue Ridge, wash their faces in the clouds, and look out over miles of land as bonny as that of Scotland. Fifteen hundred feet above sea level, with a brisk, pleasant climate, it was ideal for stock, grain, orchards, and tobacco. They liked this land, this gateway to the West. Farther south were the Scotch-Irish, a brave and iron-veined people, who had such a fear of God that it left no room in their hearts for fear of any man. ![]() In the northern portion were Palatinate Germans, Mennonites. White men, coming first in the late Seventeenth Century, found grass growing from the limestone soil so high that they could tie it across their saddles. The Indians loved it, and named it Shenandoah -“Daughter of the Stars.” They came to hunt in the thick green foliage, to drink the cool water, and to make up poetic stories that expressed their love for the valley. ![]() There is a time, just when the sunlight touches the crest of the Blue Ridge, when there is too much beauty for believing. On both sides blue mountains hem it in, brooding over the farmhouses like a mother hen blooding over her chicks. ![]()
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