06/28/2026
The Scottish Highlander/North Carolina connection is one of the most fascinating parts of the origin story of the Old North State. Their influence on Southern politics and economy, and further impact on American history, are only now being fully understood.
In the 1730s, waves of Scottish Highlanders began landing on the banks of the Cape Fear River in what is now Cumberland County, building what would become the largest concentration of Highland Scottish settlement in colonial North America. ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ They came from the Isle of Skye, from Argyll, from Inverness-shire, driven out by the collapse of the clan system after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and by the systematic removal of tenant farmers from the Scottish Highlands by landlords converting the land to sheep pasture. The town they established at the fork of the Cape Fear and Cross Creek streams, which they called Cross Creek, was a Gaelic-speaking community that maintained its language, culture, and social structures in the Carolina wilderness.
By the 1770s, Cross Creek had become a commercial hub for the entire Cape Fear River valley. Highland Scots ran its stores, milled its grain, and operated its ferries. When the American Revolution came, the community faced a painful division. Many Highland Scots remained loyal to the Crown, partly from genuine monarchist sentiment and partly from oaths they had sworn, including Flora MacDonald who famously helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape after Culloden and later emigrated to North Carolina. The Loyalist Highlanders lost badly at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge in 1776, and the aftermath reshuffled the community's politics and fortunes entirely.
Cross Creek was incorporated in 1783 and eventually merged with the nearby town of Campbellton to form Fayetteville, named for the Marquis de Lafayette. ๐ The Scottish character of the old town faded slowly into the general colonial fabric of North Carolina, but if you listen for it, the echoes are still there, in family names, in church records, and in the Highland Games still held every autumn in the sandhills.
