The Colquhouns can be traced back to the 1300's in Dunbartonshire, Scotland. They were Scottish royalty, Lords of Colquhoun and Lairds of Luss. A brief history of the clan Colquhoun states: "The lands of the clan Colquhoun are on the shores of Loch Lomond. During the reign of Alexander II, Umphredus de Kilpatrick received from Malduin, Earl of Lennox, the estates of Colquhoun, Auchentorily and Dumbuck. The clan chief's early stronghold was at Dunglass Castle, which is perched on a rocky promontory by the River Clyde. Dunglass was also close to the royal Dumbarton Castle, of which later Colquhoun chiefs were appointed governors and keepers. The chief's title was that of the Barony of Luss which came to the clan when Sir Robert of Colquhoun married the heiress of the Lord of Luss in about 1368."
In 1630 after the death of his mother, Lady Christane Lindsay Colquhoun, eight-year old Sir Robert Colquhoun was sent from his home in Dunbartonshire, Scotland, by his father Adam Colquhoun, to live with his paternal aunt Nancy Colquhoun McAnselan's family in Ireland, eventually establishing an estate in Donagal, Ireland. By the time the Colquhoun/Calhouns decided to immigrate to America they were ensconced in County Tyrone (what is now Northern Ireland).
The protestant Calhouns immigrated to America from Ulster, Ireland, landing in Philadelphia in 1735. The patriarch of the Calhoun clan was James Patrick Calhoun, son of Rev. Alexander Calquhoun of Newton-Stewart, Crosh, Tyrone County, Ulster, Ireland. James Patrick and family settled in what is now Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where James Patrick died in 1741. After his death, his widow, Cathrine Montgomery Calhoun and her sons Patrick, William, James, and Ezekiel, along with daughter Mary (Noble) moved south to Augusta County, Virginia, then in 1756, to the hill country of South Carolina settling in what is now Abbeville County.
Long Canes, a place name in Abbeville (formally Old 96 District), is where the Calhouns made their home, and from where a long lineage of Calhouns can be traced.
Cathrine met her death in 1760, a victim of the Long Canes Massacre. The massacre took place on 1 February 1760 when Cherokee Indians attacked a group of Long Canes settlers attempting to flee toward a fort near Augusta. Of the 150 settlers in the party, over fifty were killed and another dozen captured. Two of William's daughters were murdered - seven year old Cathrine and two year old Mary, and four year old Anne became a captive (she was freed many years later and at age thirty married Isaac Mathews).
James Patrick Calhoun's son Patrick Calhoun married Martha Caldwell and they would be the parents of the famous John Caldwell Calhoun, Vice President of the United States under two presidents - John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. He was also Sec of State under John Tyler and James Polk, as well as, Sec of War under James Monroe. He also served the state of South Carolina as both a US Senator and member of Congress.
Another of James Patrick Calhoun's sons that settled in Abbeville was William Caldwell Calhoun who married Nancy Agnes Long. They were the parents of several children including the three young victims of the massacre noted earlier. William had eleven children - Joseph (1749), Cathrine (1753), Anne (1755), Mary (1757), Patrick (1760), Rachel (1762), Esther (1765), William (1768), Ezekiel (1770), Agnes (1773) and Alexander (1776).
William's daughter Anne, the young child captured by the Cherokee and freed many years later, married Isaac Mathews who had immigrated from Ulster, Ireland as a boy with his father John and older brother John Jr. The Mathews' had landed in Charleston and made their way west to the Long Cane settlement. Five years older than Anne, they married 12 Oct 1784. They produced six offspring - Joseph (1785), Mary (1788), Nancy (1790), Ann, John (1792) and Lewis (1786).
Isaac died in 1801 and sixteen year old Joseph Calhoun Mathews became the man of the house, helping his mother to raise his siblings. Joseph Mathews married Margaret Brough in 1807. Her father Thomas had immigrated at age fifteen in 1775, as an indentured servant to American. He was accompanied by his parents George and Barbara, and three siblings, on a long trek from the Orkney Islands of Scotland to Savannah, Georgia. They had been indentured to the infamous British Loyalist, Thomas "burnfoot" Brown.
Margaret Brough Mathews' mother was Nancy Calhoun, daughter of Patrick Calhoun, making Nancy Calhoun and Anne Calhoun cousins, mother-in-laws, and both grand-daughters of James Patrick Calhoun.
Joseph and Margaret had eleven children - Ezekiel (1808), Nancy (1810), Eleanor (1812), Jane (1814), Mary (1816), Thomas (1817), Rachel (1818), Elizabeth (1821), Margaret (1823) Joseph (1830) and Lucretia (1833).
Before Joseph Calhoun Mathews death in 1854, all three of his sons had moved away from Abbeville and headed west, two - Ezekiel Waddell and Joseph Alexander, settling in Fayette County, Tennessee and one - Thomas Jefferson, settling in Pontotoc County, Mississippi.
Thomas Jefferson Mathews married Jane Christopher in Abbeville and they had two sons - John and William, prior to Jane dying during stillbirth to twins. Thomas remarried to a Mary Fortescue and with her young brother and Thomas' two sons loaded up their wagon and migrated to Pontotoc County, Mississippi. The oldest boy, John Lewis, died during the Civil War in hospital in Columbus, Mississippi after the Battle of Shiloh. My great-grandfather, William Henry Mathews, went on to marry and have a large family of eleven children. Many of their descendants still live northern Mississippi where most are still solid Scots-Irish descendants.
