Bachelor Uncle - Archibald McClurkin (1753-1781)

Archibald McClurkin was part of a large covenator family who immigrated from Ballymena Ireland to Chester County South Carolina shortly before the revolutionary war. His father's name is not known for certain, but it was probably John McClurkin. There are various un-proven stories about the McClurkins. One version states that Archibald and his brother Thomas were involved in a Irish rebellion and that they stowed away on a ship from Ireland to South Carolina in 1772 to escape the authorities. Supposedly their parents and most of their siblings followed a few years later and arrived at Charleston on the last ship before war broke out.

The McClurkin's immigration is not documented but it is well documented is that all five of the McClurkin brothers fought in the Revolutionary war. Archibald is recorded as serving fifty seven days "militia duty in the hourse in 1780". His brother's Robert, John, Thomas, and Matthew were also paid for similar service. Matthew and Thomas also applied for Pensions later in life giving extensive descriptions of their service and it is Thomas's pension file that gives the earliest account of Archibald's fate. Thomas was asked to name some of the officers he had served under. He named several, then as an aside named the one enemy commander he had not, in fifty years since the war, been able to forget.

"Col. Tarleton took my brother from his house and had him hung to a Red oak tree"

The History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church and Women of the American Revolution give more details about Archibald's murder. He was apparently home sick with small-pox and was taken by Tarleton and a man named Phillips and killed as a known patriot.

In the Fairfield District there lived one John Phillips, who was a man of wealth and talent. During the war, however, he became a rank Tory and was called "Tory Colonel Phillips." He betrayed the cause of the Covenanters, and those who had often saved his life when he cast himself upon the mercy of the Whigs. He accompanied Tarleton to Little Rocky Creek, where he took Archibald McClurkin from his bed, when he was lying at the point of death with small-pox, and hanged him to a tree by the roadside. This barbarous act so aroused the righteous indignation of the Covenanters, that their military aid in behalf of the Colonists was thereby greatly increased. Many cold blooded deeds were attributed to this traitor Phillips. After the war he returned to Ireland, but was not there safe from the vengeance he had provoked in South Carolina. He was shot on the street in Ballymoney by one of McClurkin's brothers, but not fatally injured. He lived in constant fear of the avenger of blood and died a drunkard, himself in despair, and his family wholly destitute.

Archibald did not get the chance to marry and have children and therefore is a "bachelor uncle", however, he was not forgotten. Many of his nephews and grand-nephews were given his name.

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