"Now over border dale and fell, Full wide and far was terror spread; The frighten'd flocks and herds were pent And maids and matrons dropp'd the tear, While ready warriors seized the spear. From Branksome's towers, the watchman's eye Dun wreaths of distant smoke can spy, Which, curling in the rising sun, Show'd southern savage war begun." Not far from the grave of William Redford (about half a mile) upon a little knoll is another Covenanter's grave, the grave of another "forefather of the hamlet." Here "Old Mortality" would have lingered lovingly, for Walter Ker had been a prisoner in the Whig's Vault of Dunottar Castle, near Stonehaven, on the North Sea, south of Aberdeen. Throughout the long defense of the Covenant the name of Ker had been constantly conspicuous in the low countries among its defenders. Sir Walter Scott tells the story of the prisoners of the "Whig's Vault:" "It was in 1685, when Argyle was threatening a descent upon Scotland, and Monmouth was preparing to invade the West of England, that the privy council of Scotland, with cruel precautions, made a general arrest of more than a hundred persons in the south and western provinces, supposed, from their religious principles, to be inimical to government, together with many women and children. These captives were driven northward like a flock of bullocks, but with less precaution to provide for their wants, and finally penned up in a subterranean dungeon in the Castle of Dunottar, having a window opening to the front of a precipice which overhangs the German Ocean." George Scott, Laird of Pitlochie, a persecuted Covenanter, obtained permission to leave the kingdom of Scotland, chartered a vessel from Newcastle, and, receiving as a gift the banished prisoners of Dunottar, sailed to the plantations of East Jersey. Lord Neil Campbell sold to him one thousand acres of land. The voyage was a pitiful one, and the Laird and his wife died on the passage. John Johnstone, his son-in-law. became his heir and executor. He settled near the town of Topanemus, Monmouth county, New Jersey. Not until 1689-90 did Walter Ker receive deeds and grants of land. After that time he received lands from James, the son of John Johnstone, beside his own lands at Topanemus. From 1685 to 1689 he probably served John Johnstone to pay for his passage to America. Walter Ker was one of the founders of "Old Scots" or "Old Tennent" Church. There is still another and perhaps more far-reaching association between Dunottar Castle and the historic families of New Jersey. For several centuries that stronghold had been the seat of the family of Keith, Earls-Marischal of Scotland. In an article in "The Scottish Review" for October, 1898, entitled "Earl-Marischal and Field Marshal," it is said that "In the seventeenth century, when Dunottar was made a prison for the Covenanters, and its dungeon became known as the 'Whig's Vault,' the later Castle of Inverugie, built, or at all events largely added to, by the Keiths, became the favorite residence of the family." In the autumn of 1645, when James Graham, of Montrose, with his Irish dragoons and Highlanders, swept down from the north, destroying the Covenanters of the lowlands who were opposing Charles I, he demanded entrance to Dunottar Castle. "The bearer of the letter was not, however, suffered to enter within the gate, and was sent back, at the instigation (probably) of the Earl's lady and the ministers who were with him, without an answer. Montrose then endeavored, by means of George Keith, the Earl-Marischal's brother, to persuade the latter to declare for the king, but he refused, in consequence of which Montrose resolved to inflict summary vengeance upon him by burning and laying waste his lands and those of his retainers in the neighborhood." After this event the Earl-Marischal and his lady resided in the Castle of Inverugie, on the River Don, a few miles al ve Aberdeen. About a century before, one of his anc:stors had founded Marischal College in Aberdeen. Here many of the men who came to New Jersey after the fall and execution of Argyle and the Duke of Monmouth had been educated—the Gordons, Forbes, Barclays of Ury, Burnetts of Lethentie, Falconers, Campbells, Fullertons and many others. Among them was George Keith, a younger son of the Covenanting Earl-Marischal and his lady, of Dunottar and later of Inverugie. The Keiths and Campbells of Argyle were related by marriage. George Keith, the Quaker, probably influenced by his mother and Robert Barclay of Ury, came to America as a Proprietor, Surveyor General, etc. He held lands all through Monmouth county. He resided in Philadelphia, and after differences upon points of doctrine with the Quakers returned to Scotland. Early in the eighteenth century he again came to New Jersey and from among the Quakers organized the Episcopal Churches of Shrewsbury. Middletown, Freehold and other New Jersey and Pennsylvania towns. George Keith was a cousin of Lord Neil Campbell. The Marquis of Argyle, Lord Neil's father, was the guardian and instructor of Sir Ewan (or Sir Evan) Cameron, commonly called Ewan Dhru of Locheil or Lochiel, from the lake Loch Eil, near which was the seat of the Cameron's Lochaber. The Marquis strove to train Lochiel in the tenets of the Covenanters, but he refused to receive the instruction of such stern teachers. At the age of eighteen he was allowed to return to his home at Lochaber. He and the Earl of Perth were ever constant and powerful friends of the Stuarts. Lochiel was one of the East Jersey Proprietors, owning land near Bound Brook, at Perth Amboy, at Wickatunck, and at Barnegat. Robert Drummond, nephew of Gawan Drummond, and related to the Earl of Perth, settled upon a large tract of land situated between the present towns of Eatontown and Tinton Falls, and the lccality was named for a time Lochaber or "Locharbour." The Drummond family still occupy this land. Sir Evan Cameron was one of the greatest of the Scotch cavaliers, and was the most conspicuous hero in the history of his clan. His grandson, Donald Cameron, was the "Lochiel" of Thomas Campbell's poem, "Lochiel's Warning"—a prophecy of the disastrous battle of Culloden in 1745. In the registers of many old churches in the lowland towns of Scotland will be found the baptismal records of Scotch emigrants of Monmouth county, New Jersey, kept in a similar manner to those of the old Tennent Church of Freehold. In "Old Sterling Register," March 6, 1588, is the following: "Johnne Reid, son of Johnne Reid and Isobell Lowrie. W. (witness) John Scot, potter, John Prestone of Cambers, Thomas Reid, flescher, Gilbert Thompsone, flescher." Among the records of "Englishmen in Scotland" are these entries: William Watsone, Englishman, and John Tutishawe (the Father dead)." ter of William Watsone, Englishman, and Isobell Reid." "June 27, 1656, Marie, daughter of Isobell Reid. W. James Stausfeild, December 17, 1657, "Agnes, daugh These records were made before the Restoration. The baptisms occurring after the renewal of the persecutions of the Covenanters may not have been recorded. These were probably the records of the ancestors of John Reid and Peter and William Watson, who came to Monmouth county as servants of the Proprietors. The ch ldren of Peter Watson intermarried into many of the Monmouth families. Agnes Watson was lice sed to marry Peter Fresneau, of Huguenot descent, March 12. 1750, and their son, Philip Fresneau (or Freneau) became the poet of the American Revolution. Alexander Napier also came to Monmouth with John Reid and Peter Watson. The latter married Agnes, the daughter of Alexander Napier, a Quaker who returned to the Church of England under the preaching of George Keith. The family of Napier was conspicuous among the Covenanters. Another of the old records above mentioned states, "November 10th, 1657, Joseph, son of Thomas Johnstown, Englishman, and Margaret Wright. W. Samuell Winder." In 1685 Thomas Rudyard, merchant, of the city of London and New York, and one of the twenty-four Proprietors of East Jersey, granted one-half of his proprietary claims to Samuel Winder, husband of his daughter Margaret, and to John West, husband of his daughter Anne. Many of the descendants of John West and his family are to be found along the New Jersey coast and wherever the people of its early settlers have wandered. Samuel Winder, "Register.' a lawyer, came to New York and Staten Island from Boston. His wife's claims in New Jersey he located at Cheesequakes and Chingaroras. Thomas Rudyard had disposed of his New Jersey lands and made his will prior to leaving New York, "by God's permission," on a voyage to Barbadoes and Jamaica, declaring Captain Andrew Bowne and his "sonnes-in-law" Samuel Winder and John West his executors "in ye Provinces of East and West Jersey and New York." He appointed Thomas Foullerton and Hannah Beaumont, servant, his executors "in ye Barbadoes, Jamaica and Old England." This will was proven in 1693. "A true copy was taken out of ye records of ye Province of East New Jersey," April 10, 1701, and was in the possession of James G. Crawford, a descendant of Captain John Bowne. Samuel Winder was a member of Council under. Governor Andrew Hamilton, and signed the patent from the Governor and Council to John Crawford for his homestead at Nutswamp, New Jersey. James G. Crawford is descended from the latter. Samuel Winder died in 1688-9, in Boston, and his widow, Margaret, married George Willocks or Willox, conspicuous in New Jersey history. Her lands at Chingaroras passed into the hands of the Bownes. Other proprietary lands in this fertile valley passed into the possession of the Bownes as the larger tracts were broken up by the demand for homes. The transfers of title to a portion of the valley illustrate perfectly the settlement of Monmouth county. Captain John Bowne, one of the Englishmen of Gravesend. who under the Nicolls Patent purchased the land from the natives, received his town lots, and after the lots were established located his cut-plantation with Richard Stout in Pleasant Valley or Chingaroras. Then under the twentyfour Proprietors the lands were apportioned regardless of the patent. Thomas Cooper, of London, sold one-half of his claims to Sir John Gordon. This was subdivided—one-tenth to Sir John himself, one-tenth to Sir Robert Gordon, one-twentieth to Thomas Pearson, etc. By lease and release, dated April 23d and 24th. in 1684, in Scotland, witnessed by "Barclay." "Sandilands," and Patrick Innes, Sir John granted one-tenth of one forty-eighth, of his lands in Monmouth county, a part lying in Chingaroras. to Captain Thomas Pearson. The following November he sailed in his ship "Thomas and Benjamin" to Perth Amboy, bringing with him fourteen Highlanders as servants, some of whom he sold in Amboy. Six months later Thomas Pearson, mariner, of Perth Amboy, deeded his lands at Chingaroras to John Bowne of Middletown. The original lease and release are still in the possession of his descendants. Ten years passed, and John Bowne, Junior, of Middletown, granted five hundred acres of the same land to Garret Schenck, Stephen Courte Voorhys, Cornelius Couwenhoven and Peter Wyckoff, of "Flatlands, alias Amesfort," Kings County, Long Island. John Schenck, the brother of Garret Schenck, two years later purchased Peter WyckofT's one-quarter of the five hundred acres of land. From that time to the present the descendants of the Schenck brothers and Cornelius Cowenhovem have held the fields of Chingaroras (now Pleasant Valley), and their descendants are scattered throughout the United States. Every link in that chain of title to lands in Pleasant Valley embodies a volume of history.. The independent merchant and sea captain of the Republic of England, Captain John Bowne; the advocate of Scotland, a defender of the Covenanters, Sir John Gordon; with the Scotch sea captain of Aberdeen, Thomas Pearson, and the group of Hollanders, sons of the men who had been ruined by the struggle for liberty and Protestantism during the Thirty Years War on the Continent of Europe, successively within a few years held a few fertile acres in Monmouth. county. They represented the political development of the Reformation Republicanism, and their descendants have defended and perfected the principles of their fathers in the national history of the United States. Mentally and physically such men were fit for the fatherhood of a nation founded upon the individuality of its units. Each possessed the strongest traits and characteristics of his people. The intermingling of their blood in the rapidly changing and grand environment of the trackless continent over which they swept, have developed the highest types of men known to the civilized world. The Clan Gordon played a conspicuous part in the Scotch settlement of New Jersey. At this time it was divided, the Marquis of Huntly, chief of the Clan, supporting the Stuarts and either the State or the Catholic Church, while Sir John Gordon, Earl of Sutherland, with his relatives, supported the Covenant. To the former belonged the Gordons of Stralach of Pitlurg, represented by Thomas Gordon, Dr. John Gordon of Colliston, and Charles Gordon, who died in Aberdeen in 1698-9 intestate. Only the descendants of Thomas remained in the State. Sir John did not come to America, but his brother, George Gordon, merchant, died in Perth Amboy in 1685-6, leaving by will legacies to "lifelong comrades—Thomas Gordon, his brother Charles, Robert Fullerton, William Laing, John Bar |