Archibald McClurkin (abt. 1753 - 1781)

Born about 1753 in Ballymena, County Antrim, Ireland

Ancestors

Died 14 Jan 1781 at about age 28 in Little Rocky Creek, Chester County, South Carolina

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Biography

Archibald McClurkin served with South Carolina Militia during the American Revolution.

Archibald was born in Ireland, possibly about 1753. He and his siblings immigrated to Chester County South Carolina about 1772. At the beginning of the war much of his family's livestock were confiscated by the British without payment. Archibald and his four brother's fought in the revolutionary war, and after the war his estate was paid eight pounds two shillings and ten pence farthing stering for serving fifty seven days "militia duty in the hourse in 1780". Probably in January of 1781 he was home sick with small pox in Chester County and was taken from his bed by a Tory name John Philips and Col. Tarleton and hung on a red Oak tree.

The earliest mention of Archibald's death comes from one line in his brother, Thomas's, Pension file. In 1833, when asked if he remembers the names of the officers he served under, Thomas mentions several Continental officers, then offers, as a side note, the one enemy officer he had not been able to forget:

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

In 1856 Elizabeth Ellet's book, Women of the American Revolution, mentions Archibald when describing the Treachery of John Philips:

At another time when with his loyalists [John Philips] accompanies Tarleton to Little Rocky Creek, he took a young man--McClurken--who was ill with the small pox, from his bed and hung him on a tree by the roadside. This act of barbarity aroused the Irish spirit of Rocky Creek, adding the instinct of revenge to the spirit of military opposition

In 1888 Glasgow's History of the Reformed Presbyterian church, using Ellet as a source tells the same story, this time giving Archibald's first name:

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.

Narratives of Randolph County, a 1940s compilation of genealogical research on the families of Randolph IL, including the McClurkins includes several other accounts of Archibald's death. One gives his date of death as January 14th 1780 two days before Col Tarleton was defeated at Cowpens (Cowpens was actual in Jan of 1781). A letter from W J McClurkin, a great grandson of Archibald's brother Thomas, says that the story he heard was that Archibald and Thomas at the ages of 19 and 17 had participated in an Irish rebellion and had fled to America in the early 1770s and later the rest of the family followed (Another Naritive says the Thomas and Mathew came over first, but Mathew would have only been 11 in 1772). If this story is correct it would put Archibald's birth date at about 1753 since Thomas is known to have immigrated in 1772 and was born in 1756. W J McClurkin also recounted the story of Archibald's death noting that he had heard it as young boy he might not be remembering it quite right. He said that Archibald was a revolutionary war soldier who was home because of his illness and that Archibald's wife and children were forced to watch his execution. Other descriptions in the narratives agree with this account that Archibald fought in the SC militia and was home of furlough when he was killed, but disagree with the mention of a wife and children saying that Archibald was single.

Many of Archibald's nephews and grand-nephews were named after him.

Sources

• Ellet, Elizabeth. The Women of the American Revolution, Volume 3 p302
• Rev War Pention file of Thomas McClurkin
• Glasgow, W. Melancthon. "History of the Reformed Presbyterian church in America" 1888 p390
• Narratives of Randolph County
• Stub entries to indents issued in payment of claims against South Carolina growing out of the Revolution. book O-Q. p39