Cecil County, Maryland was the other sanctuary for the Scotch-Irish in early colonial America as their numbers filled the census rolls of Pennsylvania and the Northern Neck of the Chesapeake Bay. Actually Cecil and Somerset Counties were earlier settlements than Western Pennsylvania dating from the mid and late 1600's. As this area and that of Western Pennsylvania filled to overflowing, it created a southern migration to the settlements along the Great Wagon Road to the west of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia all the way to the Catawba River and the settlement of ................. Mecklenburg North Carolina.
Here their prodigy would begin a debate that has lived for the life of our great nation. The Mecklenburg Declaration Controversy.