Celebrating Family History Month:
1000 Years of History - The Boyds - Scotland, Ireland, America
Saturday, October 25, 2008,  1:00 PM
Elizabeth Boyd Henry Tennies

The story of the Boyd Family and later the Henry, Campbell and Colwell Families could be the story of hundreds of Scottish Families, who were Warriors for Scottish Freedom with Wallace and Bruce; Leaders and Followers of the Religious Reformation in the 1500’s, led by Calvin and Knox. Many became Presbyterians, but were persecuted and murdered by their sovereign in Scotland.

They began to look across the short channel to Ireland. Soon they went to Ulster, Northern Ireland in the 1600’s to the Great Plantation just beginning. Flourishing for decades, yet victims of “The Killing Times”, and massacres in their midst; many realized their sojourn in Ireland was not to be. Deciding that a greater destiny lay across the Atlantic, where others seeking liberty and religious freedom had preceded them, plans were made for the perilous journey.

Ulster Scots (Scots-Irish as they came to be called in America) moved to the frontier of every colony in America. By 1775, there was a Call to Arms in the Revolutionary War. The Ulster Scots, bitter from their experience with English Mandates against them in Ireland, carried that bitterness to America. The Ulster Scots became the backbone of the Revolutionary War. When Washington was at his lowest ebb at Valley Forge, the Ulster Scots were with him.

Following the War life and death on the frontier continued. By the 1800’s, they were moving onward with life. New counties, such as Armstrong County, Indiana County, Allegheny County, and Butler were formed out of what had been Westmoreland County, or that frontier area west of the Allegheny Mountains of Western Pennsylvania. Churches were planted every where, some only six to seven miles apart. Schools began and teachers were secured, some from as far away as Connecticut, educated at schools in the East such as Yale University. Stores, mills, iron works, and all that spoke of civilization began. In due time they endured the Civil War and then World War I. They bore everything with faith, courage and resolution.

About the Author:  Elizabeth Boyd Henry Tennies  is the daughter of  Boyd Campbell Henry and Rebecca Moyer Henry of Kittanning, Pennsylvania and a direct descendant of Abraham Boyd, founder of Bull Creek Presbyterian Church, Tarentum, Pennsylvania.

A 1956  graduate of Kittanning High School and a 1960 graduate of Grove City College,  Mrs. Tennies has taught school in Butler, Pennsylvania, North Allegheny School District, Derry Area School District and Shaler Area School District.

Mrs. Tennies is married to the Rev. Francis E. Tennies, who served as Youth Pastor at the Natrona Heights Presbyterian Church from 1963 until 1966 and is also the sister of the late Dr. Boyd C. Henry, Jr. who founded the Colonial Clinic in Sarver, Pennsylvania, who practiced medicine in that area until his untimely death in 1969.

Admission $5.00 / Members $3.00

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