Cabarrus

The great wagon road led many pioneers out of eastern Pennsylvania (Lancaster and York) and northeastern Maryland into North Carolina. Groups of lowland Scots from Ulster in Northern Ireland and German Lutherans who had arrived at the Port of Philadelphia traveled along that road. The road crossed the Potomac River and entered the Shenandoah Valley near Martinsburg, West Virginia and continued south through the valley on the Great Warriors Trail (Indian Road) used by Indians for many years. The Treaty of Lancaster in 1744 established the rights of the colonists to settle along Indian Road. After the French and Indian War (1756-1763) it was the most heavily traveled road in America. It is generally accepted that these first Scotch/Irish settlers claimed the richer “black jack” lands of western and southern Cabarrus County, so that German settlers arriving in the 1740s claimed lands on both sides of Dutch Buffalo Creek. To their west, along Cold Water Creek, lived a colony of Welsh/English, who brought their Baptist religious traditions with them. Later on, the colonial churches were Lutheran and Presbyterian took root.