CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



surprising, therefore, that the new profession 

 of making farm machinery should have been 

 born upon a Scotch-Irish farm. 



As for Cyrus H. McCormick, he represented 

 the fourth generation of American McCormicks. 

 His great-grandfather, Thomas McCormick, 

 quit Ulster in the troublous days of 1735. He 

 was a soldier at Londonderry; and later be- 

 came noted as an Indian fighter in Pennsyl- 

 vania. His son Robert, who moved south to 

 Virginia, carried a rifle for American inde- 

 pendence at the battle of Guilford Court-house, 

 North Carolina, in 1781. He was a farmer 

 and weaver by occupation, a typical Ulsterman, 

 whose farm was a busy workshop of invention 

 and manufacturing. 



On his mother's side, too, Cyrus McCormick 

 had behind him a line of battling Scotch-Irish. 

 She was the daughter of a Virginian farmer 

 named Patrick Hall, one of whose forefathers 

 had been driven out of Armagh by the massacre 

 of 1641. Patrick Hall was the leader of the old- 

 school Presbyterians in his region of Virginia. 

 So rigid was he in his loyalty to the faith of the 



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