1976- 201st anniversary of Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence

 The Charlotte Observer 5/20/1976 p. E 1

Meck Dec Day Festivities  

Speeches, bagpipes, and the waving of flags will mark the 201st birthday of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence today.  

Those faithful to the validity of the document, led by the Mecklenburg Historical Association, will gather at noon in front of the Signers’ Monument. Several members of the Caledonian Pipe Band, directed by Dick Chapin, will play several tunes, including, “Amazing Grace” and “Will Ye No Come Back Again?” Rudy Thompson, a local amateur actor, will read the declaration. Liz Hair, chairman of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners, will speak. Two charter members of the Mecklenburg Historical Association, Mary Hunter and her sister, Grace McDowell, will place a wreath on the Signers’ Monument while a solo piper plays, “The Flowers of the Forest.”  

This evening, the action will shift to Providence Presbyterian Church in Matthews. Those who made reservations will eat a picnic supper at 6:30 p.m., stroll in the historic cemetery, where grave markers date to 1764, and hear a talk by Dr. Frontis Johnston at 8 p.m.  

Johnston, a vice president of Davidson College and faculty dean, will discuss “Scotch on the Rocks,” a historical sketch of the rough-hewn Scottish people who came to this country in four major waves.  

The first wave, he said, was in 1717, but it wasn’t until the third and fourth waves that the immigrants began making their way to this area.  

“A lot of them spent a generation in Pennsylvania before coming here,” he said. “When they overflowed there, they began coming down by way of the back country, through the Shenandoah Valley, into North Carolina, it the 1740s, mostly.”  

Johnston said he took the title of his talk from the Biblical quotation, “Look to the rock from which you were hewn.”