Ruins of Ballywallin
Presbyterian Church, County Antrim, Ulster Plantation, ca. 1748 – Image Courtesy
Ballywallin Presbyterian Church
Five generations ago,
Hugh Gaston risked it all…and paid it all.
He fled home, hearth, church and family risking everything for the
freedom of reading, teaching and living the precepts of the Holy
Scriptures. After attending an annual
conference of ministers in 1766 he disappeared for nearly four months. Suddenly he reappeared in South Carolina,
sought out his brother, John “Justice” Gaston of Chester County and set out for
the back country to begin a new ministry.
He preached just one or two sermons, then falling ill with the measles. He was dead within a month of his
arrival. He is buried next to his
brother and sister in law in Burnt Meeting House Cemetery just an hour’s drive
south of Charlotte, NC. John wrote a
letter home to his widow, Mary Gaston, and children telling of Hugh’s tragic
demise. Hugh’s family stayed in Ulster
and never came to America.
These freedoms that
Hugh risked everything for had eluded the Gaston family for generations. Long before Hugh was born the Gaston family
searched for the truth of the gospel with the Huguenots of France. Roman Catholicism was the state religion
there in the 16th century.
The Gaston’s, under persecution from Rome, fled France for Scotland where
they associated themselves with the Reformed Presbyterianism of John Knox. Here too, they faced persecution, not from
Rome but from London. The English,
having subdued Scotland, were determined to force the Scots back into Romanism
under Queen Mary and then into Anglicanism under Elizabeth I and James VI. Scotland was under the boot of the tyrannical
English, land was scarce and times were hard.
After several generations, the family sought a better life across the
Irish Sea in what was then called Ulster Plantation, now known as Northern
Ireland. Here they found more, better
and cheaper land. However, they did not find the religious freedom that they so
desperately longed for.
Ulster Plantation was
designed by the English as an enclave where both Scots and English would settle
Irish Catholic lands and eventually cause the Irish to give up their resistance
to English rule. The plan backfired and
the repercussions of this 400 year old plan are still resounding today in the
streets of Northern Ireland. The Gaston’s
faced the hatred of the displaced Irish Catholics and the persecution of the
English Anglicans. It was literally a “stress
sandwich.” However, early in the 18th
century, these displaced Ulster Scots began immigrating to a new land that
promised it all – freedom of religion, free land and unbridled prosperity in a
land “flowing with milk and honey,” AMERICA.
John and Esther Waugh Gaston along with two small daughters came to
Pennsylvania before 1740. By 1754, the
expanding family found their way south through the Shenandoah Valley of
Virginia, through the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina, ending up in the rolling
piedmont hills of upstate South Carolina. John became the top law officer on the frontier,
the so-called “Kings Justice.” He also
became the most successful surveyor of land in all the upstate. Here they would prosper in freedom and
liberty. John and Esther would
eventually have 13 children, all of which lived to adulthood, a blessing
unheard of in that day and time. The
only thing they lacked in the upstate were trained preachers for all the Scot –
Irish, as we are called here in America.
Hugh Gaston was not only a trained minister, he was the most brilliant Presbyterian
scholar of his age. No wonder John was
so excited to greet his brother on his way to Chester from Charleston when he
arrived in 1766.
Hugh Gaston was a
dangerous man to the English, perhaps the most dangerous man in all of Scotland
and Ireland. Why? Hugh had in 1763 published a book, a book
that threatened every Catholic and every Anglican in Ulster. It was book that, for the first time,
provided the common man the tools needed for deep Bible study. Now the Ulster ploughman could within a very
short period of time, know more Bible than any Catholic or Anglican “clergyman.”
It was simple, yet brilliant. The book was a combination systematic
theology, concordance and topical Bible.
It became a bombshell! The name
of the book? A Scripture Account of the Faith and Practice of Christians.
The publication of this
book apparently cost Hugh everything. By
1766 he found himself broke and disgraced.
Because he so soon died upon arriving in the new world, he left no
information as the exact circumstances of his sudden departure. One thing is for sure. This book cost Hugh everything. He lost his family. He lost his position. He lost his wealth. He lost his life. He lost these things so that anyone could
study the Bible for themselves.
Though Hugh Gaston, as
far as we know, never discovered the complete truth of the gospel, he searched
for it diligently and gave everything so that others could take that journey as
well. He was a man of great passion and
love for the truth.
Now, one year shy of
250 years, the passion of Hugh Gaston has been replaced by passivity. “Christians” today have grown passive, lazy
and unconcerned with the study, the teaching and the living of the Scriptures. Bibles sit unopened on the shelf or travel without
use in the back seats of automobiles. People
today are passive towards the claims of Holy Scripture and are ashamed of what
it says. What Hugh Gaston died for in
1766, people in 2015 could not care less about.
How about you? Are you passionate
or passive?
Hugh Gaston is my great
uncle, five times removed. I have a
reprinted copy of his book I can show you anytime. John Gaston is my great grandfather five
times removed. He and Esther gave four
sons in death during the War for Independence, their home, their possessions
and their freedom. All nine of their
sons served the cause of liberty. At 80
years of age, John Gaston died in his sleep, still being pursued by the
English. He had two loaded pistols under
his pillow and a loaded musket at this bedside as he passed into eternity.
-
Russ McCullough
