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he valley being conveniently situated for emigrants from Pennsylvania, as well as from lower Virginia, the population there came to be a mixture of English Virginians and German and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. The German Pennsylvanians, being passionate lovers of fat lands, no sooner heard of the rich valleys of the Shenando and its branches, than they began to join their countrymen from Europe in pouring themselves forth over the country above Winchester. Finding the main Shenando mostly preoccupied, they followed up the north and south branches on both sides of the Massanutten, or Peaked Mountain, until they filled up all the beautiful vales of the country for the space of sixty miles. So completely did they occupy the country, that the few stray English or Irish settlers among them did not sensibly affect the homogeneousness of the population.'
And again:
'The first settlements of this portion of the valley were made by the Scotch Irish, with a few original Scotch among them. They settled in the neighorhoods around Martinsburg, in Berkely county, Winchester, and almost the entire counties of Orange and Guilford. The same race went on into North Carolina, and settled in the counties of Orange and Guilford, especially in the northern and middle parts of the latter county.'
Beverley writes (p. 228):
'The French refugees sent in thither by the charitable exhibition of his late majesty King William, are naturalized by a particular law for that purpose. In the year 1699 there went over about three hundred of these, and in the year following about two hundred more, and so on, till there arrived in all between seven and eight hundred men, women, and children, who had fled from France on account of their religion.'
Bishop Meade (ii. 75) writes:
'That twelve Protestant German families, consisting of about fifty persons, arrived, April 17th, in Virginia, and were therein settled near the Rappahannock river. That in 1717, seventeen Protestant German families, consistin