Flora afterward married Allan, son of the Laird of Kingsburg, and became the mistress of the mansion where Prince Charles Edward passed his last night in Scotland, June 29, 1746. There she and her husband entertained Dr. Johnson and Boswell when they visited the Hebrides in 1773. She had then been a wife more than twenty years, and was the mother of numerous children, yet she was still beautiful, and full of enthusiasm and abiding loyalty to the British crown. Misfortune caused Flora and her family to join some of their kindred who had settled in North Carolina, and she abode for a while at Cross Creek (now Fayetteville).
In the winter of 1849 I started to follow the line of the retreat of General Greene before Cornwallis across North Carolina from the Catawba to the Dan, in 1781, but soon turned eastward to Fayetteville, where I arrived toward sunset. In the evening I called on Mrs. McL——, an aged and sprightly Scotchwoman, who, I was told, remembered Flora Macdonald. She was enthusiastic in her praises of that noble woman from the Hebrides. She described her as "not very tall, but a very handsome and dignified woman, with fair complexion, sparkling blue eyes, the finest teeth ever seen, and her hair, partly covered with a pretty lace cap, was slightly streaked with gray. Her kindly voice was sweetest music," continued Mrs. McL——, "and oh, how the poor and the church missed her when she went home after seeing much trouble here!"
"Is her dwelling here yet standing?" I asked.
"No; it was partly burned in the great fire here about twenty years ago. As you pass from the Market-House to the Court-House, you may see the ruins of it near the creek," she said.
Stepping to a quaint chest of drawers, Mrs. McL—— took out a dingy-looking letter written by Flora to her (Mrs. McL——'s) elder sister, then a maiden, of twenty, dated February 1, 1776. It was a brief note, but an exceedingly interesting one, as it was in the bold handwriting of the heroine of Skye.
"It was sent," said the old lady, "from her new home in the Barbacue Congregation, and, as you will see, she wrote her name 'Flory.'"
"Then she did not live here long?" I said.
"No; she soon moved to the Barbacue Congregation, about twenty miles north of here."
On the day when that note was written, the royal Governor of North Carolina issued a proclamation calling upon all friends of the King to assemble, with arms, at Cross Creek, and join his standard. The Macdonalds were all loyalists, and now the troubles of Flora in North Carolina began. Her husband and others, to the number of about fifteen hundred, mostly Scotchmen, readily obeyed the call.
"Flora came with her husband and friends," said Mrs. McL——. "I remember seeing her riding along the line on a large white horse, and encouraging her countrymen to be faithful to the King. Why, she looked like a queen. But she went no further than here, and when they marched away, she returned to her home."