In 1727, 3,000 people sailed for the North American colonies from Belfast Lough. The following year, ships took 1,000 more, and in the next three years as many as 4,200. The tidings of the success of the New Hampshire colonists and of those who preceded them to other parts of America, drew between the years 1720 and 1742 over 3,000 emigrants annually from Ulster alone. (Gordon’s History of Ireland.) This enormous emigration, for the period, was stimulated by the rich resources and grand opportunities offered in a new country on the one hand, and on the other by the land laws and the restrictions placed on Irish industries.
In 1736 a number of families emigrated from Banbridge, County Down, and neighborhood; amongst them were members of the Glass, MacDowell, Magill, Mulholland, Linn and other families. These people settled in the Shenandoah Valley on the banks of the Opequan, Virginia.
In the beautiful valley of Shenandoah, three miles south of Winchester, Va., you will find the ruins of the old Opequan Presbyterian Church, destroyed in the Civil War. From the Donegal (Pennsylvania) Presbytery, as early as 1736, the Presbyterian settlers received attention, as they were visited by missionaries and ministers from that Presbytery, making it the earliest preaching place in the valley. The first pastor was John Hodge, who may justly be esteemed the founder of the church, as he gave five acres of land for the church site and graveyard. Mr. Hodge, with many of his large family, are buried there, as well as Samuel Glass, the emigrant from Banbridge.
Samuel Glass, the leader of the Banbridge emigrants, took up his residence at the head spring of the Opequan, after many wanderings through the then almost pathless woods, naming the homestead Greenwood, from the grand old forest which covered for the most part the 16,000 acres of land which he had purchased. His son David settled lower down the river, at a place named Cherry Mead, and Robert, another son, took up his abode at Long Meadows. James Vance, a son-in-law of Samuel Glass, resided in the same neighborhood. Another son-in-law named Becket, lived between the Glass estate and North Mountain.—(Foot’s Sketches of Virginia, second edition.) Samuel Glass died at an advanced age, honored and respected by all the settlers over a large portion of the state; he had centered in his person many good characteristics—courage, thrift, perseverance. In the cemetery, near the old homestead, stands a monument to Samuel Glass and his wife, erected by his descendants. It is an obelisk, executed in limestone, standing on a pedestal, in all over ten feet in height. On the south side is inscribed:
To the Memory
of
SAMUEL GLASS
and his wife,
MARY GAMBLE,
emigrants