BIOGRAPHY

Contributed by: Dennis P. Arntzen

      THERE is much natural beauty in Scotland. Half the country is covered by the mountainous wilderness of the Highlands. The long coastline and islands is a region in of themselves, a region of gales, cliffs, clouds of seabirds, and hardy fishermen. Scotland is a rural nation, which has attracted the attention of outside forces envious of the fertile soil and climate in the Lowlands of Scotland.
     SCOTLAND lies as far north as Moscow, southern Sweden, and the Gulf of Alaska. But for the most part, it seldom gets as cold in the winter. This is due to an ocean current called the Gulf Stream, which carries the warmth of the Equator across the Atlantic and north past Scotland's west coast. There are ornamental gardens created on the northwest coast, where subtropical plants flourish only 600 miles from the Arctic Circle. The Scots' idea of a hot summer's day is anything over 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
     AT the northernmost part of Scotland, there is twenty three hours of daylight during the summer time. The other remaining hour is the evening and morning dusk. Fresh water is everywhere in Scotland from the thousands of tiny mountain burns and waterfalls to the 118 mile long River Tay and the country's largest body of inland water, Loch Lomond, at over 27 square miles.
     THE emigration of the Scottish nation began between 1608 and 1618. Like many emigrants to America during the same period, a large number of those who left Scotland for Ulster (Northern Ireland) were fleeing religious persecution at home. Ulster filled with Scots who wanted to worship God according to their own strict creed of Calvinist Protestantism without elaborate ranks of priest and authoritarian kings telling them what to do. To the Calvinists, every word of the Bible was the literal truth. Most forms of pleasure were sinful. Plays, dancing, singing, celebrations of Easter and Christmas were banned. Any form of work or play on Sundays was forbidden. In 1656, children were punished for playing on Sunday. Serious offenses like adultery and fornication attracted harsh penalties, or, at the least, public humiliation by the local minister in front of the congregation. In the end, many of Ulster settlers from Scotland found their new home was not far enough away from London to escape royal interference.
     SCOTLAND in 1707 was a country of some one million people. The majority still worked the land for a living. They lived in scattered hamlets, growing barley to brew drink and oats for food. Oatmeal was eaten as porridge or as a hard baked biscuit. Cattle, sheep, and goats were kept for food and clothing. The ordinary folk lived in houses of unmortared stone, thatched with turf over rough wooden roof beams. Floors were bare ground where furnishing and utensils were sparse. Scotland practiced a very inefficient style of agriculture. The land was divided into long narrow strips on which the same crops were grown year in, year out, until the soil was exhausted. Much land was wasted. This laid the nation open to famines.
     RELUCTANTLY, spurred on by persecution, famine, and landlord troubles, the Scots and Scot-Irish packed up and crossed a wider sea to America. They settled in the Appalachian Mountains, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. An estimated quarter of a million of them had arrived by the dawn of the American Revolution. George Washington said that if he was defeated everywhere else, he would make his last stand with the Scotch-Irish of his native Virginia.
     THE first record of where the Hattons first appeared in North Carolina was settled almost entirely by Scot-Irish Presbyterians from Chester and Lancaster Counties in Pennsylvania. Since the first record of the Hattons was Charles' birth in 1754 in Iredell County, it may be assumed that his father had migrated from Scotland to Pennsylvania and then onto the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. The landscape of the Appalachian's is very similar to the Highlands of Scotland. The rest of the family story will be told through the biographies of certain family members.
REFERENCE 1) James Meek. "The Land and People of Scotland". Harper & Row, Publishers. 1990.

Charles 1754 (B)	Ione	Lee 1884	Sarah 1847

Charles 1790 (B)	Jaicey	Lee 1917	Selena

Charles 1819	James 1796	Manley 1823 (B)	Susana 1784

Charles 1853 (B)	James 1831	Manley 1862 (B)	Susane 1833

Dorcas 1827	James 1850	Manley 1881	Susie

Dorcas After 1859	James 1873 (B)	Manley 1910	Vicynthia Hicks

Doris	Jane Chambers	Marie	Wanda (B)

Edith	John 1792	Mary	Webb

Elizabeth	John 1872	Mary Millsap	William 1788

Flora	Julia	Pearl	William 1821

Georgie King	Katherine Mitchell	Rhoda	William 1859

Ida	Lawrence	Sarah 1826	William 1874