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Dear Members,
In the next few days you will be receiving in the mail the Election Ballot
for officers of our McCord Family Association (Clan McCord Society). It
would be appreciated if you would promptly sign and return the completed
ballot.
We are very proud of our Advisory Board Member, Brigadier General Tom
McCord, who will be inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame
in June at an Army Base near Tucson, Arizona. General Tom McCord graduated
from Texas A & M University just before WWII began, served over 30 months
in the Pacific in the jungle wars there as head of a Rifle Company and
then Battalion Executive Officer. He was then was assigned in Berlin,
Germany as a Lt. Colonel after attending Defense Language School at
Monterrey California studying Russian. Tom was in Berlin when the Berlin
Wall went up, which were some very harrowing days there! Tom was then
Chief of U.S. Military Liaison to Commander Group of Soviet Forces
Germany, and was stationed in Berlin. This was also the time when a
notorious Soviet KGB officer defected in Berlin and told Tom's defector
unit of the KGB officer's assassination of a dissident with a poison
weapon. This was a front-page story at the time and still remains akin to
the story of the Bulgarian/Soviet KGB's attempt to assassinate Pope John
Paul in the early 1980's in Rome. Tom was later appointed to be Assistant
Chief of Staff G2, lst Field Force Vietnam and also Assistant Chief of
Staff G2, U.S.Army Pacific, from which he retired. We are very proud of
General Tom McCord's great honor in being inducted into the Military
Intelligence Hall of Fame! Congratulations Tom!
On a recent visit to North Carolina to speak at a Seminar on Crisis
Management and Risk Assessment before a religious organization, I had the
great pleasure of attending the Sugaw Creek Presbyterian Church in
Charlotte N.C. The Church is celebrating it's 250th Anniversary (formed in
1755) and they extended a very warm welcome to me and have since invited
our Society to participate in the Church's 250th Anniversary Celebration
on September 11, 2005. Please join us if you can. They have been made
aware of the several McCord families who lived in the Charlotte area
before and during the American Revolution, some of whom are buried in the
Sugaw Creek's oldest cemetery (they have 3 cemeteries near the Church). I
will be asking some of our members in the area to represent our Society at
some of their Anniversary-related celebrations in June and August 2005, as
well as to attend the September 11th celebration with yours truly. Our
ancestors lived in Mecklenburg-Lincoln counties in N.C., starting in the
1760's and on through the American Revolution.
Four sons of William McCord who built Fort McCord in 1756, a son, John
McCord, of David McCord of Derry, and James McCord, who also lived near
Fort McCord and emigrated later from N.C. into South Carolina, lived near
Charlotte at those times, as did other McCords. Dr. Symm McCord who is
descended from William of the Fort's son John, Jack McCord who is
descended from James McCord, and our Senior Research expert Dr. Tom Hill's
ancestors of William of the Fort's family were also there.
David McCord, son of William of Fort McCord, also lived in Charlotte and
participated in the famous "Hornet's Nest" battle in Charlotte during the
American Revolution where British General Cornwallis' troops were routed
in 1780. David married a sister of Abraham Lincoln's grandmother, named
Shipley. Elizabeth McCord who was there also married a brother of Abraham
Lincoln's grandmother. So we have much early McCord history to celebrate,
along with the Sugaw Creek Church! We hope you can come to the September
11th Celebration!
Some most interesting and delicate developments continue regarding Fort
McCord, PA. When we are able to discuss it, it will be shared with you,
the parties involved having asked that it not be further discussed at this
time. As you know, for many months we have worked to have Ft. McCord
declared a National Historic Site on the Register of Historic Places in
America, and we have received much fine cooperation from the Pennsylvania
State History and Museum Commission personnel.
Services for our very distinguished former Vice-President David McCord
will be held May 29th at Estancia N.M. where he lived for several years.
David McCord was also of the William McCord family of Fort McCord. Dave
had been an expert Chinese linguist, teaching Chinese first as a Professor
at Yale University, then at the Defense Language Institute at Monterrey
California. There he served with a mentor and close friend who had been a
missionary in China for many years and was the author of the book, They
Called Us White Chinese. Dave later recruited Chinese linguists for the
National Security Agency and the Top Secret Air Force Security Service. He
will be sorely missed by all of us. For years he assisted many thousands
of McCords in their family research. Our Senior Researcher Don McCord of
Tennessee will be receiving Dave's most extensive files, some 700 binders
on McCord families which he accumulated over his lifetime, so his legacy
will continue!
Our Advisory Board member, Dr. Charles Reynolds, is in Belfast, Northern
Ireland for the launching of his book, He Leadeth Me: The Travail and
Triumph of The Scotch-Irish. which has just been published. Dr.
Reynolds was the keynote speaker at our 2004 McCord Reunion in New
Holland, PA and was the recipient of the coveted Order of British Empire
from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace earlier, which is one of the
highest honors in the British Government. We know his book will do well
and we congratulate him on it!
We also learned through some research after the Reunion that our Society
member Henry Sims and his sister Jane Johns and her daughter, Karen
Caldwell, are related to a member of the British House of Lords, a very
distinguished family. Congratulations all! Later this Fall there will be
published on this web site profiles of our new members which you will find
very interesting. New and renewal memberships for 2005 have been coming in
at the rate of one or more a week and we are very proud of each of you!
Funds in our Society's bank account stand at $1,711.00, with no
indebtedness, of which we are also very pleased.
Research of mine has been accumulating which appears to indicate that the
ancestor of President George Bush, Hugh Weir, lived nearby Fort McCord in
the early 1700's as did the ancestor of General Sam Houston of Texas fame.
These three families, the Weirs (also spelled Ware and Weare), the McCords,
and the Houstons, then "tracked" each other down into Augusta, later
Rockbridge County, Virginia, and then into Washington County North
Carolina (now Tennessee) during the American Revolution where some of the
Weirs and McCords served in the Colonel John Sevier's Regiment together
during the American Revolution. John Sevier was later first Governor of
Tennessee.
Two of Hugh Weir's sons were Captains in Sevier's N.C. Regiment and served
at the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina. James McCord, Sr. and
David McCord, Jr., sons of David of Derry, served in Col. Sevier's
Regiment in the Washington County State Militia with the Weirs during the
Revolution.
After the Revolution, Hugh Weir's son,Jonathan, from whom President Bush
is descended, and some of his family members moved to Blount County,
Tennessee at the same period as did the James McCord Sr.'s family and the
Houstons. Some of the Weirs, McCords and Houstons intermarried.
General Sam Houston's private Secretary, Washington D. Miller, who was
later Secretary of the Treasury in General Sam Houston's Republic of
Texas, was the brother of Caroline Miller, the wife of Campbell W. McCord,
son of James McCord Jr, grandson of David of Derry. The General Sam
Houston and the McCord families were very close. All of this is most
interesting and will be posted shortly on Jack McCord's website
www.McCordClan.com for your reading.
There is much more going on with our Society. Stay tuned to this website
to read it as it is published and thank you for joining with us in 2005 as
members of our great Society!
Jim McCord
President, Clan McCord Society (McCord Family Association)
P.O. Box 471, Leola PA 17540
15 April 2005
email: jmccord07@epix.net
Phone 717-656-4452
Clan McCord Society Home Page
www.McCordFamilyAssn.com
Jack McCord's McCord Newsletter website:
www.McCordClan.com
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