Patrick Cunningham

THE CUNNINGHAMS OF CUB CREEK by John Goodwin Herndon, Haverford, Pennsylvania from Genealogies of Virginia Families – from The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

The story of Cub Creek may be said to commence 11 April 1738 when the Donegal Presbytery (Lancaster, Penna.) approved the supplication of John Caldwell “in behalf of himself and many families of our persuasion who are about to settle in the back parts of Virginia, desiring that some members of the Synod may be appointed to wait upon that government to solicit their favour in behalf of our interest in that place.”(Records of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, embracing the Minutes of the General Presbytery and General Synod, 1706-1788, pp. 138-139).John Caldwell, an elder in the Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church in Lancaster County, Penna., is the recognized founder of the Cub Creek Congregation, in which movement he was ably assisted by Andrew and Thomas Cunningham, along with 14 others who purchased land, then in Brunswick County from Richard and William Kennon.(The 17 founders were David, John and William Caldwell, and William, son of John Caldwell;Andrew and Thomas Cunningham; Thomas Daugherty, Richard Dudgeon, James Franklin, William Fuqua, William Hardwick; David and James Logan; Alexander McConnel, Israel Pickens, John Stewart, and Thomas Vernon, as noted in Elizabeth Venable Gaines:Cub Creek and Congregation, 1738-1838, p. 93)

It seems likely that these two brothers, Andrew and Thomas (Cunningham), were born in Northern Ireland, and came to Pennsylvania in 1737.It is of record that Andrew lived in 1737 in Little Britain township, Lancaster County, next to George Caldwell’s (Pennsylvania Gazette, Vol. 26, p. 53).The name of their father is not absolutely known and since the Cunninghams of Lancaster County were by that time a numerous clan, his identity may remain an unsolved mystery.But there is good reason to believe that such may not be the case, for one descendant of the Southside Virginia Cunninghams has furnished a copy of a paper pasted in the lid of an old chest, the sort brought from the old country, which give the following information about the ancestry of one John Cunningham who came to America in 1737 and died in Philadelphia.It says that Patrick Cunningham born in Scotland in 1559 removed at age 44 to Cunningham Manor, Ireland, where he died, aged 85, in 1644; that his son William born 1585 accompanied him in that move, being then 18 years old, and died in Ireland in 1677, when he was 92;that his John lived from 1609 to 1705; that his son James born in 1630; died in 1722; that his son James born in 1652, died at Cunningham Manor in 1736; and that his son John settled in Philadelphia (A copy furnished by W. S. Morton, in Farmville, Va., who obtained it from a descendant of the Cub Creek Cunninghams.)It is no wonder then that Ellis and Evans, in their monumental “History ofLancaster County”refer to the Cunninghams as “one of the notable families of early settlers” of the township where one James Cunningham lived.What makes the above-given genealogy of significance is that James Cunningham, of Cub Creek, in his will (1 Charlotte Wills 224) makes three references to such chests.It therefore is certainly not unreasonable to say that Andrew and Thomas Cunningham may have been brothers of the John Cunningham who migrated to Pennsylvania in 1737.If that identification is correct, we have the ancestry of the Cub Creek Cunninghams back to 1559 in Scotland.

For purposes of enumeration we shall designate the family as having its origin in 1 James (1652-1736) whose sons were 2 John, 3 Andrew and 4 Thomas,