Somerset County in Maryland

 I have brick walls in both my Lackey family and my Elliott family.  So tonight I decided to look at Somerset County, Maryland.  

From:  https://www.cecildaily.com/our_cecil/irish-immigrants-helped-build-cecil-county-america/article_8ec73170-48d8-52ac-b7be-a3cc22861841.html

In the 1680s, an influx of Ulster Scots, or Scots-Irish immigrants from Northern Ireland, came to Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  [from my reading in other places, it seems that Maryland was actively recruiting Scotch-Irish and they were moving into the area much earlier than they moved to other places.]....

In the early 1700s, a number of these early immigrant families to Somerset County broke away to become pioneers of new lands in the north of Maryland. Among the families that made the move are many familiar to Cecil County residents, including Alexander, McKnitt and Wallace. They settled, by and large, on a large tract of land called New Munster, between the Big Elk and Christiana creeks, some 2 miles from the Head of Christiana Presbyterian Church. This church dates to 1706, when it split off from the New Castle church.

With Gillespie at the pulpit, John Gardner and John Steele became the first elders of the church and were deeply connected with the Alexander family that was active in the congregation. Representatives of these families would be among the pioneers who later chose to move into the frontier territories — first to Cumberland Valley, Pa., and eventually all the way to Mecklenburg County, N.C. In North Carolina, many of these once Cecil locals became the framers of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and peopled the area known as the “Hornet’s Nest” by Gen. Charles Cornwallis and his troops during the Revolutionary War.

More to look at.....I am looking at Immigration of Irish Quakers to Pennsylvania 1682-1750 by Albert Cook Myers and found the below footnote that has much to think about!