When Henry Johnston and his youthful wife settled on the western banks of the Catawba river, the country was then covered with its native forests, and over its wide expanse of territory, as yet but little disturbed by the implements of husbandry, the Indians and wild beasts held almost undisputed sway.  The uplands were clothed with wild “pea vines,” and other luxuriant herbage, and cattle literally roamed over and fed upon a “thousand hills.”  Every water course, too, bristled with cane-brakes, indicating the great fertility of the soil, and the sure road, under proper industrial efforts, to agricultural prosperity.

In the absence of family records we are left to infer Col.  Johnston grew up to manhood, receiving as good an education as his own limited means and the opportunities of societies then afforded.  It was then a gloomy period in our history.  In 1765 the Stamp Act had been passed, which agitated the American Colonies from one extremity to the other.  The dark cloud of discontent hung heavily over our people, too truly foreboding the storm of open rupture, and approaching revolution.  During this exciting period he imbibed those patriotic principles, which, in subsequent years, governed his actions, and prepared him to cast in his lot, and heartily unite with those who pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” in the cause of American freedom.  He emphatically belonged to that class of ardent young men of the Revolutionary period

    “Whose deeds were cast in manly mold,
    For hardy sports or contest bold.”

Tradition speaks of the wife of Henry Johnston as dying comparatively young, leaving two children—­James, the immediate subject of this sketch, and Mary—­who married Moses Scott, settled near Goshen Church, in the present county of Gaston, and there ended her days.  Moses Scott had three children—­James J., William and Abram Scott.  Of these sons, James Johnston Scott married in 1803, Mary, a daughter of Captain Robert Alexander, a soldier of the Revolution, and of extensive usefulness.  He (James) died in 1809, in the twenty seventh year of his age, leaving two children—­Abram and Mary Scott, the former of whom in this Centennial year (1876) still survives, having nearly completed his “three-score years and ten.”

Col.  Johnston first entered the service as Captain of a company, in the winter of 1776, Col.  William Graham commanding, against a large body of Tories in the northwestern section of South Carolina.  This expedition is known in history as the “Snow Campaign,” from the unusually heavy snow, of that winter, and, in conjunction with the troops of that State, drove the Tory commanders, Cunningham and Fletcher, from the siege of the post of Ninety Six.  On the retreat of these Tory leaders they surprised and defeated them with a loss of four hundred of their followers.  The reader may be curious to know the origin of the name “Ninety Six” applied to this post, now constituting the village of Cambridge,