So Close, Yet So Far Away - 52 Ancestors #9

David McClure was a Scottish immigrant who moved to New Hampshire after a brief time in Boston. He married another Scottish immigrant, Martha Glenn and together they braved the wilds of the colonial frontier. The book, History of Candia, paints a colorful picture of the challenges from wild animals, to Indian attack, to extreme weather. What follows is the account of the death of David McClure, the first settler in Candia. 

About the winter of 1770, while returning, an old man (David McClure), from a visit to his daughter, in Raymond, he became bewildered in a severe snow storm, and sunk exhausted but a few rods from the path he had lost. His voice, borne by the fitful gusts over the drifting hill sides, was heard at a mile's distance. Ere he was found, he had perished. A pine, at whose foot he fell, had its bark bruised off as far as an old man could reach, in the vain effort to keep off the chill which bound his aged limbs in death. 

Such was the melancholy fate of the first settler in Candia. So perish multitudes whose restless spirits send them, in advance of civilization, to encounter the dangers of the frontier, or plunge into the unexplored recesses of the wilderness. 

What seems the most tragic to me is that they could evidently hear his cries for help but couldn't get to him in time to save him! He was so close, yet so far away! 

I wrote about his wife, Martha Glenn, for the "One Tough Woman" prompt.

My Line
David McClure
Jane McClure

Elizabeth Simpson
David Philbrick
Oliver Smith Philbrick
Benjamin Perley Philbrick
Lizzie Philbrick
Ray Everett Cotton
Fern Lyndell Cotton - my grandmother