According to that account, John, Jean, and Patrick crossed the Atlantic in a sailing vessel, and the voyage did not go smoothly. Unfavorable winds prolonged the crossing to three months. Before they reached America, their water and provisions ran short. Patrick supposedly left Ireland wearing a new pair of buckskin breeches that fit him tightly. After three months at sea, with food running short, the breeches were considerably looser when he stepped ashore.

Among the children of Robert Carruthers Sr. and Margaret Gillespie, none leaves a clearer documentary trail than Robert Carruthers Jr. (1763-1828).

Follow his life from Revolutionary North Carolina through early Tennessee using military records, federal censuses, migration evidence, and probate proceedings that preserve one of the family's best-documented frontier stories.