Person:James Leckie (1)

There are a variety of surname spellings in the old documents, with LECKY believed to be the original.From Family Name History,courtesy of James A. Lackey, Sr. of Kent, Washington: "When found in England the surname Leckey or Lecky, Leckie and Leakey is ultimately of Scottish origin. The name is of local origin, that is, it belongs in the category of surnames derived from the place where the initial bearer once lived or held land. In this instance, the name indicates 'one who came from Leckey,' The name of a baronry in the parish of Gargunnock in Sterlingshire. In Scotland this name is especially found in the shires of Dumbarton and Stirling. . . . Refractory stones called “lecks,” useful in forging iron or steel, are found in Sterlingshire. Workmen in that land of lecks came to be called Leckies. They might have forged weapons for William Wallace but they had no clan tartan; they were artisans or tradesmen, not land owners. . . . and the Leckies of Antrim and Carlow in Ireland are of Scottish descent, having been brought here during the Plantation period of the seventeenth century." King James I had forced many Scottish tradesmen or artisans to leave their homes in Scotland and relocate to Ireland in the period around 1620. King James wanted the Protestant Scots to displace the Catholic Irish in the Ulster region, but the means of production were still controlled by the Anglicans of England, thus the Ulster Plantation." ~ Marilyn B. Headley, Immigrants From Ireland George W. Diehl, The Brick Church On Timber Ridge: “Among the passengers on board an emigrant ship sailing from Londonderry, Ireland, 1n 1748, was a Leech Family of seven and young twenty-year-old Thomas Lackey. Five of the Leeches died and were buried at sea, leaving only eighteen-year old-Agnes and her nine-year old brother John. Landing at a Delaware port, most of the immigrants made their way to the frontier and settled in Lancaster County, Pa. Here six years later, in 1754, Thomas Lackey and Agnes Leech were married and then, with her brother John and his bride, the former Martha McComb, they moved across the Potomac River and made their way up the Shenandoah Valley, finally settling a few miles west of the Natural Bridge in Augusta County, now Rockbridge.... He was a master craftsman in wood-working, a cabinet maker and wheelright. Being well educated, he acted as the scribe for the community. In the American Revolution, he served as a scout."