Cabarrus Celtic Festival

Long before Cabarrus County had a name, its rolling Piedmont hills were home to people with Celtic roots. In the mid-1700s, Scots-Irish Presbyterian families came down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania. Writing in 1755, Royal Governor Arthur Dobbs described them as "a Colony from Ireland… of what we call Scotch-Irish Presbyterians." By 1751 they had founded Rocky River and Poplar Tent Presbyterian Churches. Poplar Tent took its name from the simple tent its first worshippers gathered under. Rocky River's first minister, the Reverend Alexander Craighead, was known for speaking out for freedom from England, and that spirit carried down to the Cabarrus Black Boys. These were local patriots who blackened their faces in 1771 and blew up a royal gunpowder shipment, years before the Revolution began. Today we celebrate that heritage of faith, music and fierce independence.