McGrath,

Here is some more detail about the Scots Highlander settlement in the Cape Fear Valley, from David Hackett Fisher, Albion's Seed, Oxford U.P., 1989, page 818:

"Highland Scots began to arrive circa 1732. Many followed after the '45 rebellion, and by 1776 their numbers were nearly as large as the white population of the South Carolina low country. [Citation to Duane Meyer, The Highland Scots of North Carolina 1732-1776, Chapel Hill, 1961.] Other ethnic groups also settled in the Cape Fear Valley, but so dominant were highlanders that Gaelic came to be spoken in this region even by people who were not scots. There is a story of a newly arrived Highland lady who heard two men speaking in Gaelic:

Assuming by their sppech that they must inevitably  be fellow Highlanders, she came nearer, only to discover   that their skin was black.  Then she knew that her worst  foreboding  about the climate of the South was not un-  founded  and cried in horror, "A Dhí nan fras,   am fas sinn bhuile mar sin "?(O God of mercy, are we all  going to turn black like  that?)

[Citation to Meyer, Highland Scots, p. 119, and Charles W. Dunn, Highland Settler: A Portrait of the Scottish Gael in Nova Scotia, Toronto, 1953, p. 138.

Even in the twentieth century, the Cape Fear pepole sent to Scotland for minsiters who were required to wear the kilt, play the pipes, and preach in Gaelic. [Citation to "Personal conversation with Charles Joyner"].

Cape Fear is in the southernmost part of North Carolina. Presumably the Cape Fear Valley is the valley in which lies the Cape Fear river, enters the saltwater at Cape Fear.