Francis Locke Sr.
Francis Locke was born in 1722 in Ireland. He was the son of John and Elizabeth Locke. When he was still young, the family emigrated to Lancaster, Pennsylvania Colony, where Locke grew up. After his father died in 1744, his mother married John Brandon, who eventually moved the family to Anson County, North Carolina Colony. That area of the county was later split off as Rowan County, North Carolina.
Natural and legal rights
This marked an important departure from medieval natural law theories which gave precedence to obligations over rights.
John Locke (1632 – 1704) was another prominent Western philosopher who conceptualized rights as natural and inalienable. Like Hobbes, Locke believed in a natural right to life, liberty, and property. It was once conventional wisdom that Locke greatly influenced the American Revolutionary War with his writings of natural rights, but this claim has been the subject of protracted dispute in recent decades. For example, the historian Ray Forrest Harvey declared that Jefferson and Locke were at "two opposite poles" in their political philosophy, as evidenced by Jefferson’s use in the Declaration of Independence of the phrase "pursuit of happiness" instead of "property." More recently, the eminent legal historian John Phillip Reid has deplored contemporary scholars’ "misplaced emphasis on John Locke," arguing that American revolutionary leaders saw Locke as a "commentator" on established constitutional principles. Thomas Pangle has defended Locke's influence on the Founding, claiming that historians who argue to the contrary either misrepresent the classical republican alternative to which they say the revolutionary leaders adhered, do not understand Locke, or point to someone else who was decisively influenced by Locke. This position has also been sustained by Michael Zuckert.