After crossing the Awe the road turns down the north side of the
River and winds through a magnificent park, some of the trees of
which must certainly have been there before the Major’s time. This
is all the more remarkable because with the exception of the parks
of the private estates, Scotland is nearly a treeless country and
even the mountains and wild land which with us would be covered
with forests, have there only grass and heather. Then at the end
of a delightful four mile drive was old Inverawe house and a most
cordial and hospitable welcome from its present owner.
The old house has had many additions in the past one hundred and
fifty years but the entrance hall and the main part of the building
and particularly the room where Duncan Campbell saw the ghost,
are still very much as they were in his time. We endeavored to
learn as much as possible of the family history of the Campbells
of Inverawe, but like the records of the Black Watch of that time,
there was in 1910, little left but tradition.
_The Campbells of Inverawe_
Twenty years have passed since the account of the Black Watch at
Ticonderoga as written for the 1910 meeting of the New York State
Historical Association was published, and while we regret that very
little can be added, we are pleased to say that few corrections
have had to be made in the story as then told. It was thought that
the records of the Regiment of the 18th Century were discovered in
1913 among the military manuscripts in the Royal United Service
Institution, but while they purported to be the original records,
careful examination disclosed that they had been written early in
the nineteenth century so nothing new was learned of the Regiment
of the Ticonderoga period. The preceding pages therefore are
practically unchanged.
The part, however, about the family history of Major Duncan
Campbell of Inverawe has been entirely rewritten. We are indebted
for this additional information to the descendants of Alexander,
a brother of Duncan of Inverawe, to the late Major Sir Duncan
Campbell of Barcaldine, to the late Captain Douglas Wimberly, and
others. No one feature of the Black Watch at Ticonderoga has been
of such general interest as the ghost story of its Major, Duncan
Campbell of Inverawe, and the straightening out of the family
puzzle which was such a mystery in 1910 has been a fascinating
study.
The Major’s memory has been honored recently by two celebrations.
In 1920 when his bones were moved to the Jane McCrea enclosure,
just inside the main gate of the Union Cemetery between Hudson
Falls and Fort Edward, where his ancient tombstone now has the
protection of a high iron fence, and in 1925 when a monument to
the Black Watch and its Major was unveiled at Fort Ticonderoga.
Both occasions were under the auspices of the St. Andrews Society
of Scots of Glens Falls and vicinity, and the New York State
Historical Association.
[Illustration: Photo by Miss Dorothea E. Seaton, Edinburgh