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SCOTLAND'S MARK ON AMERICA
By GEORGE FRASER BLACK, PH.D.
With a Foreword By JOHN FOORD
_Published by_
The Scottish Section of "America's Making" New York, 1921
FOREWORD
It has been said that the Scot is never so much at home as when he is
abroad. Under this half-jesting reference to one of the
characteristics of our race, there abides a sober truth, namely, that
the Scotsman carries with him from his parent home into the world
without no half-hearted acceptance of the duties required of him in
the land of his adoption. He is usually a public-spirited citizen, a
useful member of society, wherever you find him. But that does not
lessen the warmth of his attachment to the place of his birth, or the
land of his forbears. Be his connection with Scotland near or remote,
there is enshrined in the inner sanctuary of his heart, memories,
sentiments, yearnings, that are the heritage of generations with whom
love of their country was a dominant passion, and pride in the deeds
that her children have done an incentive to effort and an antidote
against all that was base or ignoble.
It is a fact that goes to the core of the secular struggle for human
freedom that whole-hearted Americanism finds no jarring note in the
sentiment of the Scot, be that sentiment ever so intense. In the
sedulous cultivation of the Scottish spirit there is nothing alien,
and, still more emphatically, nothing harmful, to the institutions
under which we live. The things that nourish the one, engender
attachment and loyalty to the other. So, as we cherish the memories of
the Motherland, keep in touch with the simple annals of our
childhood's home, or the home of our kin, bask in the fireside glow of
its homely humor, or dwell in imagination amid the haunts of old
romance, we are the better Americans for the Scottish heritage from
which heart and mind alike derive inspiration and delight.
It is as difficult to separate the current of Scottish migration to
the American Colonies, or to the United States that grew out of them,
from the larger stream which issued from England, as it is to
distinguish during the last two hundred years the contributions by
Scotsmen from those of Englishmen to the great body of English
literature. We have the first census of the new Republic, in the year
1790, and an investigator who classified this enumeration according to
what he conceived to be the nationality of the names, found that the
total free, white, population numbering 3,250,000 contained 2,345,844
people of English origin; 188,589 of Scottish origin, and 44,273 of
Irish origin. The system of classification is manifestly loose, and
the distribution of parent nationalities entirely at variance with
known facts. That part of the population described as Irish was
largely Ulster-Scottish, the true Irish never having emigrated in any
considerable numbers until they felt the pressure of the potato
famine, fifty years later. There is excellent authority for the
statement that, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War one-third of
the entire population of Pennsylvania was of Ulster-Scottish origin. A
New England historian, quoted by Whitelaw Reid, counts that between
1730 and 1770 at least half a million souls were transferred from
Ulster to the Colonies--more than half of the Presbyterian population
of Ulster--and that at the time of the Revolution they made one-sixth
of the total population of the nascent Republic. Another authority
fixes the inhabitants of Scottish ancestry in the nine Colonies south
of New England at about 385,000. He counts that less than half of the
entire population of the Colonies was of English origin, and that
nearly, or quite one-third of it, had a direct Scottish ancestry.
These conclusions find powerful support in the number of distinguished
men whom the Scots and the Ulstermen contributed to the Revolutionary
struggle, and to the public life of the early days of the United
States. Out of Washington's twenty-two brigadier generals, nine were
of Scottish descent, and one of the greatest achievements of the
war--the rescue of Kentucky and the whole rich territory northwest of
the Ohio, from which five States were formed--was that of General
George Rogers Clark, a Scottish native of Albert County, Virginia.
When the Supreme Court of the United States was first organized by
Washington three of the four Associate Justices were of the same
blood--one a Scot and two Ulster-Scots. When the first Chief Justice,
John Jay, left the bench, his successor, John Rutledge, was an
Ulster-Scot. Washington's first cabinet contained four members--two of
them were Scotch and the third was an Ulster-Scot. Out of the
fifty-six members who composed the Congress that adopted the
Declaration of Independence eleven were of Scottish descent. It was in
response to the appeal of a Scot, John Witherspoon, that the
Declaration was signed; it is preserved in the handwriting of an
Ulster-Scot who was Secretary of the Congress; it was first publicly
read to the people by an Ulster-Scot, and first printed by a third
member of the same vigorous body of early settlers.
George Bancroft will hardly be accused of holding a brief for the Scot
in American history but, with all his New England predilections, he
frankly records this conclusion: "We shall find the first voice
publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great
Britain, came not from the Puritans of New England, or the Dutch of
New York, or the planters of Virginia, but from Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians." It was Patrick Henry, a Scot, who kindled the popular
flame for independence. The foremost, the most irreconcilable, the
most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last extremity, were
those whom the bishops and Lord Donegal & Company had been pleased to
drive out of Ulster.
The distinguished place which men of Scottish or of Ulster origin had
asserted for themselves in the councils of the Colonies was not lost
when the Colonies became independent States. Among the first of the
thirteen original States two-thirds were of either Scottish or
Ulster-Scottish origin. Of the men who have filled the great office of
President of the United States, eleven out of the whole twenty-five
come under the same category. About half the Secretaries of the
Treasury of the Government of the United States have been of Scottish
descent, and nearly a third of the Secretaries of State.
But it is perhaps in the intangible things that go to the making of
national character that the Scottish contribution to the making of
America has been most notable. In 1801, the population of the whole of
Scotland was but little over a million and a half, and behind that
there were at least eight centuries of national history. Behind that,
too, were all the long generations of toil and strife in which the
Scottish character was being molded into the forms that Scott and
Burns made immortal. It is a character full of curious contrasts, with
its strong predilection for theology and metaphysics on one side, and
for poetry and romance on the other. Hard, dry and practical in its
attitude to the ordinary affairs of life, it is apt to catch fire from
a sudden enthusiasm, as if volatility were its dominant note and
instability its only fixed attribute. And so it has come about that
side by side with tomes of Calvinistic divinity, there has been
transmitted to Scotsmen an equally characteristic product of the mind
of their race--a body of folksong, of ballad poetry, of legend and of
story in that quaint and copious Doric speech which makes so direct an
appeal to the hearts of men whether they are to the manner born or
not. It is surely a paradox that a nation which, in the making, had
the hardest kind of work to extract a scanty living from a stubborn
soil, and still harder work to defend their independence, their
liberties, their faith from foes of their own kindred, should be best
known to the world for the romantic ideals they have cherished and the
chivalrous follies for which their blood has been shed.
But, it is well to remember that long before the Reformers of the
sixteenth century founded the parish school system of Scotland, the
monasteries had their schools and so had the parish churches; there
were high schools in the burghs and song schools of remarkable
excellence. The light of learning may have waxed dim at times, but it
was not from an illiterate land that Scottish scholars carried into
Europe all through the Middle Ages the name and fame of their country,
any more than it was from a people unversed in the arts of war that
Scottish soldiers went abroad to fight foreign battles, giving now a
Constable to France, a General-in-Chief to Russia and still again a
Lieutenant to Gustavus Adolphus. If evidence were needed of the vigor
of the Scottish race, it is readily forthcoming in the fact that for
five hundred years the Land O'Cakes enriched the world with the
surplus of her able men.
Nurse of heroes, nurse of martyrs, nurse of freemen, are titles which
belong of right to our Motherland and she has been justified of her
children, at home and abroad. The rolls of honor of many countries and
many climes bear their names; there is no field of distinction whether
it be of thought or of action that has not witnessed their triumphs.
That Scotland has yielded more than her share of the men who have gone
forth to the conquest of the world is largely due to the fact that it
was part of her discipline that men must first conquer themselves. The
weakest of them felt that restraining influence, and the striving
after the Scottish ideal, however feeble, has been a protection
against sinking into utter baseness. The most wayward scions of the
Scottish family have known that influence, and have borne testimony to
the beauty of the homely virtues which they failed to practice and the
nobility of aspirations which fell short of controlling their life.
It belongs to the character and antecedents of Scotsmen that the
attribute of national independence should take so high a place among
the objects of human effort and desire. It was because Scotland
settled for all time, six hundred years ago, her place as an
independent State that she proved herself capable of begetting men
like John Knox, Robert Burns and Walter Scott. It is because the vigor
of the Scottish race and the adaptiveness of the Scottish genius
remain to-day unimpaired, that the lustre of Scottish-names shone so
brilliantly during the World War. It may be confidently asserted that,
whether regarded as a race or a people no members of the great
English-speaking family did more promptly, more cheerfully or more
courageously make the sacrifices required to perform their full part
in the struggle to defend the freedom that belongs to our common
heritage and to preserve the ideals without which we should not regard
life as worth living. The union, centuries old, in the Scottish mind
and heart of the most uncompromising devotion to individual liberty
with the most fervid patriotism, is a sentiment of which the world
stands greatly in need to-day. We need not go far to find evidence of
how perilous it is to sink regard for the great conception of human
brotherhood in a narrow, nationalistic concern for individual
interests. In the Scottish conception of liberty, _duties_ have always
been rated as highly as _rights_; it has been a constructive, not a
destructive formula; it has been an inspiration to raise men out of
themselves, not to prompt them to indulge in antics of promiscuous
leveling. The kind of democracy for which Scotsmen have deemed that
the world should be made safe is a human brotherhood, indeed, but a
brotherhood imbued with the generous rivalry of effort, the enthusiasm
of emulous achievement, and not one of inglorious, monotonous and
colorless equality.
JOHN FOORD
CONTENTS
Foreword 3
Scottish Emigration to the American Colonies 11
Some Prominent Scots and Scots Families 24
Scots as Colonial and Provincial Governors 32
Scots and the Declaration of Independence 36
Scots as Signers of the Declaration of Independence 38
Scots in the Presidency 40
Scots as Vice-Presidents 41
Scots as Cabinet Officers 42
Scots in the Senate 45
Scots in the House of Representatives 47
Scots in the Judiciary 48
Scots as Ambassadors 51
Scots as State Governors 53
Scots in the Army 60
Scots in the Navy 65
Scots as Scientists 67
Scots as Physicians 73
Scots in Education 76
Scots in Literature 81
Scots in the Church and Social Welfare 84
Scots as Lawyers 87
Scots in Art, Architecture, etc. 88
Scots as Inventors 95
Scots as Engineers 99
Scots in Industries 101
Scots in Banking, Finance, Insurance and Railroads 105
Scots as Journalists, Publishers and Typefounders 108
Some Prominent Scots in New York City 113
Scottish Societies in the United States 115
Conclusion 116
List of Principal Authorities Referred to 117
Index 119
"No people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world's
history as the Scots have done. No people have a greater right to be
proud of their blood."--_James Anthony Froude_.
* * * * *
SCOTTISH EMIGRATION TO THE AMERICAN COLONIES
Scottish emigration to America came in two streams--one direct from
the motherland and the other through the province of Ulster in the
north of Ireland. Those who came by this second route are usually
known as "Ulster Scots," or more commonly as "Scotch-Irish," and they
have been claimed as Irishmen by Irish writers in the United States.
This is perhaps excusable but hardly just. Throughout their residence
in Ireland the Scots settlers preserved their distinctive Scottish
characteristics, and generally described themselves as "the Scottish
nation in the north of Ireland." They, of course, like the early
pioneers in this country, experienced certain changes through the
influence of their new surroundings, but, as one writer has remarked,
they "remained as distinct from the native population as if they had
never crossed the Channel. They were among the Irish but not of them."
Their sons, too, when they attended the classes in the University of
Glasgow, signed the matriculation register as "A Scot of Ireland."
They did not intermarry with the native Irish, though they did
intermarry to some extent with the English Puritans and with the
French Huguenots. (These Huguenots were colonies driven out of France
by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and induced to
settle in the north of Ireland by William III. To this people Ireland
is indebted for its lace industry, which they introduced into that
country.)
Again many Irish-American writers on the Scots Plantation of Ulster
have assumed that the Scots settlers were entirely or almost of Gaelic
origin, ignoring the fact, if they were aware of it, that the people
of the Scottish lowlands were "almost as English in racial derivation
as if they had come from the North of England." Parker, the historian
of Londonderry, New Hampshire, speaking of the early Scots settlers in
New England, has well said: "Although they came to this land from
Ireland, where their ancestors had a century before planted
themselves, yet they retained unmixed the national Scotch character.
Nothing sooner offended them than to be called Irish. Their antipathy
to this appellation had its origin in the hostility then existing in
Ireland between the Celtic race, the native Irish, and the English and
Scotch colonists." Belknap, in his _History of New Hampshire_ (Boston,
1791) quotes a letter from the Rev. James MacGregor (1677-1729) to
Governor Shute in which the writer says: "We are surprised to hear
ourselves termed Irish people, when we so frequently ventured our all
for the British Crown and liberties against the Irish papists, and
gave all tests, of our loyalty, which the government of Ireland
required, and are always ready to do the same when demanded."
Down to the present day the descendants of these Ulster Scots settlers
living in the United States who have maintained an interest in their
origin, always insist that they are of Scottish and not of Irish
origin. On this point it will be sufficient to quote the late Hon.
Leonard Allison Morrison, of New Hampshire. Writing twenty-five years
ago he said: "I am one of Scotch-Irish blood and my ancestor came with
Rev. McGregor of Londonderry, and neither _they_ nor any of their
descendants were willing to be called 'merely Irish.' I have twice
visited," he adds, "the parish of Aghadowney, Co. Londonderry, from
which they came, in Ireland, and all that locality is filled, not with
'Irish' but with Scotch-Irish, and this is pure Scotch blood to-day,
after more than _200_ years." The mountaineers of Tennessee and
Kentucky are largely the descendants of these same Ulster Scots, and
their origin is conclusively shown by the phrase used by mothers to
their unruly children: "If you don't behave, Clavers [i.e.,
Claverhouse] will get you."
If we must continue to use the hyphen when referring to these early
immigrants it is preferable to use the term "Ulster Scot" instead of
"Scotch-Irish," as was pointed out by the late Whitelaw Reid, because
it does not confuse the race with the accident of birth, and because
the people preferred it themselves. "If these Scottish and
Presbyterian colonists," he says, "must be called Irish because they
had been one or two generations in the north of Ireland, then the
Pilgrim Fathers, who had been one generation or more in Holland, must
by the same reasoning be called Dutch or at the very least English
Dutch."
To understand the reasons for the Scots colonization of Ulster and the
replantation in America it is necessary to look back three centuries
in British history. On the crushing of the Irish rebellion under Sir
Cahir O'Dogherty in 1607 about 500,000 acres of forfeited land in the
province of Ulster were at the disposal of the crown. At the
suggestion of King James the I. of England, Ulster was divided into
lots and offered to colonists from England. Circumstances, however,
turned what was mainly intended to be an English enterprise into a
Scottish one. Scottish participation "which does not seem to have been
originally regarded as important," became eventually, as Ford points
out, the mainstay of the enterprise. "Although from the first there
was an understanding between [Sir Arthur] Chichester and the English
Privy Council that eventually the plantation would be opened to Scotch
settlers, no steps were taken in that direction until the plan had
been matured ... The first public announcement of any Scottish
connection with the Ulster plantation appears in a letter of March 19,
1609, from Sir Alexander Hay, the Scottish secretary resident at the
English Court, to the Scottish Privy Council at Edinburgh." In this
communication Hay announced that the king "out of his unspeikable love
and tindir affectioun" for his Scottish subjects had decided that they
were to be allowed a share, and he adds, that here is a great
opportunity for Scotland since "we haif greitt advantaige of
transporting of our men and bestiall [i.e., live stock of a farm] in
regairde we lye so neir to that coiste of Ulster." Immediately on
receipt of this letter the Scottish Privy Council made public
proclamation of the news and announced that those of them "quho ar
disposit to tak ony land in Yreland" were to present their desires and
petitions to the Council. The first application enrolled was by "James
Andirsoun portionair of Litle Govane," and by the 14th of September
seventy-seven Scots had come forward as purchasers. If their offers
had been accepted, they would have possessed among them 141,000 acres
of land. In 1611, in consequence of a rearrangement of applicants the
number of favored Scots was reduced to fifty-nine, with eighty-one
thousand acres of land at their disposal. Each of these "Undertakers,"
as they were called, was accompanied to his new home by kinsmen,
friends, and tenants, as Lord Ochiltree, for instance, who is
mentioned as having arrived "accompanied with thirty-three followers,
a minister, some tenants, freeholders, [and] artificers." By the end
of 1612 the emigration from Scotland is estimated to have reached
10,000. Indeed, before the end of this year so rapidly had the traffic
increased between Scotland and Ireland that the passage between the
southwest of Scotland and Ulster "is now become a commoun and are
ordinarie ferrie," the boat-men of which were having a rare time of it
by charging what they pleased for the passage or freight. In the
selection of the settlers measures were carefully taken that they
should be "from the inwards part of Scotland," and that they should be
so located in Ulster that "they may not mix nor intermarry" with "the
mere Irish." For the most part the settlers appear to have been
selected from the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, and
Dumfries. Emigration from Scotland to Ireland appears to have
continued steadily and the English historian Carte estimated, after
diligent documentary study, that by 1641 there were in Ulster 100,000
Scots and 20,000 English settlers. In 1656 it was proposed by the
Irish government that persons "of the Scottish nation desiring to come
into Ireland" should be prohibited from settling in Ulster or County
Louth, but the scheme was not put into effect. Governmental opposition
notwithstanding emigration from Scotland to Ireland appears to have
continued steadily, and after the Revolution of 1688 there seems to
have been a further increase. Archbishop Synge estimated that by 1715
not less than 50,000 Scottish families had settled in Ulster during
these twenty-seven years. It should be also mentioned that "before the
Ulster plantation began there was already a considerable Scottish
occupation of the region nearest to Scotland. These Scottish
settlements were confined to counties Down and Antrim, which were not
included in the scheme of the plantation. Their existence facilitated
Scottish emigration to the plantation and they were influential in
giving the plantation the Scottish character which it promptly
acquired. Although planned to be in the main an English settlement,
with one whole county turned over to the city of London alone, it soon
became in the main a Scottish settlement."
The Scots were not long settled in Ulster before misfortune and
persecution began to harass them. The Irish rebellion of 1641, said by
some to have been an outbreak directed against the Scottish and
English settlers, regarded by the native Irish as intruders and
usurpers, caused them much suffering; and Harrison says that for
"several years afterward 12,000 emigrants annually left Ulster for the
American plantations." The Revolution of 1688 was also long and bloody
in Ireland and the sufferings of the settlers reached a climax in the
siege of Londonderry (April to August, 1688). They suffered also from
the restrictions laid upon their industries and commerce by the
English government. These restrictions, and later the falling in of
leases, rack-renting by the landlords, payment of tithes for support
of a church with which they had no connection, and several other
burdens and annoyances, were the motives which impelled emigration to
the American colonies from 1718 onwards. Five ships bearing seven
hundred Ulster Scots emigrants arrived in Boston on August 4, 1718,
under the leadership of Rev. William Boyd. They were allowed to select
a township site of twelve miles square at any place on the frontiers.
A few settled at Portland, Maine, at Wicasset, and at Worcester and
Haverhill, Massachusetts, but the greater number finally at
Londonderry, New Hampshire. In 1723-4 they built a parsonage and a
church for their minister, Rev. James MacGregor. In six years they had
four schools, and within nine years Londonderry paid one-fifteenth of
the state tax. Previous to the Revolution of 1776 ten distinct
settlements were made by colonists from Londonderry, N.H., all of
which became towns of influence and importance. Notable among the
descendants of these colonists were Matthew Thornton, Henry Knox, Gen.
John Stark, Hugh McCulloch, Horace Greeley, Gen. George B. McClellan,
Salmon P. Chase, and Asa Gray. From 1771 to 1773 "the whole emigration
from Ulster is estimated at 30,000 of whom 10,000 were weavers."
In 1706 the Rev. Cotton Mather put forth a plan to settle hardy Scots
families on the frontiers of Maine and New Hampshire to protect the
towns and churches there from the French and Indians, the Puritans
evidently not being able to protect themselves. He says, "I write
letters unto diverse persons of Honour both in Scotland and in
England; to procure Settlements of Good Scotch Colonies, to the
Northward of us. This may be a thing of great consequence;" and
elsewhere he suggests that a Scottish colony might be of good service
in getting possession of Nova Scotia. In 1735, twenty-seven families,
and in 1753 a company of sixty adults and a number of children,
collected in Scotland by General Samuel Waldo, were landed at George's
River, Maine. In honor of the ancient capital of their native country,
they named their settlement Stirling.
Another and an important cause of the early appearance of Scots in
America was the wars between Scotland and England during the
Commonwealth. Large numbers of Scottish prisoners taken at Dunbar
(1650) and at Worcester (1651) were sold into service in the colonies,
a shipload arriving in Boston Harbor in 1652 on the ship _John and
Sara_. The means taken to ameliorate their condition led in 1657 to
the foundation of the Scots Charitable Society of Boston--the earliest
known Scottish society in America. Its foundation may be taken as
evidence that there were already prosperous and influential Scots
living in Boston at that time. A list of the passengers of the _John
and Sara_ is given in Suffolk _Deed Records_ (bk. 1, pp. 5-6) and in
Drake's _The Founders of New England_ (Boston, 1860, pp. 74-76). These
men, says Boulton, "worked out their terms of servitude at the Lynn
iron works and elsewhere, and founded honorable families whose Scotch
names appear upon our early records. No account exists of the Scotch
prisoners that were sent to New England in Cromwell's time; at York in
1650 were the Maxwells, McIntires, and Grants. The Mackclothlans
[i.e., Mac Lachlans], later known as the Claflins, gave a governor to
Massachusetts and distinguished merchants to New York City."
The bitter persecution of Presbyterians during the periods of
episcopal rule in the latter half of the seventeenth century also
contributed largely to Scottish emigration to the new world. A
Scottish merchant in Boston named Hugh Campbell, obtained permission
from the authorities of the Bay State Colony in February 1679-80 to
bring in a number of settlers from Scotland and to establish them in
the Nepmug country in the vicinity of Springfield, Massachusetts.
So desperate had matters become in Scotland at the beginning of the
eighth decade of the seventeenth century that a number of the nobility
and gentry determined to settle in New Jersey and the Carolinas. One
of these colonies was founded in New Jersey in 1682 under the
management of James Drummond, Earl of Perth, John Drummond, Robert
Barclay the Quaker Apologist, David and John Barclay, his brothers,
Robert Gordon, Gawen Lawrie, and George Willocks. In 1684 Gawen
Lawrie, who had been for several years previously residing in the
colony, was appointed Deputy Governor of the province, and fixed his
residence at Elizabeth. In the same year Perth (so named in honor of
the Earl of Perth, one of the principal proprietors, now Perth Amboy)
was made the capital of the new Scottish settlement. During the
following century a constant stream of emigrants both from Scotland
and from Ulster came to the colony. One of the principal encouragers
of the Scottish colony in New Jersey was George Scot or Scott (d.
1685) of Pitlochrie, who had been repeatedly fined and imprisoned by
the Privy Council of Scotland for attending "Conventicles," as
clandestine religious gatherings were then called in Scotland, and in
the hope of obtaining freedom of worship in the new world he proposed
to emigrate "to the plantations." To encourage others to do the like
he printed at Edinburgh (1685) a work, now very rare, called "The
Model of the Government of the Province of East New Jersey, in
America; and Encouragement for Such as Design to be concerned there."
Scot received a grant of five hundred acres in recognition of his
having written the work, and sailed in the _Henry and Francis_ for
America. A malignant fever broke out among the passengers and nearly
half on board perished including Scot and his wife. A son and daughter
survived and the proprietors a year after issued a confirmation of the
grant to Scot's daughter and her husband (John Johnstone), many of
whose descendants are still living in New Jersey.
Walter Ker of Dalserf, Lanarkshire, banished in 1685, settled in
Freehold, and was active in organizing the Presbyterian Church there,
one of the oldest in New Jersey. The Scots settlers who came over at
this period occupied most of the northern counties of the state but
many went south and southwest, mainly around Princeton, and, says
Samuel Smith, the first historian of the province, "There were very
soon four towns in the Province, viz., Elizabeth, Newark, Middletown
and Shrewsbury; and these with the country round were in a few years
plentifully inhabited by the accession of the Scotch, of whom there
came a great many." These Scots, says Duncan Campbell, largely gave
"character to this sturdy little state not the least of their
achievements being the building up if not the nominal founding of
Princeton College, which has contributed so largely to the scholarship
of America."
In 1682 another company of nobles and gentlemen in Scotland arranged
for a settlement at Port Royal, South Carolina. These colonists
consisted mainly of Presbyterians banished for attending
"Conventicles." The names of some of these immigrants, whose
descendants exist in great numbers at the present day, included James
McClintock, John Buchanan, William Inglis, Gavin Black, Adam Allan,
John Gait, Thomas Marshall, William Smith, Robert Urie, Thomas Bryce,
John Syme, John Alexander, John Marshall, Matthew Machen, John Paton,
John Gibson, John Young, Arthur Cunningham, George Smith, and George
Dowart. The colony was further increased by a small remnant of the
ill-fated expedition to Darien. One of the vessels which left Darien
to return to Scotland, the _Rising Sun_, was driven out of its course
by a gale and took refuge in Charleston. Among its passengers was the
Rev. Archibald Stobo, who was asked by some people in Charleston to
preach in the town while the ship was being refitted. He accepted the
invitation and left the ship with his wife and about a dozen others.
The following day, the _Rising Sun_, while lying off the bar, was
overwhelmed in a hurricane and all on board were drowned. This Rev.
Archibald Stobo was the earliest American ancestor of the late
Theodore Roosevelt's mother. In the following year (1683) the colony
was augmented by a number of Scots colonists from Ulster led by one
Ferguson. A second Scottish colony in the same year under Henry
Erskine, Lord Cardross, founded Stuartstown (so named in honor of his
wife). Another colony from Ulster was that of Williamsburgh township
(1732-34), who named their principal village Kingstree.
There were settlements of Scots Highlanders in North Carolina, on the
Cape Fear River, as early as 1729; some indeed are said to have
settled there as early as 1715. Neill McNeill of Jura brought over a
colony of more than 350 from Argyllshire in 1739, and large numbers in
1746, after Culloden, and settled them on the Cape Fear River. Cross
Creek, now Fayetteville, was the center of these Highland settlements,
and hither came the Scottish heroine, Flora MacDonald, in 1775. The
mania for emigration to North Carolina affected all classes in
Scotland and continued for many years. The _Scots Magazine_ for May
1768 records that a number of settlers from the Western Isles had
embarked for Carolina and Georgia, including forty or fifty families
from Jura alone. In September of following year it is stated that a
hundred families of Highlanders had arrived at Brunswick, North
Carolina, and "two vessels are daily expected with more." In August
1769 the ship _Mally_ sailed from Islay full of passengers for North
Carolina, which was the third or fourth emigration from Argyll "since
the conclusion of the late war." In August 1770 it was stated that
since the previous April six vessels carrying about twelve hundred
emigrants had sailed from the western Highlands for North Carolina. In
February of the following year the same magazine states that five
hundred souls in Islay and adjacent islands were preparing to emigrate
to America in the following summer. In September of the same year
three hundred and seventy persons sailed from Skye for North Carolina,
and two entries in the magazine for 1772 record the emigration of
numbers from Sutherland and Loch Erribol. In the same year a writer
says the people who have emigrated from the Western Isles since the
year 1768 "have carried with them at least ten thousand pounds in
specie. Notwithstanding this is a great loss to us, yet the
depopulation by these emigrations is a much greater.... Besides, the
continual emigrations from Ireland and Scotland, will soon render our
colonies independent on the mother-country." In August, 1773, three
gentlemen of the name of Macdonell, with their families and four
hundred Highlanders from Inverness-shire sailed for America to take
possession of a grant of land "in Albany." On the 22d of June
previously between seven and eight hundred people from the Lewis
sailed from Stornoway for the colonies. On the first of September,
1773, four hundred and twenty-five men, women and children from
Inverness-shire sailed for America. "They are the finest set of
fellows in the Highlands. It is allowed they carried at least 6000
pounds Sterling in ready cash with them." In 1774 farmers and heads of
families in Stirlingshire were forming societies to emigrate to the
colonies and the fever had also extended to Orkney and Shetland and
the north of England. In 1753 it was estimated that there were one
thousand Scots in the single county of Cumberland capable of bearing
arms, of whom the Macdonalds were the most numerous. Gabriel Johnston,
governor of the province of North Carolina from 1734 to 1752, appears
to have done more to encourage the settlement of Scots in the colony
than all its other colonial governors combined.
In 1735 a body of one hundred and thirty Highlanders with fifty women
and children sailed from Inverness and landed at Savannah in January
1736. They were under the leadership of Lieutenant Hugh Mackay. Some
Carolinians endeavoured to dissuade them from going to the South by
telling them that the Spaniards would attack them from their houses in
the fort near where they were to settle, to which they replied, "Why,
then, we will beat them out of their fort, and shall have houses ready
built to live in." "This valiant spirit," says Jones, "found
subsequent expression in the efficient military service rendered by
these Highlanders during the wars between the Colonists and the
Spaniards, and by their descendants in the American Revolution. To
John 'More' McIntosh, Captain Hugh Mackay, Ensign Charles Mackay, Col.
John McIntosh, General Lachlan McIntosh, and their gallant comrades
and followers, Georgia, both as a Colony and a State, owes a large
debt of gratitude. This settlement was subsequently augmented from
time to time by fresh arrivals from Scotland.... Its men were prompt
and efficient in arms, and when the war cloud descended upon the
southern confines of the province no defenders were more alert or
capable than those found in the ranks of these Highlanders." "No
people," says Walter Glasco Charlton, "ever came to Georgia who took
so quickly to the conditions under which they were to live or remained
more loyal to her interests" than the Highlanders. "These men," says
Jones, "were not reckless adventurers or reduced emigrants
volunteering through necessity, or exiled through insolvency or want.
They were men of good character, and were carefully selected for their
military qualities.... Besides this military band, others among the
Mackays, the Dunbars, the Baillies, and the Cuthberts applied for
large tracts of land in Georgia which they occupied with their own
servants. Many of them went over in person and settled in the
province."
Among the immigrants who flocked into Virginia in 1729 and 1740 we
find individuals named Alexander Breckinridge, David Logan, Hugh
Campbell, William Graham, James Waddell (the "Blind Preacher"), John
McCue, Benjamin Erwin, Gideon Blackburn, Samuel Houston, Archibald
Scott, Samuel Carrack, John Montgomery, George Baxter, William
McPheeters, and Robert Poage (Page?), and others bearing the names of
Bell, Trimble (Turnbull), Hay, Anderson, Patterson, Scott, Wilson, and
Young. John McDowell and eight of his men were killed by Indians in
1742. Among the members of his company was his venerable father
Ephraim McDowell. In 1763 the Indians attacked a peaceful settlement
and carried off a number of captives. After traveling some distance
and feeling safe from pursuit they demanded that their captives should
sing for their entertainment, and it was a Scotswoman, Mrs. Gilmore,
who struck up Rouse's version of the one hundred and thirty-seventh
psalm:
"By Babel's streams we sat and wept,
When Zion we thought on,
In midst thereof we hanged our harps
The willow tree thereon.
"For there a song required they,
Who did us captive bring;
Our spoilers called for mirth, and said:
'A song of Zion sing.'"
In the following year Colonel Henry Bouquet led a strong force against
the Indians west of the Ohio, and compelled them to desist from their
predatory warfare, and deliver up the captives they had taken. One of
his companies was made up of men from the Central Valley of Virginia,
largely composed of Scots or men of Ulster Scot descent, and commanded
by Alexander McClanahan, a good Galloway surname. Ten years later
occurred the battle of Point Pleasant when men of the same race under
the command of Andrew Lewis defeated the Shawnee Indians.
In January 1775, the freeholders of Fincastle presented an address to
the Continental Congress, declaring their purpose to resist the
oppressive measures of the home government. Among the signers were
William Christian, Rev. Charles Cummings, Arthur Campbell, William
Campbell, William Edmundson, William Preston and others. Several other
counties in the same state, inhabited mainly by Scots or people of
Scottish descent, adopted like resolutions. During the Revolutionary
war, in addition to large numbers of men of Scottish origin serving in
the Continental army from this state, the militia were also constantly
in service under the leadership of such men as Colonels Samuel
McDowell, George Moffett, William Preston, John and William Bowyer,
Samson Mathews, etc.
The following Scots were members of His Majesty's Council in South
Carolina under the royal government, from 1720 to 1776: Alexander
Skene, James Kinloch (1729), John Cleland, James Graeme, George Saxby,
James Michie, John Rattray (1761), Thomas Knox Gordon, and John
Stuart. Andrew Rutledge was Speaker of the Commons' House of Assembly
from 1749 to 1752. David Graeme, attorney at law in 1754, was
Attorney-General of the State from 1757 to 1764. James Graeme, most
probably a relation of the preceding, was elected to the Assembly from
Port Royal in 1732, became Judge of the Court of Vice Admiralty from
1742 to 1752, and Chief Justice from 1749 to 1752. James Michie was
Speaker of the Assembly from 1752 to 1754, Judge of the Court of
Admiralty from 1752 to 1754, and Chief Justice from 1759 to 1761.
William Simpson served as Chief Justice 1761-1762. Thomas Knox Gordon
was appointed Chief Justice in 1771 and served till 1776, and in 1773
he also appears as Member of Council. John Murray was appointed
Associate Justice in 1771 and died in 1774. William Gregory was
appointed by His Majesty's mandamus to succeed him in 1774. Robert
Hume was Speaker of the Assembly in 1732-1733. Robert Brisbane was
Associate Justice in 1764, and Robert Pringle appears in the same
office in 1760 and 1766. John Rattray was Judge of the Court of
Vice-Admiralty in 1760-61, and James Abercrombie appears as
Attorney-General in 1731-32. James Simpson was Clerk of the Council in
1773, Surveyor-General of Land in 1772, Attorney-General in 1774-75,
and Judge of Vice-Admiralty in the absence of Sir Augustus Johnson in
1769. John Carwood was Assistant Justice in 1725. Thomas Nairne was
employed in 1707 "as resident agent among the Indians, with power to
settle all disputes among traders ... to arrest traders who were
guilty of misdemeanors and send them to Charleston for trial, to take
charge of the goods of persons who were committed to prison, and to
exercise the power of a justice of the peace." This Thomas Nairne is
probably the same individual who published, anonymously, "A letter
from South Carolina; giving an account of the soil ... product ...
trade ... government [etc.] of that province. Written by a Swiss
Gentleman to his friend at Bern," the first edition of which was
published in London in 1710 (second ed. in 1732).
Among the names of the seventeen corporate members of the Charleston
Library Society established in 1743 occur those of the following
Scots: Robert Brisbane, Alexander M'Cauley, Patrick M'Kie, William
Logan, John Sinclair, James Grindlay, Alexander Baron, and Charles
Stevenson.
Of the members of the Provincial Congress held at Charleston in
January, 1775, the following were Scotsmen or men of Scottish
ancestry: Major John Caldwell, Patrick Calhoun (ancestor of
Vice-President Calhoun), George Haig of the family of Bemersyde,
Charles Elliott, Thomas Ferguson, Adam Macdonald, Alexander M'Intosh,
John M'Ness, Isaac MacPherson, Col. William Moultrie, David Oliphant,
George Ross, Thomas Rutledge, James Sinkler, James Skirving, senior,
James Skirving, junior, William Skirving, and Rev. William Tennent.
In Maryland there seems to have been a colony of Scots about 1670
under Colonel Ninian Beall, settled between the Potomac and the
Patuxent, and gradually increased by successive additions. Through his
influence a church was established at Patuxent in 1704, the members
of which included several prominent Fifeshire families. Many other
small Scottish colonies were settled on the eastern shore of Maryland
and Virginia, particularly in Accomac, Dorchester, Somerset, Wicomico,
and Worcester counties. To minister to them the Rev. Francis Makemie
and the Rev. William Traill were sent out by the Presbytery of Laggan
in Ulster. Upper Marlborough, Maryland, was founded by a company of
Scottish immigrants and were ministered to by the Rev. Nathaniel
Taylor, also from Scotland.
Two shiploads of Scottish Jacobites taken at Preston in 1716 were sent
over in the ships _Friendship_ and _Good Speed_ to Maryland to be sold
as servants. The names of some of these sufficiently attest their
Scottish origin, as, Dugall Macqueen, Alexander Garden, Henry Wilson,
John Sinclair, William Grant, Alexander Spalding, John Robertson,
William MacBean, William McGilvary, James Hindry, Allen Maclien,
William Cummins, David Steward, John Maclntire, David Kennedy, John
Cameron, Alexander Orrach [Orrock?], Finloe Maclntire, Daniel Grant,
etc. Another batch taken in the Rising of the '45 and also shipped to
Maryland include such names as John Grant, Alexander Buchanan, Patrick
Ferguson, Thomas Ross, John Cameron, William Cowan, John Bowe, John
Burnett, Duncan Cameron, James Chapman, Thomas Claperton, Sanders
Campbell, Charles Davidson, John Duff, James Erwyn, Peter Gardiner,
John Gray, James King, Patrick Murray, William Melvil, William
Murdock, etc.
A strong infusion of Scottish blood in New York State came through
settlements made there in response to a proclamation issued in 1735 by
the Governor, inviting "loyal protestant Highlanders" to settle the
lands between the Hudson River and the northern lakes. Attracted by
this offer Captain Lauchlin Campbell of Islay, in 1738-40, brought
over eighty-three families of Highlanders to settle on a grant of
thirty thousand acres in what is now Washington County. "By this
immigration," says E.H. Roberts, "the province secured a much needed
addition to its population, and these Highlanders must have sent
messages home not altogether unfavorable, for they were the pioneers
of a multitude whose coming in successive years were to add strength
and thrift and intelligence beyond the ratio of their numbers to the
communities in which they set up their homes." Many Scottish
immigrants settled in the vicinity of Goshen, Orange County, in 1720,
and by 1729 had organized and built two churches. A second colony
arrived from the north of Ireland in 1731. At the same time as the
grant was made to Lauchlin Campbell, Lieutenant-Governor Clarke
granted to John Lindsay, a Scottish gentleman, and three associates, a
tract of eighty thousand acres in Cherry Valley, in Otsego County.
Lindsay afterwards purchased the rights of his associates and sent
out families from Scotland and Ulster to the valley of the
Susquehanna. These were augmented by pioneers from Londonderry, New
Hampshire, under the Rev. Samuel Dunlop, who, in 1743 established in
his own house the first classical school west of the Hudson. Ballston
in Saratoga County was settled in 1770 by a colony of Presbyterians
who removed from Bedford, New York, with their pastor, and were
afterwards joined by many Scottish immigrants from Scotland, Ulster,
New Jersey, and New England. The first Presbyterian Church was
organized in Albany in 1760 by Scottish immigrants who had settled in
that vicinity.
Sir William Johnson for his services in the French War (1755-58)
received from the Crown a grant of one hundred thousand acres in the
Mohawk Valley, near Johnstown, which he colonized with Highlanders in
1773-74.
In New York City about the end of the eighteenth century there was a
colony of several hundred Scottish weavers, mainly from Paisley. They
formed a community apart in what was then the village of Greenwich. In
memory of their old home they named the locality "Paisley Place." A
view of some of their old dwellings in Seventeenth Street between
Sixth and Seventh Avenues, as they existed in 1863, is given in
Valentine's _Manual_ for that year.