"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.
"It
is the knowledge that Scotsmen have done their share in building
up the great Republic that makes them proud of its progress
and inspires them to add to its glories and advantages in
every way. Scotsmen, as a nationality, are everywhere spoken
of as good and loyal citizens, while Americans who can trace
a family residence of a century in the country are proud if
they can count among their ancestors some one who hailed from
the land of Burns, and it is a knowledge of all this, in turn,
that makes the American Scot of today proud of his country's
record and his citizenship and impels him to be as devoted
to the new land as it was possible for him to have been to
the old had he remained in it. In America, the old traditions,
the old blue flag with its white cross, the old Doric, are
not forgotten, but are nourished, and preserved, and honored,
and spoken by Scotsmen on every side with the kindliest sentiments
on the part of those to whom they are alien. Americans know
and acknowledge that the traditions and flag and homely speech
have long been conserved to the development of that civil
and religious liberty on which the great confederation of
sovereign republican States has been founded. In the United
States, Sir Walter Scott has more readers and quite as enthusiastic
admirers as in Scotland, and if Americans were asked which
of the world's poets came nearest to their hearts, the answer
would undoubtedly be, Robert Burns."
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.
Although
many Scots came to New England and New York they never settled
there in such numbers as to leave their impress on the community
so deeply as they did in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
and the south. There were Presbyterian churches in Lewes,
Newcastle (Delaware), and Philadelphia previous to 1698, and
from that time forward the province of Pennsylvania was the
chief centre of Scottish settlement both from Scotland direct
and by way of Ulster. By 1720 these settlers had reached the
mouth of the Susquehanna, and three years later the present
site of Harrisburg.
Between
1730 and 1745 they settled the Cumberland Valley and still
pushing westward, in 1768-69 the present Fayette, Westmoreland,
Allegheny, and Washington counties. In 1773 they penetrated
to and settled in Kentucky, and were followed by a stream
of Todds, Flemings, Morrisons, Barbours, Breckinridges, McDowells,
and others. By 1790 seventy-five thousand people were in the
region and Kentucky was admitted to the Federal Union in 1792.
By 1779 they had crossed the Ohio River into the present state
of Ohio. Between the years 1730 and 1775 the Scottish immigration
into Pennsylvania often reached ten thousand a year.