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Extract from Scotland's Mark on America,
by George Fraser Black.
Originally published
by the Scottish Section of "America's Making" New York, 1921, p 8 -18.
Some additional cross references have been added in [ ] and as footnotes.
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.
[ NOTE: The Henry &
Francis carried survivors of the “Crown” disaster and prisoners ex
Dunnottar gifted by the Crown to Pitlochrie as slaves. See
www.thereformation.info/passhf.htm Johnston tried to sell them to
recover costs but lost his court case because they had not come
voluntarily.
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, educated at Univ. of
Edinburgh; M.A. (25th June1697); he had been appointed by the Commission
of General Assembly to accompany the Second Expedition to Darien 21st July
1699. He was on his way back to Scotland when the vessel was overtaken by
storm in Charleston Harbour, South Carolina, and greatly damaged. The
Puritan congregation at Charleston (vacant through the death of John
Cotton, 8th Sept. 1699) learning that a Scottish min. was on board,
welcomed him amongst them and gave him a call to be their minister. He and
some others disembarked just in time as the following day, the Rising
Sun, while lying off the bar, was overwhelmed in a hurricane and all
on board were drowned.
He
removed to Willtown, Carleton County, in 1707; in 1722 he petitioned the
House of Representatives that the " Established Church of Scotland should
be on the same footing as the Established Church of England" . He died in
1741. He married 9 July 1699 Elizabeth Park, the daughter of James Park, a
`writer` [solicitor] in Edinburgh. Their daughter Jean married in 1729,
James Bulloch, from Glasgow, and was great- great- great- grandmother of
Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States.
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 ndependent 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 cotland.... 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 ownservants. 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-seventhpsalm:
"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 waspublished 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 in1773-74.
In New York City about
the end of the eighteenth century there was acolony 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.
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