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The Scot in British North America
Chapter I - The Scots Across the Sea


Farewell, our fathers’ land,
Valley and fountain!
Farewell, old Scotia’s strand,
Forest and mountain!
Then hush the drum, and hush the flute,
And be the stirring bagpipe mute -
Such sounds may not with sorrow suit -
And fare thee well, Lochaber!
-- D.M MOIR

He’s away! he’s away
To far lands o’er the sea-
And long is the day
Ere home he can be;
But where his steed prances,
Amid thronging lances,
Sure he’ll think of the glances
That love stole from me!
-- MOTHERWELL

The loved of early days!
Where are they? – where?
Not on the shining braes,
The mountains bare; -
Not where the regal streams
Their foam bells cast –
Where childhood’s time of dreams
And sunshine pass’d.
Some in the mart and some
In stately halls,
With the ancestral gloom
Of ancient walls;
Some where the tempest sweeps
The desert waves;
Some where the myrtle weeps
On Roman graves.
And pale young faces gleam
With solemn eyes;
Like a remember’d dream
The dead arise;
In the red track of war,
The restless sweep;
In sunlit graves afar
The loved ones sleep.
-- ROBERT MILLER

The extraordinary activity of the emigrant or traveling and adventurous Scot all over the world is an anomaly not readily explicable without understanding fully the antecedents of the country and the people, as we have attempted to set them forth in the preceding part. Other nations, English-speaking and foreign, have either been impelled to migrate fitfully, or strayed far afield, in slender detachments; but the Scots have been wanderers for the last seven or eight centuries systematically, and with little or no interruption. The extraordinary statements of Thomas Dempster, a Scot at the University of Paris, that there were learned Scots at all the learned institutions in Europe as early as the eighth century. From the nature of things that was an impossibility, and only a perverted patriotism could have made, or would persist in, the assertion. Mr. Burton in his work, The Scots Abroad * lays down the more reasonable rule, that all men called Scots on the Continent before the eleventh century, were Irish Scots. This includes at home and abroad, such distinguished names as those of St. Columba, St. Adamnan, Marianus Scotus, the historian Sedulius, author of the first hymn-book, St. Gall, the Apostle of Germany, and John Scotus Erigena.

On the other hand, Duns Scotus, the great founder of a school of medieval philosophy, specially known as Scottists, was unquestionably a Scot in the modern sense of the word. His full name was Johannes de Dunse, Scotus—John of Dunse, a Scot—and he left Oxford for France in 1307, alarmed at the persistent assaults of Edward upon the independence of his country.** A few only of the scholars who established the credit of Scottish intellect and erudition abroad need be mentioned—John Mair or Major, tutor at the Sorbonne, Hector Boece, James (the Admirable) Crichton, satirised in Rabelais, George Buchanan, tutor of Montaigne and James VI., Urquhart, translator of Rabelais, and Dempster. It was the War of Independence, and the intimate alliance of Scotland with France, in the face of a common enemy, which gave the great impetus to Scottish emigration to the continent and laid the foundation for their influence for ages to come, especially in France. There can be no doubt that whether Wallace visited France between his defeat at Falkirk and his capture, or not, the foundations of what is known as "The Ancient League" were laid early in the reign of Philip IV., if not earlier.*** It was not, however, until 1326, twelve years after Bannockburn, that a treaty, offensive and defensive, was concluded between the two powers. This compact, which was renewed from time to time, had important consequences in the progress and results of "The One Hundred Years’ War." The Scots, unlike the foreign mercenaries serving under the House of Valois, stood upon the footing of allies. They fought for the Scottish national cause on the soil of France, and were no mere adventurers. More than that, as Sismondi says they were soon destined to prove "the nerve of the French army, at a time when the people were sunk in wretchedness, dispirited by defeats of no ordinary character, and had lost all hope or self-helpfulness."

England had been in possession of the French capital for more than ten years when, in 1424, John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, landed with a small force, which succeeded, by the valley of the Loire, in reaching the heart of Anjou. A few French had joined him and the result was a battle in which the English chivalry were defeated with terrible slaughter. Honours unusually magnificent were heaped upon Buchan. He was made High Constable of France, ranking next to the princes of the blood and received large estates extending between Avranches and Chartres. Archibald, Earl of Douglas, Buchan’s father-in-law, joined with several thousand Scots and was created Duke of Touraine. Meanwhile the English had collected their strength, allied themselves with the powerful Duke of Burgundy and proved too much for the Scots. They were defeated at Crevant with great slaughter, and at the disastrous battle of Verneuil the Scots force was all but annihilated, their brave leaders, Buchan and Douglas, being left dead on the field. "Verneuil," says Mr. Burton, "was no Crecy, Poitiers or Agincourt, and Bedford and Salisbury were so nearly defeated as to be alarmed. Scotland independent and hostile to England had saved France. Had Henry V. been King of Great Britain, with France at his feet, he might have re-established a Western Empire. The enjoyers of English liberty owe a debt of gratitude to the victors of Bannockburn."+

More than that, France was rehabilitated, and became again a warlike nation. Henry V. was no more, and there was a minority; Burgundy forsook the English alliance, and Charles VII. stood on his feet again. Out of the survivors of Verneuil was formed the Scots Guard. This consisted of one hundred gens d’armes and two hundred archers, and its captain was to be named by the Scots king; when that became absurd, the first French captain, the Count of Montgomery, was appointed solely to preserve the name. The first captain was John Stewart, Lord of Aubigne, the founder of an illustrious Scots house in France.

"Louis XI." says Mr. Burton, "perhaps of all monarchs whose character is well known to the world, the most unconfiding and most skeptical of anything like simple faith and honesty—was content, amid all his shifting, slippery policy and his suspicions and precautions, to rely implicitly on the faith of his Scots Guard." (Vol i., p. 35). Indeed, more than once, Louis, when his habitual suspicions yielded to the tempting allurements of his craft, had good reason to believe, if he believed nothing else, that "simple faith" is more than "Norman blood." Throughout his wily career, he was ever learning lessons of the futility of trusting in promises, hard and loud mouthed; and, on one occasion, at Liege, in the celebrated Peronne expedition, he was saved from Burgundian treachery by the faithful Scots. The Guard were not only faithful beyond the breath of suspicion; but their bravery became proverbial. "Fier comme un Ecossais""—proud as a Scot—says the Chronicler was long a French proverb, "because" he adds "they preferred rather to die in preserving their honour than to live in disgrace." In 1503, it was that their banner-bearer, William Turnbull, fighting the Spaniards in Calabria, was found dead, with the staff in his rigid arms, and the flag gripped in his clenched teeth, with the little cluster of his countrymen around him, killed at their posts.

Mr. Burton’s account of illustrious Scots in France is very full, but it will be obviously impossible to note more than a few of them here. ++ In the early centuries they were a wild lot in the North of Scotland, one of the wildest was Alexander, brother of Robert III, known, in history, as "The Wolf of Badenoch." A natural son of Alexander, named after his father, in the early part of his career, followed the paternal example. He not only "wanted a wife, his braw house to keep," like the Laird o’ Cockpen, but he wanted the braw house to boot. He was not long in securing both; thinking, with the Laird, that "favour wi’ wooing is fashions to seek," so Alexander wooed the widowed Countess of Mar, "as the lion wooes his bride." He took both the lady and her castle of Kildrummy by storm, married the one, and quietly installed himself as Earl of Mar, in the other. But there was evidently a want of elbow-room for him in his new domains; so he naturally went over to France with his retainers, and cut a splendid figure at court. Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, was a brother of James III., but his conduct to that monarch was hardly fraternal. That both the King’s brothers, Albany and Mar, had some cause for complaint is true; at any rate both were imprisoned in Edinburgh, where the latter was murdered, and from which the former escaped to France. Albany, says Robertson, was inspired by what had happened, "with more ambitious and criminal thoughts. He concluded a treaty with Edward IV. of England, in which he assumed the title of Alexander, King of Scots," and thus brought northward an invading English army, under a more celebrated character in history and drama, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. In France, Albany was in the court sunshine. A favourite of Louis XI. he acquired immense estates, and married Anne, daughter of the proud family of Auvergne and Boulogne, a scion of which was Marshal Turenne.

Of the Darnley Stewarts, there were Sir John, founder of the D’Aubignys, and Sir Alexander, who figures as "Viceroy of Naples, Constable of Sicily and Jerusalem, Duke of Terra Nova," &c. Also Matthew, Earl of Lennox, who sought the hand of Mary of Guise, widow of James V. and mother of Mary Stuart. His rival, oddly enough, was the father of that Bothwell "who settled all matters of small family differences, by blowing his son into the air."+++ Of the nobility closely allied to royalty, there were the Earls of Douglas, Lords of Touraine, and the Dukes of Hamilton and Chatelherault. The Dukes of Richmond, Lennox and Gordon, are, of course, entitled to the D’Aubigny dignity. Michel and the chroniclers give a host of Scottish names, most of them long since sunk in territorial titles; some of these may be noted as proof of the vast influence of the Scot upon the destinies of France. There are Guillaume Hay, Jacques Scrimgour, Helis de Guevremont (Kinrinmond), Andrien Stievart, Guillebert, Sidrelant (Sutherland), Alexandre de Jervin (Girvin), Jehan de Miniez (Menzies), Nicholas Chambres, Sieur de Guerche, Coninglant (Cunningham), Jean de Hume, George de Ramesay, Gohory (Gowrie or Govrie, De Glais (Douglas), D’Hendresson, Mauriçon, Dromont (Drummond), Crafort (Crawford), Léviston (Livingstone), Bercy, Locart, Tournebulle, Moncrif, Devillencon or D’Aillençon (Williamson), Maxuel, Herrison (Henryson), Doddes, De Lisle (Leslie), De Lauzun (Lawson), D’Espence (Spence), Sinson (Simpson), &c., &c. The Blackwoods play a distinguished part, and there are also, Thomas de Houston, seigneur, and Robert Pitteloch, a Dundee man, and many others. These exiles from their native land, in fact, regenerated France. At a time when the national pulse beat so feebly as to forbode dissolution, the hardy sons of the north impregnated the veins of France with their own vigorous Scottish blood. Like the Normans of England centuries before, the Scots colony "was received as a sort of aristocracy by race or caste; and hence it became to be a common practice for those who were at a loss for a pedigree to find their way to some adventurous Scot, and stop there, just as, both in France and England, it was sufficient to say that one’s ancestor’s came in with the Normans."*+ In all biographies of the great Colbert, he is said to be of Scottish descent. Moreri says that his ancestor’s tomb is at Rheims. Sully, whose family name was Bethune, Scottish enough of itself, thought to trace relationship with the Beatons. Moliere, to disguise the vulgarity of his patronymic which was Poquelin, suggested noble descent from a Scot. Mr. Burton mentions that some Scots who were petty landed proprietors, in later times, found it to their advantage to use the prefix "de" before the name of their petty holding. John Law, of Lauriston, is a case in point; but the most ludicrous was an invented title palmed off upon Richelieu. Monteith’s father was a fisherman on the Forth, and when the Cardinal asked him to what branch of the Monteiths he belonged, the candidate for patronage boldly replied, "Monteith de Salmonet."

With the Reformation struggle the Scottish influence abroad took, for a time at any rate, another direction. During the struggle for independence in the Netherlands the Scots were divided: part of them adhering to the "old" cause of Mary Stuart and Spain, and part attached to the Protestant resistance of the United Provinces. In Holland they appeared as champions of liberty, in the Scottish brigade, and it is said that, on the eve of the English Revolution, John Graham of Claverhouse, and Mackay, of Scourie, afterwards William’s general at Killiecrankie were rivals for promotion in that corps. At that time, of course, the Scots contingent in Holland had ceased to subserve its original purpose, although there was still plenty of work to accomplish in the struggle with Louis XIV. It was the cause of the Elector Palatine which had hold upon the hearts of patriotic Scots, and the glorious struggle made by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Frederick V. had married Elizabeth, the third child and eldest daughter of James I., from whom is descended in a direct line, Her Majesty the Queen.

In the service of Gustavus Adolphus, there were thirteen Scottish regiments, which kept together in whatever particular part of the field they might be temporarily in the fight. Under Mansfeldt, the king of Denmark, or "the lion of the North," they fought for principle and achieved undying renown. Of the illustrious names which came to the surface in this desperate struggle are those of Sir Andrew Gray, Robert Monro, Sir John Hepburn, Hamilton, Turner, Lumsden, Forbes, Ruthven, Grant, Ramsay, the Leslies, the Lindsays, Rutherford, Spence, Ker, Drummond, Douglas, Baillie, Cunningham, Meldrum, Innes, Ballantine, Sandilands and Leckie—most of them in the rank of general officers. The Thirty Years’ War was the school of discipline from which the Scot emerged a trained soldier. It produced especially a body of the bravest, and most skilful officers of the time, as Mr. Burton remarks, men of the calibre of Alexander Leslie, who led the Covenanting forces, and David Leslie, "who divides with Oliver Cromwell, the fame of Marston Moor."

Before referring to the most illustrious of the Jacobite Scots who performed service abroad, it may be well to note one or two distinguished otherwhere. It has been related that a Scot named Thomas Garne or Garden was once elected "King of Bukheria"; but as that appears to have been on account of the height and grossness of his physical framework, Thomas may be passed over. During that singular period when the Muscovite power was emerging from barbarism under Peter the Great, there were a number of Gordons who, by their fidelity, courage and native intelligence performed essential service. The chief of them was General Patrick Gordon, who wrote a biography of the great, though somewhat erratic, Czar. It is not recorded that Patrick was "the seventh son of a seventh son," but only a "younger son of a younger brother," which brings no luck with it. As he inherited the sound, practical sense of his country, and therefore did not expect his fortune to come down from the stars, he determined to seek it somewhere or other on the surface of the earth. Touching at Elsinore, a classic spot where he may, or may not, have taken Shakespearian observations, he found of course a "brither Scot," one John Donaldson, who sped him on his way. "As he began, so he went on, finding fellow-countrymen dotted here and there, at convenient posting distances, on through Austria and Russia to the very extremities of civilization.*++ Of his great services in Sweden and Poland under John Sobieski, and during his later years in Russia, where he was the right arm of Peter the Great, there is no need to speak in detail. One fact, with the closing scene must suffice. When the Czar went on his celebrated wanderings to Western Europe, he left General Gordon in charge of the Kremlin at Moscow, with four thousand men, and but for the Scot’s valour, address and skilful management, Peter might have worked in the dockyard in England to the day of his death.

Another celebrated character connected with Russia was Samuel Greig, the founder of the Russian navy, and the projector of the fortifications of Cronstadt.*+++ He was a Fife-shire skipper’s son, born at Inverkeithing in 1735, and entered the Royal navy at an early age. He was a lieutenant when the British Government, having been solicited by Russia to send out some naval officers of skill, amongst the rest dispatched Greig. Apart from his organizing abilities, this Scot had all the dash of his race, as shown in the war with the Turks in the Mediterranean, especially by his daring exploits at Scio. He was loaded with honours by the Empress Elizabeth; but whilst he triumphantly swept the Baltic, after blocking up the Swedish fleet in harbour, he caught a violent fever of which he died, in spite of the efforts of Dr. Rogerson, the chief physician, whom the Czarina had promptly sent to his side. Greig had not completed his fifty-third year.+* Of the diplomatists of the period may be specially mentioned Alexander Erskine, who represented Sweden in the conferences which terminated in the Treaty of Westphalia; Sir William Lockhart, of Lee, the Commons’ ambassador to France at the Restoration;. Sir Robert Keith, who rendered invaluable services to the Queen of Denmark, and Sir Alexander Mitchell’s important work at the Court of Prussia.

It would be impossible to give any satisfactory account of the great amount of ability which the Jacobite movement spread over Europe after the Revolution, but more especially at the accession of George I. It took various shapes from the military skill of the Duke of Berwick to the controversial skill of Father Innes or the plottings of a thousand intriguers. Andrew Michael Ramsay, usually called "The Chevalier," was none of these, but a scholarly man, who became a Catholic by accident, and not perhaps a Jacobite at all. He was the son of a baker at Ayr, was educated at Edinburgh, and then at Leyden, where he met Poiret the mystic, who subsequently introduced him to the sainted Fenelon. Under his influence he ceased to be a sceptic, as he had been, and joined the Church of Rome. After this he educated the duke de Chateau-Thierry and Prince Turenne, and at Rome, the children of the Pretender. He visited England, and was made a doctor of laws at Oxford. He was altogether an exceedingly remarkable Scot, even at a time when the star of Voltaire was rapidly nearing its zenith.

We may now give a brief notice of the Keith brothers—one of whom has a brilliant historical reputation. The Earls Marischal are principally associated with the college at Aberdeen, established by the fifth earl, and called by his title. The two of whom we speak are known by the more familiar family name of Keith. Attainted, and the hereditary estates confiscated for the part taken by the brothers in 1715, they went abroad. Of the elder, little need be said, except that he rose in the light of his brother’s genius, and became Frederick the Great’s ambassador to France. He was a man of considerable ability and force of character; but it is James, Marshal Keith, who fills the eye of the historic student. He was only nineteen when the Earl of Mar set up the standard of the Pretender, and had been designed for the bar—a very prescient choice of profession, as appears from the event, but the natural destiny of a younger son. His martial instincts were apparent before he smelt powder; his own remark was that he had begun his studies at his mother’s desire, but, he continued, "commend me to stand before the mouth of a cannon for a few minutes; this either makes a man in an instant, or he dies gloriously in the field of battle." It was Keith’s fate to compass his first enjoyment many a time; the other was to be the fitting conclusion of an illustrious career. His first taste of glory was a wound at Sheriffmuir, and thence he wandered to the Isles, where the brothers found the means of transportation to Brittany. Their road, of course, led to Paris and the mimic court of the Pretender; but there was nothing to do there. The story of his life for years thereafter is one of the most romantic perhaps that could be written of a great military genius, tossed between commissions in Sweden, descents on Scotland under Ormond’s auspices, service in the Irish brigade in Spain, and so on, until he found himself "as the French have it, au pie de la lettre sur le pave"—he had the key of the street. At last with a royal purse in his pocket, he set off for Moscow. The great obstacle in Spain had been that he was a heretic—in Russia that was a matter of small consequence. He now saw some service which attracted the notice of all Europe, and particularly the notice of the great Frederick. In the Prussian service he thereafter lived and died. His exploits are matters of history; in all Frederick’s great movements, he was a leading spirit. One anecdote illustrates his Scottish fidelity, courage and pertinacity. He had been left to defend Leipsic with 8,000 men, and when, at the age of 60, he answered a summons to surrender in these words; "Let your master know that I am by birth a Scotchman, by inclination as well as duty a Prussian, and shall defend the town in such a manner that neither the country which gave me birth, nor that which has adopted me, shall be ashamed of me. The King, my master, has ordered me to defend it to the last extremity, and he shall be obeyed." At Hochkirchen, however, he "died gloriously on the battle-field." Wounded severely in the morning, he refused to quit his post; an hour after he received a shot in the breast and fell lifeless to the ground. Thus, in the sixty-third year of his age, perished one of the bravest soldiers that were ever stirred by the blast of a war trumpet.+** 

There is no need to enter in detail upon the proof of the admitted fact that the enterprising Scot has set foot on every land, and traversed every sea, almost invariably leaving beneficent traces of his presence and his energy. There used to be an old saying that there is no part of the world where a Scotsman and a Newcastle grind-stone cannot be found, and the same notion is conveyed in a less complimentary form in an old verse preserved by Michel. +*** The unsavoury connection in which the universal spread of the Scot is introduced, was no doubt the fruit of a national jealousy, similar to that traceable in England after the Union in Swift, Horace Walpole, Johnson and others, as well as in the letters of Junius. In these last, which are still read and admired as brilliant specimens of splendid, but scorching and unscrupulous invective, this outburst of jealousy, was not altogether without defence, if we make allowance for the natural indignation which must have burned in the breast of a patriotic Englishman, when he saw the illustrious Chatham supplanted by the Earl of Bute, as a minister, and that the influence of the latter continued, as was then supposed, in the form of "a power behind the Throne," after he had been driven from office. Still when he assailed William Murray, Lord Mansfield, the most eloquent lawyer, and the ablest judge who ever presided in the King’s Bench, even Junius felt that he was wrong. "National reflections," he remarks in his Preface,**+ "I confess are not to be justified upon theory, nor upon any general principles." His plea was that the Scots formed an exception to any general rule. Their "characteristic prudence, selfish nationality, persevering assiduity," the qualities for the most part, which were the cause of their success annoyed him, and the "assiduous smile" with which they refused to take offence touched him to the quick. Sir Philip Francis was not the first nor the last, to envy the Scotsman, his intelligence, or success in life. It is the fashion in quarters nearer home than Mr. Woodfall’s Public Advertiser office to assign the uniform prosperity and elevation of the Scot in every walk of life to all possible causes but the true ones. He has been accused of "clannishness;" and yet in most European countries, he has either toiled up the ladder of success, round after round, unaided and alone by his own shrewd intelligence, force of character and innate probity, or he has triumphed in spite of national prejudices instead of by their aid in communities where anything like associated effort on the part of Scotsmen would have been at once fatal to him.

An attempt having been made to give a general conception of what the Scot has done on the continent of Europe ought now to be supplemented by a sketch of his work in the United States and in the British Colonies. It would, however be obviously out of the question to do more than glance at a branch of the general subject, so extensive and important.

Occasionally, as in New Jersey, where an entire valley was peopled by immigrants from Roxburgh and Selkirk shires, they immigrated in compact bodies to various parts of the Union; but generally speaking there was not systematic movement to particular localities, such as we shall have to describe hereafter in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Glengarry and other parts of Ontario. Still in the old Colonial times the Highland movements, particularly of a Jacobite character, had contributed a large number of settlers. At the Revolution there was a considerable amount of proscription if not of terrorism employed by the "Sons of Liberty," and the new nationality lost as many of its best inhabitants as France did by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.**++ The Scots were scattered along the Atlantic seaboard from New York to Georgia and even Florida, and they bore more than their share of loss and suffering. Even the clergy were not exempt. The Rev. Dr. Auchmuty, Rector of Trinity Church, New York, was brutally treated by the "Whigs." The Rev. Alexander Macrae, also an Episcopalian, from Edinburgh, boldly defied the patriots in Virginia, and was waylaid and beaten. But for the intervention of Patrick Henry he would either have been banished or murdered. A similarly bold loyalist was also a Scot belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Rev. Thomas Rankin. He was to have been seized by a militia party; but managed to affect the officers by his sermon. The loyalty of Rev. Dr. William Smith of Aberdeen University, enraged John Adams, and Col. Enos, who proposed to seize him, was betrayed into the declaration that the Doctor was "the most consummate villain that walked on the face of God’s earth."

Patrick Henry, the most brilliant of the Revolutionary orators, was the son of Col. John Henry, a native of Aberdeen. Alexander Campbell, father of "the Poet of Hope" was a Scottish loyalist living at Falmouth, Va., who returned home about 1776; Thomas was his youngest son; another son married Patrick Henry’s daughter. On the mother’s side, the eloquent American was allied to Robertson, the historian, "and in that way to Lord Brougham." On the loyalist side, we may note Sir Robert Abercrombie, brother of the more celebrated Sir Ralph. He fought in the French war, and through the Revolution. William, first earl of Cathcart, raised the Caledonian Volunteers, afterwards known as Tarleton’s British Legion. During the same period we note Admiral Marriott Arbuthnot, a nephew of the poet, Pope and Swift’s coadjutor in Martinus Scriblerus. Col. Moncrieff planned the works at the siege of Charleston. Besides we have George Keith, son of Lord Elphinstone, the noted Admiral who, after the Revolution, distinguished himself at Aboukir Bay. Finally we may note on the King’s side, Lord William Campbell, youngest son of the fourth Duke of Argyll, and Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia in 1766 and 1772. In 1774-5 he was Governor of South Carolina and met the brunt of the Revolutionary storm there. After having gallantly done his best, he retired on board a frigate, and died bravely at his post before Charleston, being mortally wounded on the Bristol in an attack on Fort Moultrie.

[Note sent in by Carol Mitchell - I believe the well documented records show that it was Patrick Henry's Sister, Elizabeth "Betsy" Henry 171749-1804 that married 2 Apr 1776 Gen William Campbell b1744 Augusta Co., VA-22 Aug 1781, they had two children Charles Henry Campbell dsp; and Sarah Buchanan Campbell m. Gen Francis Preston. Now Gen William Campbell was the son of Capt Charles Campbell 1744-1781 and Margaret Buchanan d. 1777 (well documented in Augusta Co. VA Records) Capt. Charles Campbell was the son of Patrick Campbell 1696 Ireland - 1767 August Co. VA. and probably his wife Elizabeth (but some traditions say Delilah Thompson, have seen no proof of this); Elizabeth was believed to be a Taylor. Patrick Campbell emigrated with his family from Ireland to Philiadelphia & then to Orange/Augusta Co., VA where his headrights are listed 1740. Patrick is said to be the son of JOhn Campbell & Grizzel/Gracy Hay. The above Elizabeth (Henry) Campbell m. 2nd Edward Carrington and 3rd 1783 William J. Russell.]

On the revolutionary side, there was a good sprinkling of Scots. One of the most singular of these was William Alexander, who claimed the Earldom of Stirling, and utterly failed.**+++ He subsequently turned patriot, and became a major-general in the revolutionary army. James Alexander was a colonel on the same side. Born in Edinburgh Castle he had sat for some time in the Nova Scotian Assembly. In 1776 he aroused the Micmacs to repeated assaults on Miramichi. He finally withdrew to Maine. Alexander Macdonald was a general, commanding chiefly on the Hudson and in New Jersey. Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, of Inverness, was not only a "patriot" himself, but had seven sons and grandsons engaged with him at the same time in 1776. Gen. Hugh Mercer was a Scot and Major-General Arthur St. Clair, who gave his name to the smallest of our chain of lakes. He was a grandson of the Earl of Rosslyn, born at Thurso, and studied medicine under the great John Hunter. Having received a legacy, he abandoned the lancet, and took up the sword as an officer in the 60th Foot; in that capacity he served at Louisbourg and Quebec. Having married at Boston, he resigned his commission in 1762 and settled in Pennsylvania, erecting saw-mills and putting his shoulder to the wheel as Scots generally do. When the Revolution broke out he espoused the popular cause, and served as colonel from Princeton to Yorktown. His subsequent career was a romantic one. Engaging in Indian wars, he fought on the Miami and Wabash. It was he who founded and named Cincinnati, not as is generally supposed from the self-denying Roman dictator, at least directly, but from the Cincinnati, a Pennsylvania society of which he had been President. In 1791 he passed under a cloud, in consequence of an Indian surprise resulting in the loss of half his men; Congress, however, acquitted him in 1802. Nevertheless Jefferson deprived him of his western governorship, and poor St. Clair retired to his log-house to die in poverty. While speaking of Indians we may notice Gen. William McIntosh, a Creek half-breed, and Alexander McGillivray Chief of the Creek Indians in Georgia and Florida, whose father was Lachlan McGillivray and his mother the half-breed daughter of a French officer. The course of American history during the past century would give a long list of eminent men; but of the soldiers and public men we shall mention only General Ulysses S. Grant, twice already elected to the Presidency. Only a short time since he took the opportunity of expressing pride in his Scottish descent.

In other walks of American life we may take at random George Bruce, who introduced stereotyping, Adam Ramage, the inventor of the Ramage printing press, Scott, an Ayrshireman, who devised the press about to be used extensively in the Dominion, and Henry Burden, who made the first cultivator, are only a few of the ingenious Scots who have developed their powers in the United States. Many of the early editors, both prior to the Revolution and since, were Scots. The most distinguished, judged by his success, is James Gordon Bennett, the founder of the New York Herald. He was a salient example of Scottish shrewdness, industry, and enterprise. Born at New Mill Keith, in Banffshire, he was educated at the Roman Catholic Seminary at Aberdeen, with a view to holy orders. On a sudden impulse, however, he started off for Nova Scotia, in 1819, where he taught school. Removing thence to Boston, he read proofs, and, strange to say, he wrote poetry. In 1822, he betook himself to New York, and became connected with the press; at last, in May 1835, he found his real work, when he published the first number of the Herald. In another direction, a salient instance will be found in the Rev. Dr. McCosh, the learned President of Princeton College. One of the tenderest poets of fifty years ago in the Union was Hew Ainslie, like Burns, an Ayrshire man. His poems were collected so late as 1855, and published with a sympathetic preface by Quincy. George Chalmers, the author of "Caledonia" was a non-combatant loyalist. His life extended from 1742 to 1825. He was an indefatigable delver in the dusty rolls of antiquity, and had, as a writer on the American Revolution a perfect hatred of New England. He ultimately went back to "the pent-up Utica," and ended his days there.

In the craft of ship-building, the Scots have made their mark in America. The work of Napier on the Clyde, Laird of Birkenhead and Lindsay, was pursued by Henry Eckford, in the United States. His mother was sister of John Black, the first layer of keels at Quebec. Commodore Perry’s ships on Erie, as well as Yeo’s for Ontario, were Eckford’s work, and the noble Scottish tar, Commodore Barclay, whose defeat by Perry was no fault of his own, was also a Scot. Donald McKay, a Nova Scotian by birth, of Scottish parentage, was the ship-builder who set the American commercial navy on its feet, and his vessels still hold their own between San Francisco and Australasia. In natural science it is only necessary to name Alexander Wilson, the author of "American Ornithology," whose life is a most impressive example of labours honestly undertaken, and persevered in with true Scottish pertinacity.

It would be easy to show the influence of Scotsmen in American art. The names of William Thom, the sculptor, and James Williamson, the landscape-painter, or, still earlier, that of John Smibert, the founder of the American school to which Copley, Allston and Trumbull belonged. Having thus rather suggested, than surveyed comprehensively the work of the Scot in the American republic, and without attempting to follow him into colonies, other than our own, we shall turn at once to the Provinces which together form the Dominion.

* Vol. ii. pp. 9,10. As Mr. J. H. Burton’s work is not readily accessible, it may be as well to acknowledge our obligation to it here once for all, as well as the Chambers’ Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen. This former is largely founded on Michel: Les Ecossais en France.

** See irrefragable proof of this in Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary, Vol. ii., pp. 198-9.

*** Michel, quoted by Mr. Burton, distinctly affirms that Wallace did take refuge and that his agent at home was the patriotic Lamberton, Archbishop of St. Andrews. It was one of the complaints made by Edward against the prelate that he was carrying on intrigues with France.

+ Scot Abroad, Vol. i., p. 47.

++ Michel, as already mentioned, is Mr. Burton’s chief authority; but Boyle, in his Dictionary, had previously provided much raw material – the result, it is said, of the fact, either that he had got hold of a Scottish bookseller in Paris, or that the latter had got hold of him.

+++ Scot Abroad, Vol. i, page 75.

*+ Scot Abroad, Vol. i, page 93.

*++ Scot Abroad, Vol. ii p. 183. This may well have been if, as has been stated, there were no less than two thousand Scots pedlars in Poland alone during the reign of Charles I.

*+++ "A French writer, speaking of these redoubtable works, says, that a Scotchman built those walls which, years afterwards, checked the career of his fellow-countryman, Sir Charles Napier." Burton, Vol. ii p. 222.

+* Chambers" Biog. Dict. Vol. ii pp. 532-3.

+** The story regarding Keith, which illustrates the universality of Scottish influence, is worth repeating, although it is found in the Percy Anecdotes. At the conclusion of a peace between the Russians and Turks, an interview took place between Field Marshal Keith, and the Grand Vizier. Business over, and the parting bow and salaam, the Turkish minister suddenly approached the Marshal, took him by the hand, and in the broadest Scots dialect, assured him, with warmth, that he was "unco happy, now he was sae far frae hame, to meet a countryman in his exalted station." Keith was astounded, but the Vizier replied, "my father was bellman o’ Kirkcaldy, in Fife, I remember to have seen you, sir, and your brother occasionally passing." The Empress Catherine, by the way, had a famous physician who was the son of a miller at the head of Peebleshire.

+*** The original may be given without venturing on a translation: -

"Que d’Escossois, de rats, de poux,
Ceux qui voyagent jus qu’ au bout
Du monde, en rencontrent partout."

**+ Letters of Junius (Bohn’s Edition), Vol. i. p. 99.

**++ See the historical essay prefixed to Sabine’s "Loyalists of the American Revolution."

**+++ See for a full account of this cause celebre, Samuel Warren’s Miscellanies.


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