Scotland's Mark on America / Black, George Fraser

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Title: Scotland's Mark on America

Author: George Fraser Black

Release Date: February 24, 2005 [EBook #15162]

Language: English

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SCOTLAND'S MARK ON AMERICA

By GEORGE FRASER BLACK, PH.D.

With a Foreword By JOHN FOORD

_Published by_

The Scottish Section of "America's Making" New York, 1921




FOREWORD


It has been said that the Scot is never so much at home as when he is
abroad. Under this half-jesting reference to one of the
characteristics of our race, there abides a sober truth, namely, that
the Scotsman carries with him from his parent home into the world
without no half-hearted acceptance of the duties required of him in
the land of his adoption. He is usually a public-spirited citizen, a
useful member of society, wherever you find him. But that does not
lessen the warmth of his attachment to the place of his birth, or the
land of his forbears. Be his connection with Scotland near or remote,
there is enshrined in the inner sanctuary of his heart, memories,
sentiments, yearnings, that are the heritage of generations with whom
love of their country was a dominant passion, and pride in the deeds
that her children have done an incentive to effort and an antidote
against all that was base or ignoble.

It is a fact that goes to the core of the secular struggle for human
freedom that whole-hearted Americanism finds no jarring note in the
sentiment of the Scot, be that sentiment ever so intense. In the
sedulous cultivation of the Scottish spirit there is nothing alien,
and, still more emphatically, nothing harmful, to the institutions
under which we live. The things that nourish the one, engender
attachment and loyalty to the other. So, as we cherish the memories of
the Motherland, keep in touch with the simple annals of our
childhood's home, or the home of our kin, bask in the fireside glow of
its homely humor, or dwell in imagination amid the haunts of old
romance, we are the better Americans for the Scottish heritage from
which heart and mind alike derive inspiration and delight.

It is as difficult to separate the current of Scottish migration to
the American Colonies, or to the United States that grew out of them,
from the larger stream which issued from England, as it is to
distinguish during the last two hundred years the contributions by
Scotsmen from those of Englishmen to the great body of English
literature. We have the first census of the new Republic, in the year
1790, and an investigator who classified this enumeration according to
what he conceived to be the nationality of the names, found that the
total free, white, population numbering 3,250,000 contained 2,345,844
people of English origin; 188,589 of Scottish origin, and 44,273 of
Irish origin. The system of classification is manifestly loose, and
the distribution of parent nationalities entirely at variance with
known facts. That part of the population described as Irish was
largely Ulster-Scottish, the true Irish never having emigrated in any
considerable numbers until they felt the pressure of the potato
famine, fifty years later. There is excellent authority for the
statement that, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War one-third of
the entire population of Pennsylvania was of Ulster-Scottish origin. A
New England historian, quoted by Whitelaw Reid, counts that between
1730 and 1770 at least half a million souls were transferred from
Ulster to the Colonies--more than half of the Presbyterian population
of Ulster--and that at the time of the Revolution they made one-sixth
of the total population of the nascent Republic. Another authority
fixes the inhabitants of Scottish ancestry in the nine Colonies south
of New England at about 385,000. He counts that less than half of the
entire population of the Colonies was of English origin, and that
nearly, or quite one-third of it, had a direct Scottish ancestry.

These conclusions find powerful support in the number of distinguished
men whom the Scots and the Ulstermen contributed to the Revolutionary
struggle, and to the public life of the early days of the United
States. Out of Washington's twenty-two brigadier generals, nine were
of Scottish descent, and one of the greatest achievements of the
war--the rescue of Kentucky and the whole rich territory northwest of
the Ohio, from which five States were formed--was that of General
George Rogers Clark, a Scottish native of Albert County, Virginia.
When the Supreme Court of the United States was first organized by
Washington three of the four Associate Justices were of the same
blood--one a Scot and two Ulster-Scots. When the first Chief Justice,
John Jay, left the bench, his successor, John Rutledge, was an
Ulster-Scot. Washington's first cabinet contained four members--two of
them were Scotch and the third was an Ulster-Scot. Out of the
fifty-six members who composed the Congress that adopted the
Declaration of Independence eleven were of Scottish descent. It was in
response to the appeal of a Scot, John Witherspoon, that the
Declaration was signed; it is preserved in the handwriting of an
Ulster-Scot who was Secretary of the Congress; it was first publicly
read to the people by an Ulster-Scot, and first printed by a third
member of the same vigorous body of early settlers.

George Bancroft will hardly be accused of holding a brief for the Scot
in American history but, with all his New England predilections, he
frankly records this conclusion: "We shall find the first voice
publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great
Britain, came not from the Puritans of New England, or the Dutch of
New York, or the planters of Virginia, but from Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians." It was Patrick Henry, a Scot, who kindled the popular
flame for independence. The foremost, the most irreconcilable, the
most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last extremity, were
those whom the bishops and Lord Donegal & Company had been pleased to
drive out of Ulster.

The distinguished place which men of Scottish or of Ulster origin had
asserted for themselves in the councils of the Colonies was not lost
when the Colonies became independent States. Among the first of the
thirteen original States two-thirds were of either Scottish or
Ulster-Scottish origin. Of the men who have filled the great office of
President of the United States, eleven out of the whole twenty-five
come under the same category. About half the Secretaries of the
Treasury of the Government of the United States have been of Scottish
descent, and nearly a third of the Secretaries of State.

But it is perhaps in the intangible things that go to the making of
national character that the Scottish contribution to the making of
America has been most notable. In 1801, the population of the whole of
Scotland was but little over a million and a half, and behind that
there were at least eight centuries of national history. Behind that,
too, were all the long generations of toil and strife in which the
Scottish character was being molded into the forms that Scott and
Burns made immortal. It is a character full of curious contrasts, with
its strong predilection for theology and metaphysics on one side, and
for poetry and romance on the other. Hard, dry and practical in its
attitude to the ordinary affairs of life, it is apt to catch fire from
a sudden enthusiasm, as if volatility were its dominant note and
instability its only fixed attribute. And so it has come about that
side by side with tomes of Calvinistic divinity, there has been
transmitted to Scotsmen an equally characteristic product of the mind
of their race--a body of folksong, of ballad poetry, of legend and of
story in that quaint and copious Doric speech which makes so direct an
appeal to the hearts of men whether they are to the manner born or
not. It is surely a paradox that a nation which, in the making, had
the hardest kind of work to extract a scanty living from a stubborn
soil, and still harder work to defend their independence, their
liberties, their faith from foes of their own kindred, should be best
known to the world for the romantic ideals they have cherished and the
chivalrous follies for which their blood has been shed.

But, it is well to remember that long before the Reformers of the
sixteenth century founded the parish school system of Scotland, the
monasteries had their schools and so had the parish churches; there
were high schools in the burghs and song schools of remarkable
excellence. The light of learning may have waxed dim at times, but it
was not from an illiterate land that Scottish scholars carried into
Europe all through the Middle Ages the name and fame of their country,
any more than it was from a people unversed in the arts of war that
Scottish soldiers went abroad to fight foreign battles, giving now a
Constable to France, a General-in-Chief to Russia and still again a
Lieutenant to Gustavus Adolphus. If evidence were needed of the vigor
of the Scottish race, it is readily forthcoming in the fact that for
five hundred years the Land O'Cakes enriched the world with the
surplus of her able men.

Nurse of heroes, nurse of martyrs, nurse of freemen, are titles which
belong of right to our Motherland and she has been justified of her
children, at home and abroad. The rolls of honor of many countries and
many climes bear their names; there is no field of distinction whether
it be of thought or of action that has not witnessed their triumphs.
That Scotland has yielded more than her share of the men who have gone
forth to the conquest of the world is largely due to the fact that it
was part of her discipline that men must first conquer themselves. The
weakest of them felt that restraining influence, and the striving
after the Scottish ideal, however feeble, has been a protection
against sinking into utter baseness. The most wayward scions of the
Scottish family have known that influence, and have borne testimony to
the beauty of the homely virtues which they failed to practice and the
nobility of aspirations which fell short of controlling their life.

It belongs to the character and antecedents of Scotsmen that the
attribute of national independence should take so high a place among
the objects of human effort and desire. It was because Scotland
settled for all time, six hundred years ago, her place as an
independent State that she proved herself capable of begetting men
like John Knox, Robert Burns and Walter Scott. It is because the vigor
of the Scottish race and the adaptiveness of the Scottish genius
remain to-day unimpaired, that the lustre of Scottish-names shone so
brilliantly during the World War. It may be confidently asserted that,
whether regarded as a race or a people no members of the great
English-speaking family did more promptly, more cheerfully or more
courageously make the sacrifices required to perform their full part
in the struggle to defend the freedom that belongs to our common
heritage and to preserve the ideals without which we should not regard
life as worth living. The union, centuries old, in the Scottish mind
and heart of the most uncompromising devotion to individual liberty
with the most fervid patriotism, is a sentiment of which the world
stands greatly in need to-day. We need not go far to find evidence of
how perilous it is to sink regard for the great conception of human
brotherhood in a narrow, nationalistic concern for individual
interests. In the Scottish conception of liberty, _duties_ have always
been rated as highly as _rights_; it has been a constructive, not a
destructive formula; it has been an inspiration to raise men out of
themselves, not to prompt them to indulge in antics of promiscuous
leveling. The kind of democracy for which Scotsmen have deemed that
the world should be made safe is a human brotherhood, indeed, but a
brotherhood imbued with the generous rivalry of effort, the enthusiasm
of emulous achievement, and not one of inglorious, monotonous and
colorless equality.

JOHN FOORD




CONTENTS

Foreword                                                 3

Scottish Emigration to the American Colonies            11

Some Prominent Scots and Scots Families                 24

Scots as Colonial and Provincial Governors              32

Scots and the Declaration of Independence               36

Scots as Signers of the Declaration of Independence     38

Scots in the Presidency                                 40

Scots as Vice-Presidents                                41

Scots as Cabinet Officers                               42

Scots in the Senate                                     45

Scots in the House of Representatives                   47

Scots in the Judiciary                                  48

Scots as Ambassadors                                    51

Scots as State Governors                                53

Scots in the Army                                       60

Scots in the Navy                                       65

Scots as Scientists                                     67

Scots as Physicians                                     73

Scots in Education                                      76

Scots in Literature                                     81

Scots in the Church and Social Welfare                  84

Scots as Lawyers                                        87

Scots in Art, Architecture, etc.                        88

Scots as Inventors                                      95

Scots as Engineers                                      99

Scots in Industries                                    101

Scots in Banking, Finance, Insurance and Railroads     105

Scots as Journalists, Publishers and Typefounders      108

Some Prominent Scots in New York City                  113

Scottish Societies in the United States                115

Conclusion                                             116

List of Principal Authorities Referred to              117

Index                                                  119

"No people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world's
history as the Scots have done. No people have a greater right to be
proud of their blood."--_James Anthony Froude_.

       *       *       *       *       *




SCOTTISH EMIGRATION TO THE AMERICAN COLONIES


Scottish emigration to America came in two streams--one direct from
the motherland and the other through the province of Ulster in the
north of Ireland. Those who came by this second route are usually
known as "Ulster Scots," or more commonly as "Scotch-Irish," and they
have been claimed as Irishmen by Irish writers in the United States.
This is perhaps excusable but hardly just. Throughout their residence
in Ireland the Scots settlers preserved their distinctive Scottish
characteristics, and generally described themselves as "the Scottish
nation in the north of Ireland." They, of course, like the early
pioneers in this country, experienced certain changes through the
influence of their new surroundings, but, as one writer has remarked,
they "remained as distinct from the native population as if they had
never crossed the Channel. They were among the Irish but not of them."
Their sons, too, when they attended the classes in the University of
Glasgow, signed the matriculation register as "A Scot of Ireland."
They did not intermarry with the native Irish, though they did
intermarry to some extent with the English Puritans and with the
French Huguenots. (These Huguenots were colonies driven out of France
by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and induced to
settle in the north of Ireland by William III. To this people Ireland
is indebted for its lace industry, which they introduced into that
country.)

Again many Irish-American writers on the Scots Plantation of Ulster
have assumed that the Scots settlers were entirely or almost of Gaelic
origin, ignoring the fact, if they were aware of it, that the people
of the Scottish lowlands were "almost as English in racial derivation
as if they had come from the North of England." Parker, the historian
of Londonderry, New Hampshire, speaking of the early Scots settlers in
New England, has well said: "Although they came to this land from
Ireland, where their ancestors had a century before planted
themselves, yet they retained unmixed the national Scotch character.
Nothing sooner offended them than to be called Irish. Their antipathy
to this appellation had its origin in the hostility then existing in
Ireland between the Celtic race, the native Irish, and the English and
Scotch colonists." Belknap, in his _History of New Hampshire_ (Boston,
1791) quotes a letter from the Rev. James MacGregor (1677-1729) to
Governor Shute in which the writer says: "We are surprised to hear
ourselves termed Irish people, when we so frequently ventured our all
for the British Crown and liberties against the Irish papists, and
gave all tests, of our loyalty, which the government of Ireland
required, and are always ready to do the same when demanded."

Down to the present day the descendants of these Ulster Scots settlers
living in the United States who have maintained an interest in their
origin, always insist that they are of Scottish and not of Irish
origin. On this point it will be sufficient to quote the late Hon.
Leonard Allison Morrison, of New Hampshire. Writing twenty-five years
ago he said: "I am one of Scotch-Irish blood and my ancestor came with
Rev. McGregor of Londonderry, and neither _they_ nor any of their
descendants were willing to be called 'merely Irish.' I have twice
visited," he adds, "the parish of Aghadowney, Co. Londonderry, from
which they came, in Ireland, and all that locality is filled, not with
'Irish' but with Scotch-Irish, and this is pure Scotch blood to-day,
after more than _200_ years." The mountaineers of Tennessee and
Kentucky are largely the descendants of these same Ulster Scots, and
their origin is conclusively shown by the phrase used by mothers to
their unruly children: "If you don't behave, Clavers [i.e.,
Claverhouse] will get you."

If we must continue to use the hyphen when referring to these early
immigrants it is preferable to use the term "Ulster Scot" instead of
"Scotch-Irish," as was pointed out by the late Whitelaw Reid, because
it does not confuse the race with the accident of birth, and because
the people preferred it themselves. "If these Scottish and
Presbyterian colonists," he says, "must be called Irish because they
had been one or two generations in the north of Ireland, then the
Pilgrim Fathers, who had been one generation or more in Holland, must
by the same reasoning be called Dutch or at the very least English
Dutch."

To understand the reasons for the Scots colonization of Ulster and the
replantation in America it is necessary to look back three centuries
in British history. On the crushing of the Irish rebellion under Sir
Cahir O'Dogherty in 1607 about 500,000 acres of forfeited land in the
province of Ulster were at the disposal of the crown. At the
suggestion of King James the I. of England, Ulster was divided into
lots and offered to colonists from England. Circumstances, however,
turned what was mainly intended to be an English enterprise into a
Scottish one. Scottish participation "which does not seem to have been
originally regarded as important," became eventually, as Ford points
out, the mainstay of the enterprise. "Although from the first there
was an understanding between [Sir Arthur] Chichester and the English
Privy Council that eventually the plantation would be opened to Scotch
settlers, no steps were taken in that direction until the plan had
been matured ... The first public announcement of any Scottish
connection with the Ulster plantation appears in a letter of March 19,
1609, from Sir Alexander Hay, the Scottish secretary resident at the
English Court, to the Scottish Privy Council at Edinburgh." In this
communication Hay announced that the king "out of his unspeikable love
and tindir affectioun" for his Scottish subjects had decided that they
were to be allowed a share, and he adds, that here is a great
opportunity for Scotland since "we haif greitt advantaige of
transporting of our men and bestiall [i.e., live stock of a farm] in
regairde we lye so neir to that coiste of Ulster." Immediately on
receipt of this letter the Scottish Privy Council made public
proclamation of the news and announced that those of them "quho ar
disposit to tak ony land in Yreland" were to present their desires and
petitions to the Council. The first application enrolled was by "James
Andirsoun portionair of Litle Govane," and by the 14th of September
seventy-seven Scots had come forward as purchasers. If their offers
had been accepted, they would have possessed among them 141,000 acres
of land. In 1611, in consequence of a rearrangement of applicants the
number of favored Scots was reduced to fifty-nine, with eighty-one
thousand acres of land at their disposal. Each of these "Undertakers,"
as they were called, was accompanied to his new home by kinsmen,
friends, and tenants, as Lord Ochiltree, for instance, who is
mentioned as having arrived "accompanied with thirty-three followers,
a minister, some tenants, freeholders, [and] artificers." By the end
of 1612 the emigration from Scotland is estimated to have reached
10,000. Indeed, before the end of this year so rapidly had the traffic
increased between Scotland and Ireland that the passage between the
southwest of Scotland and Ulster "is now become a commoun and are
ordinarie ferrie," the boat-men of which were having a rare time of it
by charging what they pleased for the passage or freight. In the
selection of the settlers measures were carefully taken that they
should be "from the inwards part of Scotland," and that they should be
so located in Ulster that "they may not mix nor intermarry" with "the
mere Irish." For the most part the settlers appear to have been
selected from the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, and
Dumfries. Emigration from Scotland to Ireland appears to have
continued steadily and the English historian Carte estimated, after
diligent documentary study, that by 1641 there were in Ulster 100,000
Scots and 20,000 English settlers. In 1656 it was proposed by the
Irish government that persons "of the Scottish nation desiring to come
into Ireland" should be prohibited from settling in Ulster or County
Louth, but the scheme was not put into effect. Governmental opposition
notwithstanding emigration from Scotland to Ireland appears to have
continued steadily, and after the Revolution of 1688 there seems to
have been a further increase. Archbishop Synge estimated that by 1715
not less than 50,000 Scottish families had settled in Ulster during
these twenty-seven years. It should be also mentioned that "before the
Ulster plantation began there was already a considerable Scottish
occupation of the region nearest to Scotland. These Scottish
settlements were confined to counties Down and Antrim, which were not
included in the scheme of the plantation. Their existence facilitated
Scottish emigration to the plantation and they were influential in
giving the plantation the Scottish character which it promptly
acquired. Although planned to be in the main an English settlement,
with one whole county turned over to the city of London alone, it soon
became in the main a Scottish settlement."

The Scots were not long settled in Ulster before misfortune and
persecution began to harass them. The Irish rebellion of 1641, said by
some to have been an outbreak directed against the Scottish and
English settlers, regarded by the native Irish as intruders and
usurpers, caused them much suffering; and Harrison says that for
"several years afterward 12,000 emigrants annually left Ulster for the
American plantations." The Revolution of 1688 was also long and bloody
in Ireland and the sufferings of the settlers reached a climax in the
siege of Londonderry (April to August, 1688). They suffered also from
the restrictions laid upon their industries and commerce by the
English government. These restrictions, and later the falling in of
leases, rack-renting by the landlords, payment of tithes for support
of a church with which they had no connection, and several other
burdens and annoyances, were the motives which impelled emigration to
the American colonies from 1718 onwards. Five ships bearing seven
hundred Ulster Scots emigrants arrived in Boston on August 4, 1718,
under the leadership of Rev. William Boyd. They were allowed to select
a township site of twelve miles square at any place on the frontiers.
A few settled at Portland, Maine, at Wicasset, and at Worcester and
Haverhill, Massachusetts, but the greater number finally at
Londonderry, New Hampshire. In 1723-4 they built a parsonage and a
church for their minister, Rev. James MacGregor. In six years they had
four schools, and within nine years Londonderry paid one-fifteenth of
the state tax. Previous to the Revolution of 1776 ten distinct
settlements were made by colonists from Londonderry, N.H., all of
which became towns of influence and importance. Notable among the
descendants of these colonists were Matthew Thornton, Henry Knox, Gen.
John Stark, Hugh McCulloch, Horace Greeley, Gen. George B. McClellan,
Salmon P. Chase, and Asa Gray. From 1771 to 1773 "the whole emigration
from Ulster is estimated at 30,000 of whom 10,000 were weavers."

In 1706 the Rev. Cotton Mather put forth a plan to settle hardy Scots
families on the frontiers of Maine and New Hampshire to protect the
towns and churches there from the French and Indians, the Puritans
evidently not being able to protect themselves. He says, "I write
letters unto diverse persons of Honour both in Scotland and in
England; to procure Settlements of Good Scotch Colonies, to the
Northward of us. This may be a thing of great consequence;" and
elsewhere he suggests that a Scottish colony might be of good service
in getting possession of Nova Scotia. In 1735, twenty-seven families,
and in 1753 a company of sixty adults and a number of children,
collected in Scotland by General Samuel Waldo, were landed at George's
River, Maine. In honor of the ancient capital of their native country,
they named their settlement Stirling.

Another and an important cause of the early appearance of Scots in
America was the wars between Scotland and England during the
Commonwealth. Large numbers of Scottish prisoners taken at Dunbar
(1650) and at Worcester (1651) were sold into service in the colonies,
a shipload arriving in Boston Harbor in 1652 on the ship _John and
Sara_. The means taken to ameliorate their condition led in 1657 to
the foundation of the Scots Charitable Society of Boston--the earliest
known Scottish society in America. Its foundation may be taken as
evidence that there were already prosperous and influential Scots
living in Boston at that time. A list of the passengers of the _John
and Sara_ is given in Suffolk _Deed Records_ (bk. 1, pp. 5-6) and in
Drake's _The Founders of New England_ (Boston, 1860, pp. 74-76). These
men, says Boulton, "worked out their terms of servitude at the Lynn
iron works and elsewhere, and founded honorable families whose Scotch
names appear upon our early records. No account exists of the Scotch
prisoners that were sent to New England in Cromwell's time; at York in
1650 were the Maxwells, McIntires, and Grants. The Mackclothlans
[i.e., Mac Lachlans], later known as the Claflins, gave a governor to
Massachusetts and distinguished merchants to New York City."

The bitter persecution of Presbyterians during the periods of
episcopal rule in the latter half of the seventeenth century also
contributed largely to Scottish emigration to the new world. A
Scottish merchant in Boston named Hugh Campbell, obtained permission
from the authorities of the Bay State Colony in February 1679-80 to
bring in a number of settlers from Scotland and to establish them in
the Nepmug country in the vicinity of Springfield, Massachusetts.

So desperate had matters become in Scotland at the beginning of the
eighth decade of the seventeenth century that a number of the nobility
and gentry determined to settle in New Jersey and the Carolinas. One
of these colonies was founded in New Jersey in 1682 under the
management of James Drummond, Earl of Perth, John Drummond, Robert
Barclay the Quaker Apologist, David and John Barclay, his brothers,
Robert Gordon, Gawen Lawrie, and George Willocks. In 1684 Gawen
Lawrie, who had been for several years previously residing in the
colony, was appointed Deputy Governor of the province, and fixed his
residence at Elizabeth. In the same year Perth (so named in honor of
the Earl of Perth, one of the principal proprietors, now Perth Amboy)
was made the capital of the new Scottish settlement. During the
following century a constant stream of emigrants both from Scotland
and from Ulster came to the colony. One of the principal encouragers
of the Scottish colony in New Jersey was George Scot or Scott (d.
1685) of Pitlochrie, who had been repeatedly fined and imprisoned by
the Privy Council of Scotland for attending "Conventicles," as
clandestine religious gatherings were then called in Scotland, and in
the hope of obtaining freedom of worship in the new world he proposed
to emigrate "to the plantations." To encourage others to do the like
he printed at Edinburgh (1685) a work, now very rare, called "The
Model of the Government of the Province of East New Jersey, in
America; and Encouragement for Such as Design to be concerned there."
Scot received a grant of five hundred acres in recognition of his
having written the work, and sailed in the _Henry and Francis_ for
America. A malignant fever broke out among the passengers and nearly
half on board perished including Scot and his wife. A son and daughter
survived and the proprietors a year after issued a confirmation of the
grant to Scot's daughter and her husband (John Johnstone), many of
whose descendants are still living in New Jersey.

Walter Ker of Dalserf, Lanarkshire, banished in 1685, settled in
Freehold, and was active in organizing the Presbyterian Church there,
one of the oldest in New Jersey. The Scots settlers who came over at
this period occupied most of the northern counties of the state but
many went south and southwest, mainly around Princeton, and, says
Samuel Smith, the first historian of the province, "There were very
soon four towns in the Province, viz., Elizabeth, Newark, Middletown
and Shrewsbury; and these with the country round were in a few years
plentifully inhabited by the accession of the Scotch, of whom there
came a great many." These Scots, says Duncan Campbell, largely gave
"character to this sturdy little state not the least of their
achievements being the building up if not the nominal founding of
Princeton College, which has contributed so largely to the scholarship
of America."

In 1682 another company of nobles and gentlemen in Scotland arranged
for a settlement at Port Royal, South Carolina. These colonists
consisted mainly of Presbyterians banished for attending
"Conventicles." The names of some of these immigrants, whose
descendants exist in great numbers at the present day, included James
McClintock, John Buchanan, William Inglis, Gavin Black, Adam Allan,
John Gait, Thomas Marshall, William Smith, Robert Urie, Thomas Bryce,
John Syme, John Alexander, John Marshall, Matthew Machen, John Paton,
John Gibson, John Young, Arthur Cunningham, George Smith, and George
Dowart. The colony was further increased by a small remnant of the
ill-fated expedition to Darien. One of the vessels which left Darien
to return to Scotland, the _Rising Sun_, was driven out of its course
by a gale and took refuge in Charleston. Among its passengers was the
Rev. Archibald Stobo, who was asked by some people in Charleston to
preach in the town while the ship was being refitted. He accepted the
invitation and left the ship with his wife and about a dozen others.
The following day, the _Rising Sun_, while lying off the bar, was
overwhelmed in a hurricane and all on board were drowned. This Rev.
Archibald Stobo was the earliest American ancestor of the late
Theodore Roosevelt's mother. In the following year (1683) the colony
was augmented by a number of Scots colonists from Ulster led by one
Ferguson. A second Scottish colony in the same year under Henry
Erskine, Lord Cardross, founded Stuartstown (so named in honor of his
wife). Another colony from Ulster was that of Williamsburgh township
(1732-34), who named their principal village Kingstree.

There were settlements of Scots Highlanders in North Carolina, on the
Cape Fear River, as early as 1729; some indeed are said to have
settled there as early as 1715. Neill McNeill of Jura brought over a
colony of more than 350 from Argyllshire in 1739, and large numbers in
1746, after Culloden, and settled them on the Cape Fear River. Cross
Creek, now Fayetteville, was the center of these Highland settlements,
and hither came the Scottish heroine, Flora MacDonald, in 1775. The
mania for emigration to North Carolina affected all classes in
Scotland and continued for many years. The _Scots Magazine_ for May
1768 records that a number of settlers from the Western Isles had
embarked for Carolina and Georgia, including forty or fifty families
from Jura alone. In September of following year it is stated that a
hundred families of Highlanders had arrived at Brunswick, North
Carolina, and "two vessels are daily expected with more." In August
1769 the ship _Mally_ sailed from Islay full of passengers for North
Carolina, which was the third or fourth emigration from Argyll "since
the conclusion of the late war." In August 1770 it was stated that
since the previous April six vessels carrying about twelve hundred
emigrants had sailed from the western Highlands for North Carolina. In
February of the following year the same magazine states that five
hundred souls in Islay and adjacent islands were preparing to emigrate
to America in the following summer. In September of the same year
three hundred and seventy persons sailed from Skye for North Carolina,
and two entries in the magazine for 1772 record the emigration of
numbers from Sutherland and Loch Erribol. In the same year a writer
says the people who have emigrated from the Western Isles since the
year 1768 "have carried with them at least ten thousand pounds in
specie. Notwithstanding this is a great loss to us, yet the
depopulation by these emigrations is a much greater.... Besides, the
continual emigrations from Ireland and Scotland, will soon render our
colonies independent on the mother-country." In August, 1773, three
gentlemen of the name of Macdonell, with their families and four
hundred Highlanders from Inverness-shire sailed for America to take
possession of a grant of land "in Albany." On the 22d of June
previously between seven and eight hundred people from the Lewis
sailed from Stornoway for the colonies. On the first of September,
1773, four hundred and twenty-five men, women and children from
Inverness-shire sailed for America. "They are the finest set of
fellows in the Highlands. It is allowed they carried at least 6000
pounds Sterling in ready cash with them." In 1774 farmers and heads of
families in Stirlingshire were forming societies to emigrate to the
colonies and the fever had also extended to Orkney and Shetland and
the north of England. In 1753 it was estimated that there were one
thousand Scots in the single county of Cumberland capable of bearing
arms, of whom the Macdonalds were the most numerous. Gabriel Johnston,
governor of the province of North Carolina from 1734 to 1752, appears
to have done more to encourage the settlement of Scots in the colony
than all its other colonial governors combined.

In 1735 a body of one hundred and thirty Highlanders with fifty women
and children sailed from Inverness and landed at Savannah in January
1736. They were under the leadership of Lieutenant Hugh Mackay. Some
Carolinians endeavoured to dissuade them from going to the South by
telling them that the Spaniards would attack them from their houses in
the fort near where they were to settle, to which they replied, "Why,
then, we will beat them out of their fort, and shall have houses ready
built to live in." "This valiant spirit," says Jones, "found
subsequent expression in the efficient military service rendered by
these Highlanders during the wars between the Colonists and the
Spaniards, and by their descendants in the American Revolution. To
John 'More' McIntosh, Captain Hugh Mackay, Ensign Charles Mackay, Col.
John McIntosh, General Lachlan McIntosh, and their gallant comrades
and followers, Georgia, both as a Colony and a State, owes a large
debt of gratitude. This settlement was subsequently augmented from
time to time by fresh arrivals from Scotland.... Its men were prompt
and efficient in arms, and when the war cloud descended upon the
southern confines of the province no defenders were more alert or
capable than those found in the ranks of these Highlanders." "No
people," says Walter Glasco Charlton, "ever came to Georgia who took
so quickly to the conditions under which they were to live or remained
more loyal to her interests" than the Highlanders. "These men," says
Jones, "were not reckless adventurers or reduced emigrants
volunteering through necessity, or exiled through insolvency or want.
They were men of good character, and were carefully selected for their
military qualities.... Besides this military band, others among the
Mackays, the Dunbars, the Baillies, and the Cuthberts applied for
large tracts of land in Georgia which they occupied with their own
servants. Many of them went over in person and settled in the
province."

Among the immigrants who flocked into Virginia in 1729 and 1740 we
find individuals named Alexander Breckinridge, David Logan, Hugh
Campbell, William Graham, James Waddell (the "Blind Preacher"), John
McCue, Benjamin Erwin, Gideon Blackburn, Samuel Houston, Archibald
Scott, Samuel Carrack, John Montgomery, George Baxter, William
McPheeters, and Robert Poage (Page?), and others bearing the names of
Bell, Trimble (Turnbull), Hay, Anderson, Patterson, Scott, Wilson, and
Young. John McDowell and eight of his men were killed by Indians in
1742. Among the members of his company was his venerable father
Ephraim McDowell. In 1763 the Indians attacked a peaceful settlement
and carried off a number of captives. After traveling some distance
and feeling safe from pursuit they demanded that their captives should
sing for their entertainment, and it was a Scotswoman, Mrs. Gilmore,
who struck up Rouse's version of the one hundred and thirty-seventh
psalm:

    "By Babel's streams we sat and wept,
       When Zion we thought on,
    In midst thereof we hanged our harps
       The willow tree thereon.

    "For there a song required they,
       Who did us captive bring;
    Our spoilers called for mirth, and said:
       'A song of Zion sing.'"

In the following year Colonel Henry Bouquet led a strong force against
the Indians west of the Ohio, and compelled them to desist from their
predatory warfare, and deliver up the captives they had taken. One of
his companies was made up of men from the Central Valley of Virginia,
largely composed of Scots or men of Ulster Scot descent, and commanded
by Alexander McClanahan, a good Galloway surname. Ten years later
occurred the battle of Point Pleasant when men of the same race under
the command of Andrew Lewis defeated the Shawnee Indians.

In January 1775, the freeholders of Fincastle presented an address to
the Continental Congress, declaring their purpose to resist the
oppressive measures of the home government. Among the signers were
William Christian, Rev. Charles Cummings, Arthur Campbell, William
Campbell, William Edmundson, William Preston and others. Several other
counties in the same state, inhabited mainly by Scots or people of
Scottish descent, adopted like resolutions. During the Revolutionary
war, in addition to large numbers of men of Scottish origin serving in
the Continental army from this state, the militia were also constantly
in service under the leadership of such men as Colonels Samuel
McDowell, George Moffett, William Preston, John and William Bowyer,
Samson Mathews, etc.

The following Scots were members of His Majesty's Council in South
Carolina under the royal government, from 1720 to 1776: Alexander
Skene, James Kinloch (1729), John Cleland, James Graeme, George Saxby,
James Michie, John Rattray (1761), Thomas Knox Gordon, and John
Stuart. Andrew Rutledge was Speaker of the Commons' House of Assembly
from 1749 to 1752. David Graeme, attorney at law in 1754, was
Attorney-General of the State from 1757 to 1764. James Graeme, most
probably a relation of the preceding, was elected to the Assembly from
Port Royal in 1732, became Judge of the Court of Vice Admiralty from
1742 to 1752, and Chief Justice from 1749 to 1752. James Michie was
Speaker of the Assembly from 1752 to 1754, Judge of the Court of
Admiralty from 1752 to 1754, and Chief Justice from 1759 to 1761.
William Simpson served as Chief Justice 1761-1762. Thomas Knox Gordon
was appointed Chief Justice in 1771 and served till 1776, and in 1773
he also appears as Member of Council. John Murray was appointed
Associate Justice in 1771 and died in 1774. William Gregory was
appointed by His Majesty's mandamus to succeed him in 1774. Robert
Hume was Speaker of the Assembly in 1732-1733. Robert Brisbane was
Associate Justice in 1764, and Robert Pringle appears in the same
office in 1760 and 1766. John Rattray was Judge of the Court of
Vice-Admiralty in 1760-61, and James Abercrombie appears as
Attorney-General in 1731-32. James Simpson was Clerk of the Council in
1773, Surveyor-General of Land in 1772, Attorney-General in 1774-75,
and Judge of Vice-Admiralty in the absence of Sir Augustus Johnson in
1769. John Carwood was Assistant Justice in 1725. Thomas Nairne was
employed in 1707 "as resident agent among the Indians, with power to
settle all disputes among traders ... to arrest traders who were
guilty of misdemeanors and send them to Charleston for trial, to take
charge of the goods of persons who were committed to prison, and to
exercise the power of a justice of the peace." This Thomas Nairne is
probably the same individual who published, anonymously, "A letter
from South Carolina; giving an account of the soil ... product ...
trade ... government [etc.] of that province. Written by a Swiss
Gentleman to his friend at Bern," the first edition of which was
published in London in 1710 (second ed. in 1732).

Among the names of the seventeen corporate members of the Charleston
Library Society established in 1743 occur those of the following
Scots: Robert Brisbane, Alexander M'Cauley, Patrick M'Kie, William
Logan, John Sinclair, James Grindlay, Alexander Baron, and Charles
Stevenson.

Of the members of the Provincial Congress held at Charleston in
January, 1775, the following were Scotsmen or men of Scottish
ancestry: Major John Caldwell, Patrick Calhoun (ancestor of
Vice-President Calhoun), George Haig of the family of Bemersyde,
Charles Elliott, Thomas Ferguson, Adam Macdonald, Alexander M'Intosh,
John M'Ness, Isaac MacPherson, Col. William Moultrie, David Oliphant,
George Ross, Thomas Rutledge, James Sinkler, James Skirving, senior,
James Skirving, junior, William Skirving, and Rev. William Tennent.

In Maryland there seems to have been a colony of Scots about 1670
under Colonel Ninian Beall, settled between the Potomac and the
Patuxent, and gradually increased by successive additions. Through his
influence a church was established at Patuxent in 1704, the members
of which included several prominent Fifeshire families. Many other
small Scottish colonies were settled on the eastern shore of Maryland
and Virginia, particularly in Accomac, Dorchester, Somerset, Wicomico,
and Worcester counties. To minister to them the Rev. Francis Makemie
and the Rev. William Traill were sent out by the Presbytery of Laggan
in Ulster. Upper Marlborough, Maryland, was founded by a company of
Scottish immigrants and were ministered to by the Rev. Nathaniel
Taylor, also from Scotland.

Two shiploads of Scottish Jacobites taken at Preston in 1716 were sent
over in the ships _Friendship_ and _Good Speed_ to Maryland to be sold
as servants. The names of some of these sufficiently attest their
Scottish origin, as, Dugall Macqueen, Alexander Garden, Henry Wilson,
John Sinclair, William Grant, Alexander Spalding, John Robertson,
William MacBean, William McGilvary, James Hindry, Allen Maclien,
William Cummins, David Steward, John Maclntire, David Kennedy, John
Cameron, Alexander Orrach [Orrock?], Finloe Maclntire, Daniel Grant,
etc. Another batch taken in the Rising of the '45 and also shipped to
Maryland include such names as John Grant, Alexander Buchanan, Patrick
Ferguson, Thomas Ross, John Cameron, William Cowan, John Bowe, John
Burnett, Duncan Cameron, James Chapman, Thomas Claperton, Sanders
Campbell, Charles Davidson, John Duff, James Erwyn, Peter Gardiner,
John Gray, James King, Patrick Murray, William Melvil, William
Murdock, etc.

A strong infusion of Scottish blood in New York State came through
settlements made there in response to a proclamation issued in 1735 by
the Governor, inviting "loyal protestant Highlanders" to settle the
lands between the Hudson River and the northern lakes. Attracted by
this offer Captain Lauchlin Campbell of Islay, in 1738-40, brought
over eighty-three families of Highlanders to settle on a grant of
thirty thousand acres in what is now Washington County. "By this
immigration," says E.H. Roberts, "the province secured a much needed
addition to its population, and these Highlanders must have sent
messages home not altogether unfavorable, for they were the pioneers
of a multitude whose coming in successive years were to add strength
and thrift and intelligence beyond the ratio of their numbers to the
communities in which they set up their homes." Many Scottish
immigrants settled in the vicinity of Goshen, Orange County, in 1720,
and by 1729 had organized and built two churches. A second colony
arrived from the north of Ireland in 1731. At the same time as the
grant was made to Lauchlin Campbell, Lieutenant-Governor Clarke
granted to John Lindsay, a Scottish gentleman, and three associates, a
tract of eighty thousand acres in Cherry Valley, in Otsego County.
Lindsay afterwards purchased the rights of his associates and sent
out families from Scotland and Ulster to the valley of the
Susquehanna. These were augmented by pioneers from Londonderry, New
Hampshire, under the Rev. Samuel Dunlop, who, in 1743 established in
his own house the first classical school west of the Hudson. Ballston
in Saratoga County was settled in 1770 by a colony of Presbyterians
who removed from Bedford, New York, with their pastor, and were
afterwards joined by many Scottish immigrants from Scotland, Ulster,
New Jersey, and New England. The first Presbyterian Church was
organized in Albany in 1760 by Scottish immigrants who had settled in
that vicinity.

Sir William Johnson for his services in the French War (1755-58)
received from the Crown a grant of one hundred thousand acres in the
Mohawk Valley, near Johnstown, which he colonized with Highlanders in
1773-74.

In New York City about the end of the eighteenth century there was a
colony of several hundred Scottish weavers, mainly from Paisley. They
formed a community apart in what was then the village of Greenwich. In
memory of their old home they named the locality "Paisley Place." A
view of some of their old dwellings in Seventeenth Street between
Sixth and Seventh Avenues, as they existed in 1863, is given in
Valentine's _Manual_ for that year.

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.




SOME PROMINENT SCOTS AND SCOTS FAMILIES


Lord Bacon expressed his regret that the lives of eminent men were not
more frequently written, and added that, "though kings, princes, and
great personages be few, yet there are many excellent men who deserve
better fate than vague reports and barren elegies." Of no country is
this more true than the United States. An examination of the
innumerable early biographical dictionaries with which the shelves of
our public libraries are cumbered, will show that the bulk of the life
sketches of the individuals therein commemorated are vague and
unsatisfactory. In nearly every case little or no information is given
of the parentage or origin of the subject, and indeed one work goes so
far as to say that such information is unnecessary, the mere fact of
American birth being sufficient. However pleasing such statements may
be from an ultra patriotic viewpoint it is very unsatisfactory from
the biological or historical side of the question, which is
undoubtedly the most important to be considered. The neglect of these
items of origin, etc., makes the task of positively identifying
certain individuals as of Scottish origin or descent a very difficult
one. One may feel morally certain that a particular individual from
his name or features (if there be a portrait) is of Scottish origin,
but without a definite statement to that effect the matter must in
most cases be left an open question. One other cause of uncertainty,
and it is a very annoying one, is the careless method of many
biographers in putting down a man's origin as "Irish," "from Ireland,"
"from the north of Ireland," etc., where they clearly mean to state
that the individual concerned is descended from one of the many
thousands of Scots who settled in Ulster in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Notwithstanding this uncertainty the proportion
of men of undoubted Scottish origin who have reached high distinction,
and whose influence has had such far reaching scope in the United
States, is phenomenal. "Let anyone," says Dinsmore, "scrutinize the
list of names of distinguished men in our annals; names of men eminent
in public life from President down; men distinguished in the Church,
in the Army, in the Navy, at the Bar, on the Bench, in Medicine and
Surgery, in Education, trade, commerce, invention, discovery--in any
and all of the arts which add to the freedom, enlightenment, and
wealth of the world, and the convenience and comfort of mankind; names
which have won luster in every honorable calling--let him scrutinize
the list" and he will be astonished to find how large a proportion of
these names represent men of Scottish birth or Scottish descent. In
these pages it is obviously impossible to mention every Scot who has
achieved distinction--to do so would require a large biographical
dictionary. We can here only select a few names in each class from
early colonial times to the present day.

The most famous family of Colonial times was that of the Livingstons
of Livingston Manor, famed alike for their ability and their
patriotism. The first of the family in America was Robert Livingston
(1654-1725), born at Ancrum, Roxburghshire, who came to America about
1672. He married Alida (Schuyler) Van Rensselaer. His eldest son,
Philip (1686-1749), second Lord of the Manor, succeeded him and added
greatly to the family wealth and lands by his business enterprise.
Peter Van Brugh Livingston (1710-92), second son of Philip, was
President of the first Provincial Congress. Another son, Philip
(1716-78), was Member of the General Assembly for the City of New
York, Member of Congress in 1774 and 1776, and one of the Signers of
the Declaration of Independence. A third son was William (1723-90),
Governor of New Jersey. Other prominent members of this family were
Robert R. Livingston (1746-1813), and Edward (1764-1836). The former
was Member of the Continental Congress, Chancellor of the State of New
York (1777-1801), Secretary of Foreign Affairs (1781-83), Minister to
France (1801-05), and Negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase (1803). He
administered the oath of office to George Washington on his assuming
the office of President. Edward was Member of Congress from New York
(1795-1801), Mayor of New York City (1801-03), Member of Congress from
Louisiana (1823-29), United States Senator (1829-31), Secretary of
State (1831-33), and Minister to France (1833-35). Robert Fulton, the
inventor, married a daughter of the Livingstons and thus got the
necessary financial backing to make the _Clermont_ a success. A sister
of Edward was married to General Montgomery of Quebec fame, another to
Secretary of War Armstrong, and a third to General Morgan Lewis.

The Bells of New Hampshire descended from John Bell, the Londonderry
settler of 1718, gave three governors to New Hampshire and one to
Vermont. Luther V. Bell, formerly Superintendent of the McLean Asylum,
Somerville, Massachusetts, was another of his descendants. The McNutts
of Londonderry, New Hampshire, are descended from William McNaught,
who settled there in 1718. The McNaughts came originally from
Kilquhanite in Galloway. The Bean family, descended from John Bean who
came to America in 1660, were pioneers in new settlements in New
Hampshire and Maine, and bore the burden of such a life and profited
by it. About one hundred of them were soldiers in the Revolutionary
War. The Macdonough family of Delaware is also of Scottish descent.
Thomas Macdonough, the famous naval officer, was of the third
generation in this country. The Corbit family of Delaware are
descended from Daniel Corbit, a Quaker born in Scotland in 1682. The
Forsyths of Georgia are descended from Robert Forsyth, born in
Scotland about 1754, who entered the Congressional Army and became a
Captain of Lee's Light Horse in 1776. The Forsyths of New York State
trace their descent to two brothers from Aberdeenshire (John and
Alexander). The bulk of the Virginia Gordons appear to have been from
Galloway.

Alexander Breckenridge, a Scot, came to America about 1728, settling
in Pennsylvania and later in Virginia. One of his sons, Robert, was an
energetic Captain of Rangers during the Indian wars, and died before
the close of the Revolutionary War. By his second wife, also of
Scottish descent, he had several sons who achieved fame and success.
One of these sons, John Breckenridge (1760-1808), became
Attorney-General of Kentucky in 1795; served in the state legislature
1797-1800; drafted the famous Kentucky resolutions in 1798; was United
States Senator from Kentucky (1801-05) and Attorney-General in
Jefferson's Cabinet from 1805 till his death. Among the sons of John
Breckenridge were Robert Jefferson Breckenridge (1800-71), clergyman
and author, and Joseph Cabell Breckenridge. John Cabell Breckenridge,
son of Joseph C. Breckenridge, was Vice-President of the United States
(1857-61), candidate of the Southern Democrats for President in 1860,
General in the Confederate Armies (1862-64), Confederate Secretary of
War till 1865. Joseph Cabell Breckenridge (b. 1840), son of Robert J.
Breckenridge, also served with distinction in the Civil War, and took
an active part in the Santiago campaign during the Spanish-American
War. Henry Breckenridge (b. 1886), son of Joseph C. Breckenridge, was
Assistant Secretary of War, and served with the American Expeditionary
Forces in the Argonne. William Campbell Preston Breckenridge
(1837-1904), son of Robert J. Breckenridge, was Member of the
Forty-ninth Congress.

The descendants of James McClellan, kin of the McClellans of Galloway,
Scotland, who was appointed Constable at the town meeting held in
Worcester in March, 1724, have written their name large in the medical
and military annals of this country. Some of his descendants are
noticed under Physicians. The most famous of the family was General
George Brinton MacClellan (1826-85), Major-General in the United
States Army during the Civil War, unsuccessful candidate of the
Democratic Party for President in 1864, and Governor of New Jersey
from 1878 to 1881. The General's son, George B. McClellan (b. 1865),
was Mayor of New York (1903 and 1905) and is now a Professor in
Princeton. James Bulloch, born in Scotland c. 1701, emigrated to
Charleston, South Carolina, c. 1728. In the following year he married
Jean Stobo, daughter of the Rev. Archibald Stobo, and was the first
ancestor of the late President Roosevelt's mother. His son, Archibald
Bulloch (d. 1777), was Colonial Governor of Georgia and Commander of
the State's forces in 1776-77, and signed the first Constitution of
Georgia as President. He would have been one of the Signers of the
Declaration of Independence had not official duties called him, home.
A descendant of his, James Dunwoody Bulloch, uncle of the late
President Roosevelt, was Lieutenant in the Confederate Navy and
Confederate States Naval Agent abroad. Irvine S. Bulloch, another
uncle of Roosevelt's, was Sailing Master of the Alabama when in battle
with the U.S.S. Kearsarge. Another of this family was William B.
Bulloch (1776-1852), lawyer and State Senator of Georgia. The Chambers
family of Trenton, New Jersey, are descended from two brothers, John
and Robert Chambers, who came over in the ship _Henry and Francis_ in
1685.

In the eighteenth century many natives of Dumfriesshire emigrated to
the American colonies, and of these perhaps the most prominent were
those descended from John Johnston of Stapleton, Dumfriesshire, an
officer in a Scottish regiment in the French service. His second son,
Gabriel, became Governor of North Carolina. In the house of the
Governor's brother, Gilbert, it is stated that General Marion signed
the commission for the celebrated band known as "Marion's Men." Among
the more prominent descendants of Gilbert Johnston are: (1) James, who
became a Colonel on the staff of General Rutherford during the
Revolution and served in several engagements; (2) William, M.D., who
married a daughter of General Peter Forney, and died in 1855. This
William had five sons: (1) James, a Captain in the Confederate Army;
(2) Robert, a Brigadier-General; (3) William, a Colonel; (4) Joseph
Forney, born in 1843, Captain in the Confederate Army, Governor of
Alabama from 1896 to 1900, and United States Senator for Alabama in
1907; (5) Bartlett, an officer in the Confederate Navy. Samuel
Johnston, a nephew of Gilbert's, was the Naval Officer of North
Carolina in 1775, Treasurer during the Revolution, and Governor of
North Carolina from 1787 to 1789, President of the Convention that
finally adopted the State Constitution, and first Senator elected by
his state in the United States Congress in 1789. His son, James, was
the largest planter in the United States on his death in 1865.
Gilbert's brother Robert, was an attorney and civil engineer. His son,
Peter, served as Lieutenant in the legion which Colonel Henry Lee
recruited in Virginia, and after the war became Judge of the
South-Western Circuit in Virginia, and Speaker of the Virginia House
of Delegates. He married Mary Wood, a niece of Patrick Henry. Their
eighth son, Joseph Eccleston Johnston, born in 1807, graduated from
West Point in 1829, served in the Federal Army in all its campaigns,
up to the time of the Civil War. Although holding the rank of
Lieutenant-Colonel and Quarter-Master-General, he resigned and joined
the Confederate Army, and rendered brilliant service in its ranks.
Another eminent individual of this name was General Albert Sydney
Johnston, the son of a physician, John Johnston, the descendant of a
Scottish family long settled in Connecticut. Christopher Johnston
(1822-1891), a descendant of the Poldean branch of the Annandale
Johnstons, was professor of surgery in the University of Maryland. His
son, also named Christopher (d. 1914), graduated M.D., practised for
eight years, studied ancient and modern languages, and eventually
became Professor of Oriental History and Archaeology in Johns Hopkins
University. He was one of the most distinguished Oriental scholars
this country has produced.

Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), one of the founders of the Republic,
served with distinction in the Revolutionary War, but it was as a
Statesman of the highest ability that he acquired his great fame. He
was one of the most prominent Members of the Continental Congress
(1782-83), of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and Secretary of
the Treasury (1789-95). He was born in the West Indies, the son of a
Scots father and a French mother.

Thomas Leiper (1745-1825), born in Strathaven, Lanarkshire, emigrated
to Maryland in 1763, was one of the first to favor separation from the
mother country, and raised a fund for open resistance to the Crown.

Robert Stuart (1785-1848), pioneer and fur-trader, born at Callander,
Perthshire, a grandson of Rob Roy's bitterest enemy. In 1810, in
company with his uncle, John Jacob Astor, and several others, he
founded the fur-trading colony of Astoria. His share in this
undertaking is fully described in Washington Irving's _Astoria_. In
1817 Stuart settled at Mackinac as agent of the American Fur Company,
and also served as Commissioner for the Indian tribes. General George
Bartram, of Scottish parentage, was one of the "Committee of
Correspondence" appointed to take action on the "Chesapeake Affair" in
1807, when war with Britain seemed imminent, and was active in
military affairs during the war of 1812. Allan Pinkerton (1819-84),
born in the Gorbals, Glasgow, organized the United States Secret
Service Division of the United States Army in 1861, discovered the
plot to assassinate President Lincoln on his way to his inauguration
in 1861, and also broke up the "Molly Maguires," etc. William Walker
(1824-60), the filibuster, was born in Tennessee of Scots parentage.

Rev. George Keith, a native of Aberdeen, became Surveyor-General of
New Jersey in 1684. He founded the town of Freehold and marked out the
dividing line between East and West Jersey. In 1693 he issued the
first printed protest against human slavery, "An Exhortation & Caution
to Friends concerning Buying and Keeping of Negroes," New York, 1693.
James Alexander (1690-1756), a Scot, was disbarred for attempting the
defense of John Peter Zenger, the printer, in 1735. Along with
Benjamin Franklin he was one of the founders of the American
Philosophical Society. Andrew Hamilton (1676-1741), the most eminent
lawyer of his time, Attorney-General of Pennsylvania, and chief
Commissioner for building Independence Hall in Philadelphia, was born
in Scotland. For his championship of the freedom of the press and his
successful defense of Zenger he was hailed by Governor Morris as "the
day-star of the Revolution." His son James Hamilton, was the first
native-born Governor of Pennsylvania and Mayor of Philadelphia. James
Breghin or Brechin, Missionary, born in Scotland, took a prominent
part in the affairs of Virginia (1705-19) and was an active supporter
of Commissary Blair. Charles Anderson, another Missionary, probably a
graduate of Aberdeen, served in Virginia from 1700 to 1719, was also a
supporter of Blair. James Graham, first Recorder of the city of New
York (1683-1700) and Speaker of Assembly (1691-99) was born in
Scotland. Thomas Gordon (d. Perth Amboy, 1722), born in Pitlochrie,
was Attorney-General of the Eastern District (1698), Chief Secretary
and Registrar in 1702, later Speaker of Assembly, and in 1709 Chief
Justice and Receiver-General and Treasurer of the province. Alexander
Skene, who previously held office in Barbadoes, settled in North
Carolina about 1696. In 1717 he was Member of Council and Assistant to
the Judge of Admiralty to try a number of pirates. In 1719 he was
elected Member of the New House of Assembly and became leader of the
movement for the Proprietary Government. He was "looked upon as a man
that understood public affairs very well." Major Richard Stobo
(1727-c. 1770), a native of Glasgow, served in the Canadian campaign
against the French. It was he who guided the Fraser Highlanders up the
Heights of Abraham. Archibald Kennedy (c. 1687-1763), a relative of
the Earl of Cassilis, was Collector of Customs of the Port of New York
and Member of the Provincial Council. In his letters to headquarters
and in his reports he urged the importance of the American Colonies
to the mother country and advocated measures which, if carried out,
would undoubtedly have strengthened their loyalty and added to their
wealth and prosperity. Alexander Barclay, grandson of the Apologist of
the Quakers, was Comptroller of the Customs under the Crown in
Philadelphia from 1762 till his death in 1771. William Ronald, a
native of Scotland, was a delegate in the Virginia Convention of 1788.
His brother, General Andrew Ronald, was one of the Counsel
representing the British merchants in the so-called British Debts
Case. William Houston, son of Sir Patrick Houston, was a Delegate to
the Continental Congress (1784-87) and a Depute from Georgia to the
Convention for revising the Federal Constitution. His portrait, as
well as that of his brother's, was destroyed by fire during the Civil
War. Sir William Dunbar (c. 1740-1810), a pioneer of Louisiana, held
important trusts under the Federal government and was a correspondent
of Thomas Jefferson. Rev. Henry Patillo (1736-1801), born in Scotland,
advocated separation from the mother country on every possible
occasion, and was a Member of the Provincial Council in 1775. John
Dickinson (1732-1808), Member of the Continental Congress of 1765, of
the Federal Convention of 1787, and President of Pennsylvania
(1782-85), was also the founder of Dickinson College, Carlisle,
Pennsylvania. The Dickinsons came from Dundee in early colonial times.
John Ross, purchasing agent for the Continental Army, was born in
Tain, Ross-shire. He lost about one hundred thousand dollars by his
services to his adopted country, but managed to avoid financial
shipwreck. John Harvie, born at Gargunnock, died 1807, was Member of
the Continental Congress (1777), signer of the Articles of
Confederation the following year, and in 1788 was appointed Secretary
of the Commonwealth. John McDonnell (1779-1846), born in Scotland, was
in business in Detroit in 1812, and "thoroughly Americanized." He
opposed the British commander's orders after the surrender of Hull,
and redeemed many captives from the Indians. Became Member of State
Constitutional Convention (1835), State Senator (1835-37), and
Collector of the Port of Detroit (1839-41). John Johnstone Adair (b.
1807), graduate of Glasgow University, settled in Michigan, filled
several important positions and became State Treasurer, State Senator,
and Auditor General. Colonel James Burd (1726-93), born at Ormiston,
Midlothian, took part with General Forbes in the expedition to redeem
the failure of Braddock. General John Forbes (1710-59), born in
Pittencrieff, Fifeshire, was founder of Pittsburgh. He was noted for
his obstinacy and strength of character, and may have been the
prototype of the Scotsman of the prayer: "Grant, O Lord, that the
Scotchman may be right; for, if wrong, he is eternally wrong."
Captain William Bean was the first white man to bring his family to
Tennessee. His son, Russell Bean, was the first white child born in
the state. His descendant, Dr. James Bean, died in a snowstorm on Mont
Blanc while collecting specimens for the Smithsonian Institution.

George Rogers Clark (1752-1818), to whose prowess is due the
possession of the territory Northwest of the Ohio, secured by the
peace of 1783, was of Scottish descent. David Crockett (1786-1836),
was most probably of the same origin, though vaguely said to be "son
of an Irishman." The name is distinctly Scottish (Dumfriesshire).
Samuel McDowell (1735-1817), took an active part in the movement
leading to the War of Independence and was President of the first
State Constitutional Convention of Kentucky (1792). Colonel James
Innes, born in Canisbay, Caithness, was appointed Commander-in-Chief
of all the forces in the expedition to the Ohio in 1754 by Governor
Dinwiddie.

Isaac Magoon, a Scot, was the first settler of the town of Scotland
(c. 1700), and gave it the name of his native country. Dr. John
Stevenson, a Scot, pioneer merchant and developer of Baltimore, if not
indeed its actual founder, was known as the "American Romulus." George
Walker, a native of Clackmannanshire, pointed out the advantages of
the present site of the Capital of the United States, and George
Buchanan, another Scot, laid out Baltimore town in 1730. John Kinzie
(1763-1828), the founder of Chicago, was born in Canada of Scottish
parentage, the son of John MacKenzie. It is not known why he dropped
the "Mac." Samuel Wilkeson (1781-1848), the man who developed Buffalo
from a village to a city, was of Scottish descent. Alexander White
(1814-72), born in Elgin, Scotland, was one of the earliest settlers
of Chicago and did much to develop the city. Major Hugh McAlister, who
served in the Revolutionary War, later founded the town of
McAlisterville, Pennsylvania, was of Scots parentage. James Robertson
(1742-1814), founder of Nashville, Tennessee, was of Scottish origin.
His services are ranked next to Sevier's in the history of his adopted
state. Walter Scott Gordon (1848-86), founder of Sheffield, Alabama,
was the great-grandson of a Scot. The town of Paterson, in Putnam
county, New York, was settled by Matthew Paterson, a Scottish
stone-mason, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and was named
after him. Lairdsville, in New York state, was named from Samuel
Laird, son of a Scottish immigrant, in beginning of the eighteenth
century. Paris Gibson (b. 1830), grandson of a Scot, founded and
developed the town of Great Falls.




SCOTS AS COLONIAL AND PROVINCIAL GOVERNORS


Of the colonial Governors sent from Britain to the American Colonies
before the Revolution and of Provincial Governors from that time to
1789, a large number were of Scottish birth or descent. Among them may
be mentioned the following:

NEW YORK. Robert Hunter, Governor (1710-19), previously Governor of
Virginia, was a descendant of the Hunters of Hunterston, Ayrshire. He
died Governor of Jamaica (1734). He was described as one of the ablest
of the men sent over from Britain to fill public positions. William
Burnet (1688-1729), Governor in 1720, was also Governor of
Massachusetts (1720-1729). He was the eldest son of Gilbert Burnet,
Bishop of Sarum. Smith, the historian of New York, calls him "a man of
sense and polite breeding, a well bred scholar." John Montgomerie,
Governor of New York and New Jersey (1728-31), was born in Scotland.
John Hamilton, Governor (1736). Cadwallader Golden (1688-1776),
Lieutenant-Governor (1761-1776), born in Duns, Berwickshire, was
distinguished as physician, botanist, mathematician, and did much to
develop the resources of the state. O'Callaghan in his "Documentary
History of the State of New York," says: "Posterity will not fail to
accord justice to the character and memory of a man to whom this
country is most deeply indebted for much of its science and for many
of its most important institutions, and of whom the State of New York
may well be proud." John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore, Governor
(1770-71), afterwards Governor of Virginia. James Robertson
(1710-1788), born in Fifeshire, was Governor in 1780. Andrew Elliot,
born in Scotland in 1728, was Lieutenant-Governor and administered the
royalist government from 1781 to November, 1783.

NEW JERSEY. Robert Barclay of the Quaker family of Barclay of Ury was
appointed Governor of East New Jersey in 1682, but never visited his
territory. Lord Neil Campbell, son of the ninth Earl of Argyll, was
appointed Governor in 1687, but meddled little in the affairs of the
colony. Andrew Hamilton (c. 1627-1703), his deputy, born in Edinburgh,
on Lord Neil Campbell's departure, became Acting Governor. He was an
active, energetic officer, who rendered good service to the state,
and organized the first postal service in the colonies. John Hamilton,
son of Andrew, was Acting Governor for a time and died at Perth Amboy
in 1746. William Livingston (1723-90), the "Don Quixote of New
Jersey," grandson of Robert Livingston of Ancrum, Scotland, founder of
the Livingston family in America, so famous in the history of New York
State, was Governor from 1776 to 1790. William Paterson (1745-1806),
of Ulster Scot birth, studied at Princeton, admitted to the New Jersey
bar in November, 1767, Attorney-General in 1776, first Senator from
New Jersey to first Congress (1789), succeeded Livingston as Governor
(1790-92), and in 1793 became Justice of the Supreme Court. The city
of Paterson is named after him.

PENNSYLVANIA. Andrew Hamilton, Governor (1701-03), was previously
Governor of East and West Jersey. Sir William Keith (1680-1751), born
in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Deputy Governor from 1717 to 1726.
Patrick Gordon (1644-1736), Governor (1726-28). James Logan
(1674-1751), born in County Armagh, son of Patrick Logan, of Scottish
parentage, was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from
1731 to 1739, and President of the Council (1736-38). He bequeathed
his library of over two thousand volumes to Philadelphia, and they now
form the "Loganian Library" in the Philadelphia Public Library. James
Hamilton (c. 1710-1783), son of Andrew Hamilton, champion of the
liberty of the press, was elected Member of the Provincial Assembly
when but twenty years of age, and was re-elected five times. He was
Deputy Governor 1748-54 and 1759-63. Robert Hunter Morris, of the
famous New Jersey family of that name, Deputy Governor (1745-56).
Joseph Reed, of Ulster Scot descent, Governor (1778-81). John
Dickinson was President from 1782 to 1785.

DELAWARE. Dr. John McKinly (1721-96), first Governor of the state
(1777), was of Ulster Scot birth. (All the above Governors of
Pennsylvania except Reed also held the governorship of Delaware along
with that of Pennsylvania.)

VIRGINIA. Robert Hunter (1707). (_See above under New York._)
Alexander Spotswood, Lieutenant-Governor (1710-22), a scion of the
Spotswood of that Ilk. He was one of the ablest and most popular
representatives of the crown authority in the Colonies and was the
principal encourager of the growth of tobacco which laid the
foundation of Virginia's wealth. Hugh Drysdale, Lieutenant-Governor
(1722-26), was strongly opposed to the introduction of slavery into
the colony. Commissary James Blair (1655-1743), President of Council
(1740-41), was born in Scotland. Robert Dinwiddie, born in Glasgow in
1693, was Governor from 1751 to 1758. He recommended the annexation
of the Ohio Valley and so secured that great territory to the United
States. To him is also due the credit of calling George Washington to
the service of his country. Dinwiddie county is named after him. John
Campbell, Earl of Loudon (1705-82), Governor (1756-58), does not
appear to have come to this colony. John Blair, Governor (1768), son
of Dr. Archibald Blair and nephew of Rev. James Blair, the Commissary.
Many of his descendants have distinguished themselves in the annals of
Virginia. John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore, Governor (1771-75), was
previously Governor of New York. Patrick Henry (1736-99), Governor
(1776-79, 1784-86), was born in Hanover County, Virginia, of Scottish
parentage, his father being a native of Aberdeen, his grandmother a
cousin of William Robertson the historian. He became a lawyer in 1760
and in 1763 found his opportunity, when having been employed to plead
against an unpopular tax, his great eloquence seemed suddenly to
develop itself. This defence placed him at once in the front rank of
American orators, and in 1765 he entered the Virginia House of
Burgesses, immediately thereafter becoming leader in Virginia of the
political agitation which preceded the Declaration of Independence. On
the passage of the Stamp Act his voice was the first that rose in a
clear, bold call to resistance, and in May, 1773, he assisted in
procuring the passage of the resolution establishing a Committee of
Correspondence for intercourse with the other colonies. In the
Continental Congress which met in Philadelphia in 1774 he delivered a
fiery and eloquent speech worthy of so momentous a meeting. In 1776 he
carried the vote of the Virginia Convention for independence. He was
an able administrator, a wise and far-seeing legislator, but it is as
an orator that he will forever live in American history. William
Fleming (1729-95), surgeon, soldier, and statesman, Councillor and
Acting-Governor (1781), was born in Jedburgh, Roxburghshire.

NORTH CAROLINA. William Drummond, Governor of "Albemarle County
Colony" (i.e., North Carolina), was a native of Perthshire, a
strenuous upholder of the rights of the people, and ranks as one of
the earliest of American patriots. He took a prominent part in
"Bacon's Rebellion" in 1676, "an insurrection that was brought about
by the insolence and pig-headedness of Sir William Berkeley, then
Governor of Virginia," and was executed the same year. Gabriel
Johnston (1699-1752), Governor (1734-52), was born in Scotland, and
held the Professorship of Oriental Languages in St. Andrews University
before coming to the colonies. Johnston County is named after him.
Matthew Rowan was President of Council and Acting Governor in 1753.
Alexander Martin (1740-1807), was fourth and Acting Governor, 1782-84,
and from 1789 to 1792. Samuel Johnston (1733-1816), sixth Governor
(1788-89), four years Senator, and Justice of the Supreme Court from
1800-1803. Bancroft says the movement for freedom was assisted by "the
calm wisdom of Samuel Johnston, a native of Dundee, in Scotland, a man
revered for his integrity, thoroughly opposed to disorder and
revolution, if revolution could be avoided without yielding to
oppression."

SOUTH CAROLINA. Richard Kirk, Governor (1684). James Glen, born in
Linlithgow in 1701, Governor (1743-56). Lord William Campbell, third
brother of the fifth Duke of Argyll, Governor (1775). John Rutledge
(1739-1800), brother of Edward Rutledge the Signer, was President of
South Carolina (1776-78) and first Governor (1779-82). He was later a
delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Associate Justice
of the United States Supreme Court (1789-91), Chief Justice of South
Carolina (1791-95), and in 1795 appointed Chief Justice of the United
States Supreme Court.

GEORGIA. William Erwin or Ewen, born in England in 1775. John Houston,
son of Sir Patrick Houston, one of the prime instigators and
organizers of the Sons of Liberty (1774), was Governor in 1774-76,
1778. His portrait was destroyed by fire during the Civil War. Houston
County was named in his honor. Edward Telfair, born in the Stewartry
of Kirkcudbright in 1735 and died at Savannah in 1807. When the
revolutionary troubles commenced he earnestly espoused the side of the
colonies, and became known locally as an ardent advocate of liberty.
He was regarded as the foremost citizen of his adopted state, and his
death was deeply mourned throughout the state.

FLORIDA. George Johnstone, a member of the family of Johnstone of
Westerhall, was nominal Governor of Florida when that colony was ceded
by Spain to Great Britain in 1763. He was one of the Commissioners
appointed by the British government to try and restore peace in
America in 1778.




SCOTS AND THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE


Presbyterians in the Colonies, being dissenters, were untrammeled and
free to speak their mind in defence of their country's right, and
history shows that they did not fail their opportunity: the doctrine
of passive obedience never finding favor with them. In the Colonies
the Presbyterian ministers claimed equal rights, religious freedom,
and civil liberty. Their teaching had great influence, particularly in
the South, and Patrick Henry of Virginia, David Caldwell, Dr. Ephraim
Brevard, Rev. Alexander Craighead (d. 1766), and James Hall of North
Carolina, the two Rutledges and Tennant of South Carolina, William
Murdoch of Maryland, James Wilson and Thomas Craighead of
Pennsylvania, Witherspoon of New Jersey, Read and McKean of Delaware,
Livingston of New York, and Thornton of New Hampshire, with their
associates had prepared the people for the coming conflict. In
Maryland the lower house of the General Assembly was a fortress of
popular rights and of civil liberty. Its resolutions and messages,
beginning in 1733, and in an uninterrupted chain until 1755
continually declared "that it is the peculiar right of his Majesty's
subjects not to be liable to any tax or other imposition but what is
laid on them by laws to which they themselves are a party." These
principles were reiterated and recorded upon the journals of every
Assembly until 1771. The resolutions, addresses, and messages of the
lower house during this period discuss with remarkable fullness and
accuracy the fundamental principles of free government, and most of
them emanated from William Murdoch, born in Scotland (c. 1720), who
was one of the leading spirits and the directing force of the
discussion. He led in the resistance to the Stamp Act and in other
ways he united his colony in solid resistance to the attempt to levy
taxes and imposts without their consent. In May, 1775, the General
Synod of the Presbyterian Church met in Philadelphia and issued its
famous "Pastoral Letter," which was sent broadcast throughout the
Colonies, urging the people to adhere to the resolutions of Congress,
and to make earnest prayer to God for guidance in all measures looking
to the defense of the country. This powerful letter was also sent to
the legislature in every colony. Adolphus in his "History of England
from the Accession of George III. to the Conclusion of Peace in 1783,"
published in London in 1802, declared that the Synod and their
circular was the chief cause which led the Colonies to determine on
resistance. There is no question that from the Scots Presbyterians and
their descendants came many of the leaders in the struggle for
independence, as Bancroft has well pointed out in the following words:
"The first voice publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection
with Great Britain came not from the Puritans of New England, nor the
Dutch of New York, nor the planters of Virginia, but from the
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians." Joseph Galloway (1730-1803), the
Loyalist, than whom, says Ford, "there could be no better informed
witness," "held that the underlying cause of the American Revolution
was the activity and influence of the Presbyterian interest," and
further, that "it was the Presbyterians who supplied the Colonial
resistance a lining without which it would have collapsed." And Joseph
Reed of Philadelphia, himself an Episcopalian, said: "The part taken
by the Presbyterians in the contest with the mother country was
indeed, at the time, often made a ground of reproach, and the
connection between their efforts for the security of religious liberty
and opposition to the oppressive measures of Parliament, was then
distinctly seen. A Presbyterian loyalist was a thing unheard of."
Parker, the historian, quotes a writer who says: "When the sages of
America came to settle the forms of our government, they did but copy
into every constitution the simple elements of representative
republicanism, as found in the Presbyterian system. It is a matter of
history that cannot be denied, that Presbyterianism as found in the
Bible and the standards of the several Presbyterian churches, gave
character to our free institutions." Ranke, the German historian,
declared that "Calvin was the founder of the American Government;" and
Gulian C. Verplanck of New York, in a public address, traced the
origin of our Declaration of Independence to the National Covenant of
Scotland. Chief Justice Tilghman (1756-1827) stated that the framers
of the Constitution of the United States were through the agency of
Dr. Witherspoon much indebted to the standards of the Presbyterian
Church of Scotland in molding that instrument.




SCOTS AS SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE


Of the fifty-six Signers of the Declaration of Independence, no less
than nine can be claimed as directly or indirectly of Scottish origin.
Edward Rutledge (1749-1800), the youngest Signer, was a son of Dr.
John Rutledge who emigrated from Ulster to South Carolina in 1735. The
Rutledges were a small Border clan in Roxburghshire. William Hooper
(1742-1790), was the son of a Scottish minister, who was born near
Kelso and died in Boston in 1767. Hooper early displayed marked
literary ability and entered Harvard University when fifteen years of
age. At twenty-six he was one of the leading lawyers of the colony of
North Carolina. George Ross (1730-79), was also of Scottish parentage.
His nephew's wife, Elizabeth (Griscom) Ross (1752-1832), better known
as "Betsy Ross," was maker of the first national flag. Matthew
Thornton (1714-1803), the distinguished New Hampshire statesman and
physician, was brought to this country from the north of Ireland by
his father when about three years of age. He accompanied the
expedition against Louisburg in 1745, was President of the Provincial
Convention in 1775 and Speaker in January, 1776. In September, 1776,
he was elected to Congress, and in November following signed the
Declaration of Independence, although he had not been one of the
framers. Thomas McKean (1734-1817), was a great-grandson of William
McKean of Argyllshire who moved to Ulster about the middle of the
seventeenth century. He was a member of Congress from Delaware
(1774-83), Chief Justice of Pennsylvania (1777-99), and Governor of
the state from 1799 to 1808. George Taylor (1716-81), described as the
son of a clergyman and "born in Ireland," was most probably an Ulster
Scot. He was a member of the Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania from
1764 to 1770 and again in 1775. James Wilson (1742-1798), whose fame
was to become as wide and lasting as the nation, was born in St.
Andrews, the old university city of Fifeshire. He was a Delegate to
Congress from Pennsylvania in 1776, Member of the Constitutional
Convention of 1787, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme
Court from 1789 till his death. He strongly advocated independence as
the only possible means of escape from the evils which had brought
the various commonwealths into such a state of turmoil and
dissatisfaction. Philip Livingston (1716-1778), grandson of Robert
Livingston, the first of the American family of the name, was Member
of Congress from New York in 1776. "His life was distinguished for
inflexible rectitude and devotion to the interests of his country."

Last but greatest of all to be mentioned is the Rev. John Witherspoon
(1722-94). Born in Yester, Scotland, educated in Edinburgh, minister
in Paisley, he was called in 1768 to be President of the College of
New Jersey, now Princeton University. He said he had "become an
American the moment he landed." He took an active part in the public
affairs of the colony of New Jersey, and in the convention which met
to frame a constitution he displayed great knowledge of legal
questions and urged the abolition of religious tests. In June, 1776,
he was elected to the Continental Congress, and in the course of the
debates he displayed little patience with those who urged half
measures. When John Dickinson of Pennsylvania said the country was not
ripe for independence, Witherspoon broke in upon the speaker
exclaiming, "Not ripe, Sir! In my judgment we are not only ripe, but
rotting. Almost every colony has dropped from its parent stem and your
own province needs no more sunshine to mature it." He further declared
that he would rather be hanged than desert his country's cause. One of
his sons was killed at the battle of Germantown.




SCOTS IN THE PRESIDENCY


Of the twenty-nine Presidents of the United States five (Monroe,
Grant, Hayes, Roosevelt, and Wilson) are of Scottish descent, and four
(omitting Jackson who has been also claimed as Scottish by some
writers) are of Ulster Scot descent, namely, Polk, Buchanan, Arthur,
and McKinley. Jackson may possibly have been of Ulster Scot descent as
his father belonged to Carrickfergus while his, mother's maiden name,
Elizabeth Hutchins, or Hutchinson, is Scottish. She came of a family
of linen weavers. Benjamin Harrison might also have been included as
he had some Scottish (Gordon) blood. His wife, Caroline Scott
Harrison, was of Scottish descent.

James Monroe, fifth President, was descended from Andrew Monroe, who
emigrated from Scotland in the middle of the seventeenth century.
President Grant was a descendant of Matthew Grant, who came from
Scotland to Dorchester, Mass., in 1630. George Hayes, ancestor of
Rutherford B. Hayes, nineteenth President, was a Scot who settled in
Windsor prior to 1680. Theodore Roosevelt was Dutch on his father's
side and Scottish on his mother's. His mother was descended from James
Bulloch, born in Scotland about 1701, who emigrated to Charleston, c.
1728, and founded a family which became prominent in the annals of
Georgia. Woodrow Wilson's paternal grandfather, James Wilson, came
from county Down in 1807. His mother, Janet (or Jessie) Woodrow, was a
daughter of Rev. Thomas Woodrow, a native of Paisley, Scotland. James
Knox Polk, eleventh President, was a great-great-grandson of Robert
Polk or Pollok, who came from Ayrshire through Ulster. Many kinsmen of
President Polk have distinguished themselves in the annals of this
country. James Buchanan, fifteenth President, was of Ulster Scot
parentage. Chester Alan Arthur, twenty-first President, was the son of
a Belfast minister of Scottish descent. William McKinley, twenty-fifth
President, was descended from David McKinley, an Ulster Scot, born
about 1730, and his wife, Rachel Stewart. The surname McKinley in
Ireland occurs only in Ulster Scot territory.




SCOTS AS VICE-PRESIDENTS


Of the Vice-Presidents of the United States six at least were of
Scottish or Ulster Scot descent.

John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850), of Scottish descent on both sides.
Previous to becoming Vice-President he was Secretary of War in
Monroe's cabinet, and later was Secretary of State in the cabinet of
President Tyler. He was one of the chief instruments in securing the
annexation of Texas. George Mifflin Dallas (1792-1864), son of
Alexander James Dallas, Secretary of the Treasury, was Minister to
Russia in 1837-39, and subsequent to his Vice-Presidency was Minister
to Great Britain (1856-61). John Cabell Breckenridge (1821-75), of
direct Scottish descent, was Vice-President from 1857-61, candidate
for President in 1860, Major-General in the Confederate Army
(1862-64), and Confederate Secretary of War (1864-65). Henry Wilson
(1812-75), of Ulster Scot descent, had a distinguished career as
United States Senator before his election to the Vice-Presidency
(1873-75). His original name was Jeremiah Jones Colbraith (i.e.,
Galbraith). He was also a distinguished author, his most important
work being the "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in
America" (1872-75). Thomas Andrews Hendricks (1819-85), who held the
Vice-Presidency only for a few months (March to November, 1885), was
of Scottish descent on his mother's side. Adlai Ewing Stevenson
(1835-1914) was Member of Congress from Illinois (1875-77), and First
Assistant Postmaster-General (1885-89), previous to becoming
Vice-President (1893-97).




SCOTS AS CABINET OFFICERS


WAR. William Harris Crawford (1772-1834), descended from David
Crawford, who came from Scotland to Virginia, c. 1654. Secretary of
War (1615-16), Secretary of the Treasury (1816-25), and save for an
unfortunate attack of paralysis, would have been President in 1824. He
was also United States Senator from Georgia (1807-13) and Minister to
France (1813-15). John Bell (1797-1869), Secretary (1841), Senator
(1847-59), and candidate of the Constitutional Union Party for
President in 1860, was probably of Scottish descent. George Washington
Crawford, Secretary of War, was also Governor of Georgia. Simon
Cameron (1799-1889), of Scottish parentage or descent, Senator
(1845-49), Secretary of War in cabinet of Lincoln (1861-62), United
States Minister to Russia (1862-63), and again Senator (1866-77).
James Donald Cameron (1833-1918), son of the preceding, was Secretary
under Grant for a year and United States Senator from 1877 to 1897.
Daniel Scott Lamont (1851-1905), journalist and Secretary under
Cleveland, was of Ulster Scot origin.

TREASURY. George Washington Campbell (1768-1848), Secretary (1814),
was also Minister to Russia (1810-20). Alexander James Dallas
(1759-1817), Secretary (1814-16), was the son of a Scottish physician,
Dr. Robert C. Dallas. During 1815-16 he also discharged the functions
of Secretary of War. Had a distinguished career as a statesman. Louis
McLane (1776-1857), son of Allen McLane, a Revolutionary soldier and
Speaker of the Legislature of Delaware, had a distinguished career as
Senator from Delaware (1827-29), Minister to Great Britain (1829-31),
Secretary of the Treasury (1831-33), and Secretary of State (1833-34).
His son, Robert Milligan McLane (1815-98), had a distinguished career
as a diplomat. James Guthrie (1792-1869), Secretary in the cabinet of
President Pierce (1853-57). Thomas Ewing (1789-1871), was United
States Senator from Ohio (1831-37), Secretary of the Treasury (1841),
Secretary of the Interior (1849-50). He traced his descent from
Findlay Ewing, a native of Loch Lomond, who distinguished himself in
the Revolution of 1688 under William of Orange. Hugh McCulloch
(1808-95), descended from Hugh McCulloch, Bailie of Dornoch,
Sutherlandshire, was Comptroller of the Currency (1863-65), Secretary
of the Treasury (1865-69, 1884-85). He funded the National Debt
during his first term as Secretary. Charles Foster (1825-1904),
Governor of Ohio (1880-84), was Secretary of the Treasury from 1891 to
1893. Franklin MacVeagh (b. 1837), of Scottish ancestry, also held the
office under President Taft.

INTERIOR. Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart (b. 1807), Secretary in
President Fillmore's cabinet, was son of Archibald Stuart, a Scot who
fought in Revolutionary War. Thomas Ewing is already referred to
(under Treasury). Samuel Jordan Kirkwood, Secretary of the Interior
under Garfield, was also three times Governor of Iowa.

NAVY. Benjamin Stoddert (1751-1813), Secretary (1798-1801), was
grandson of a Scot. William Alexander Graham (1804-75), Secretary
(1850), was also Governor of North Carolina. He projected the
expedition to Japan under Commodore Perry. James Cochrane Dobbin
(1814-57). Paul Morton (1857-1911), Secretary (1904-05), was said to
be descended from Richard Morton, a blacksmith and ironmaster of
Scottish birth, who came to America about the middle of the eighteenth
century.

STATE. James Gillespie Blaine (1830-93), Secretary (1881, 1889-92) and
unsuccessful candidate for President in 1884. John Hay (1838-1905),
one of the ablest Secretaries of State (1898-1905) this country ever
had, was also of Scottish descent. He also held several diplomatic
posts in Europe (1865-70), culminating in Ambassador to Great Britain
(1897-98).

AGRICULTURE. James Wilson (1835-1920), Secretary (1897-1913) under
McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, was born in Ayrshire, Scotland. He was
Regent of Iowa State University, and in 1891 was elected to the chair
of Practical Agriculture in the College of Agriculture and Director of
the State Experiment Stations. He was wonderfully successful in the
expansion and administration of the "most useful public department in
the world."

LABOR. William Bauchop Wilson, born in Blantyre, near Glasgow,
Scotland, in 1862, Secretary-Treasurer of the United Mine Workers of
America (1900-09); Member of Congress (1907-13), and Chairman of the
Committee on Labor in the sixty-second Congress, Secretary of Labor
(1913).

POSTMASTER-GENERAL. The first postal service in the Colonies was
organized by Andrew Hamilton, a native of Edinburgh, who obtained a
patent for a postal scheme from the British Crown in 1694. A memorial
stone on the southwest corner of the New York Post Office at
Thirty-third Street commemorates the fact. John Maclean (1785-1861),
Postmaster-General from 1823 to 1829, was later Associate Justice of
the United States Supreme Court of Ohio, and unsuccessful candidate
for the Republican nomination for President in 1856 and again in 1860.
He took part in the famous Dred Scott case, in which he dissented from
Taney, maintaining that slavery had its origin merely in power and was
against right. James Campbell (1812-93), of Ulster Scot parentage,
Postmaster-General in the cabinet of President Pierce, made a record
by reducing the rate of postage and introducing the registry system.
Montgomery Blair (1813-83) was Postmaster-General in the cabinet of
President Lincoln. Adlai Ewing Stevenson, Assistant
Postmaster-General, later became Vice-President.




SCOTS IN THE SENATE


John Ewing Colhoun (1749-1802), Member of State Legislature of South
Carolina and Senator from the same state (1801), was of the same
family as John C. Calhoun. George Logan (1753-1821), a man of high
scientific attainments, grandson of James Logan, Quaker Governor of
Pennsylvania, went to France in 1798 with the design of averting war
with that country, Senator from Pennsylvania (1801-07). John
Rutherfurd (1760-1840) was grandson of Sir John Rutherfurd of
Edgerston, Scotland. James Brown (1766-1835), Senator and
Minister-Plenipotentiary to France, was of Scottish descent. Jacob
Burnet (1770-1853), Jurist and Senator, was the grandson of a Scot.
His father, William Burnet (1730-91), was a skilful physician and
Member of Congress. John Leeds Kerr (1780-1844), lawyer and Senator,
was the son of James Kerr of Monreith. Alexander Campbell (1779-1857),
Senator, was of Argyllshire descent. Walter Lowrie (1784-1868),
Senator (1819-35) and thereafter Secretary of the Senate for twelve
years, was born in Edinburgh. His four sons all became prominent in
law and theology. Simon Cameron (1799-1889), grandson of a Cameron who
fought at Culloden. His ancestor emigrated to America soon after the
'45 and fought tinder Wolfe against the French at Quebec. Simon
Cameron was also for a time Secretary of War in Lincoln's Cabinet and
Minister to Russia. He named his residence at Harrisburg "Lochiel."
His brother James was Colonel of the New York Volunteers, the 79th
Highlanders, in the Civil War. James Donald Cameron (b. 1833), son of
Simon Cameron, was President of the Northern Central Railroad of
Pennsylvania (1863-74), Secretary of War Under General Grant, and
Senator from Pennsylvania. Charles E. Stuart (1810-87), Lawyer and
Senator, was a descendant of Daniel Stuart who came to America before
1680. Stephen Arnold Douglas (1813-61), Senator and unsuccessful
candidate of the Democratic party for the Presidency in 1860, was of
Scottish origin. Joseph Ewing MacDonald (1819-91), who held a foremost
place among constitutional lawyers and was Democratic candidate for
Governor of Indiana in 1864, was of Scottish ancestry. Francis
Montgomery Blair (1821-75), a descendant of Commissary Blair of
Virginia, was Senator from Missouri (1871-73), and Democratic
candidate for Vice-President in 1868. James Burnie Beck (1822-90),
born in Dumfriesshire, was Member of Congress (1867-75) and Senator
from 1876 to 1890. He served on many important committees. Joseph
McIlvaine (1765-1826), United States Senator from 1823 to 1826, was
grandson of a Scot. His father fought on the Colonial side in the
Revolution. Randall Lee Gibson (1822-92), of Scottish ancestry,
Major-General in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, was United
States Senator from Louisiana from 1883 till his death. His
grandfather, Randall Gibson, was one of the founders of Jefferson
College, Mississippi. John Brown Gordon (1832-1904),
Lieutenant-General in the Confederate Army, thirty-fifth Governor of
Georgia and United States Senator, was grandson of a Scot. Marcus
Alonzo Hanna (1837-1904) was also partly Scottish descent. Calvin
Stewart Brice (1845-1898), Chairman of the Democratic Campaign
Committee (1888) and Senator from Ohio (1891-97), claimed descent from
Bruce of Kinnaird. Daniel Hugh McMillan (b. 1846), was much identified
with the welfare of Buffalo. His grandfather was "John the Upright,"
arbiter of the Hollanders of the Mohawk Valley during the latter part
of the eighteenth century. Alexander McDonald (d. 1903), Senator from
Arkansas (1868-71), was the son of John McDonald who came to the
United States in 1827, and was one of the first to discover and
develop bituminous coal mines on the west branch of the Susquehanna
River in Pennsylvania. John Lendrum Mitchell (1842-1904), grandson of
John Mitchell, farmer of Aberdeenshire, was State Senator of
Wisconsin, Member of Congress from Wisconsin (1891-93), and Senator
from the same state (1893-99), was also noted as a capitalist. Samuel
James Renwick MacMillan (d. 1897), Chairman of the Committee of
Commerce, was of Covenanting descent.




SCOTS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES


Only a very few names of Members of Congress of Scottish birth of
descent can be dealt with here. Some additional names will be found in
other sections of this work. William Houston (b. about 1755), son of
Sir Patrick Houston, was a Member of the Continental Congress. John
Morin Scott (1730-84), grandson of the second son of Sir John Scott of
Ancrum was Brigadier-General of New York State troops at the Battle of
Long Island and Member of Congress from 1779 to 1783. William Burnet
(1730-91), of Scottish parentage, physician and Member of Congress.
Among his sons the following are worthy of notice: Dr. William Burnet
of New Jersey, Major Ichabod Burnet of Georgia, Jacob Burnet, pioneer
of Ohio, and David G. Burnet, Provisional President of the Republic of
Texas. William Crawford (1760-1823), Member of Congress from 1809 to
1817, was born in Paisley. William Fitzhugh Gordon (1787-1858), Member
from Virginia (1829-35), of Scottish descent, is said to have been the
originator of the Sub-Treasury system. The town of Gordonsville,
Virginia, was named after him or after his family. Leonidas Felix
Livingston (b. 1832), grandson of Adam Livingston from Scotland, who
served in the Revolutionary War, was a Member of the Georgia
Legislature and Member of Congress. John Louis Macdonald (b. 1838),
newspaper editor, State Senator, etc., was born in Glasgow. James
Buchanan (b. 1839) of Scottish descent, was Member from New Jersey to
49th, 50th, 51st and 52nd Congress. David Bremner Henderson
(1840-1906), born at Old Deer, Aberdeenshire, served in the Civil War
and lost a leg at Corinth, was Member from Iowa (1880-99), and Speaker
of the House of Representatives (1899-1906). William Grant Laidlaw,
born near Jedburgh, Scotland, in 1840, served in the Civil War and was
Member of Congress from 1887 to 1891. John Edgar Reyburn (b. 1845),
Member State Senate of Pennsylvania, Member of Congress 1890-1907; and
James Fleming Stewart (1851-1904), were both of Scottish descent.




SCOTS IN THE JUDICIARY


As with the medical and theological professions the legal has shared
the dominating influence of Scotland, and indeed it is perhaps not too
much to say that much of the distinctive character of American
jurisprudence is due to the influence of men of Scottish blood at the
bench and bar. The second Chief Justice of the United States Supreme
Court (John Rutledge) and two of the four original Associate Justices,
Blair and Wilson, were of Scottish origin. The mother of John
Marshall, the great Chief Justice, was of Scottish origin (Keith). Of
fifty judges of the United States Supreme Court from 1789 to 1882, at
least fifteen were of Scottish birth or descent. We have space here to
deal with only a selection of the most prominent names.

Andrew Kirkpatrick (1756-1831), Chief Justice of New Jersey for
twenty-one years, whose "decisions especially those on realty matters,
show a depth of research, a power of discrimination, and a justness of
reasoning which entitle him to rank among the first American jurists,"
was of Scottish parentage, descended from the Kirkpatricks of
Dumfriesshire. His son, also named Andrew, was President Judge of the
Court of Common Pleas of Essex County (1885-96) and United States
District Judge (1896-1904). George Robertson (1790-1874), Chief
Justice of Kentucky (1829-43), "whose name stands first in the list of
great men who have occupied and adorned the Appellate bench of
Kentucky," and who declined the offer of the governorship of Arkansas,
was of Scottish ancestry. Robert Cooper Grier (1794-1870), Associate
Justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut (1846-70) was of same
origin. Eugenius Aristides Nisbet (1803-71), descended from Murdoch
Nisbet, a Lollard of Kyle, after a brilliant career in the state
legislature became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.
Thomas Todd (1765-1826), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
(1807-26). The first Chief Justice of Delaware, William Killen
(1722-1805), was born in the north of Ireland of Scottish parentage.
John J. Milligan (1795-1875), grandson of a Scottish emigrant from
Ayrshire, was Associate Justice of Delaware, and refused, on account
of ill health, the portfolio of Secretary of the Interior in the
cabinet of President Fillimore. Ellis Lewis (1798-1871), Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (1855-57) was of Scottish
descent. Alexander Addison (1759-1807), born in Scotland, became
President Judge of the fifth judicial district of Pennsylvania under
the constitution of 1770. Robert Hunter Morris, Lieutenant-Governor of
Pennsylvania, was Chief Justice of New Jersey for twenty-one years.
John McLean (1785-1861), Associate Justice, is noticed under Scots in
the Presidential Cabinet; and William Paterson, Associate Justice
(1793-1806), is mentioned under Colonial Governors. Samuel Nelson
(1792-1873), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, was of Ulster
Scot descent. "His decisions have stood the test of time and the
searching analysis of the most able lawyers." Thomas Douglas
(1790-1853), first Chief Justice of Florida, was of Scots ancestry.
William Wallace Campbell (1806-81), great-grandson of an Ulster Scot,
was distinguished as a jurist and as a historian of New York State. He
was author of _Annals of Tryon County_ (1831), _Border Warfare of New
York_ (1849), _Life and Writings of De Witt Clinton_ (1849), etc.
During a visit to Scotland in 1848 he was elected an honorary member
of the Clan Campbell at a great gathering at Inveraray. Thomas
Drummond (1809-90), grandson of a Scot from Falkirk, was Justice of
the Illinois Supreme Court. John Archibald Campbell (1811-89),
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1853-61), was Assistant
Secretary of War in the Confederate Cabinet, and in 1865 took part in
the "Hampton Roads Conference." John Wallace Houston (1841-95),
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware, was of Scots
descent. His ancestors first settled in New York city, and Houston
Street is named after one of them. Other Associate Justices of
Delaware of Scottish descent are Charles Mason Cullen (1829-1903), and
George Gray (b. 1840), Attorney-General (1879-85), United States
Senator, Member of the Russo-Japanese Peace Commission of 1898, and
Member of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission of 1902. James
Gilfillan (1829-94), born at Bannockburn, Stirlingshire, "a profound
scholar, and as a jurist was distinguished for his ability, firmness,
and absolute impartiality." William Joseph Robertson (1817-98), born
in Virginia of Scottish parents, was Judge of the Supreme Court of
Virginia and Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals (1859). Thomas
Sloan Bell (1800-61), of Scottish parentage, became President Judge of
the Judicial District of the counties of Wayne, Pike, Carbon, and
Monroe, in Pennsylvania, in 1855, and held many other important
positions. Samuel Dana Bell, son of Samuel Bell, Governor of New
Hampshire, was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire
(1859-64). Matthew Hall McAllister (1800-65), for several years Mayor
of Savannah, Georgia, afterwards United States Circuit Judge of
California, LL.D. of Columbia University, was of Scottish ancestry.
Thomas Ewing (1829-96), son of Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the
Treasury, at the age of twenty-nine was elected first Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of Ohio. During the Civil War he took a conspicuous
part and rose to the rank of General. William Harper (1790-1847), born
in Antigua, Leeward Islands, of Scottish parents, was Chancellor of
the University of South Carolina (1828-30, 1835-47) and Judge of the
Court of Appeals of South Carolina (1830-35). John Bannister Gibson
(1780-1853), Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, was of Ulster Scot
descent. Harry Innes (1752-1816), of Scottish parentage, was one of
the Commissioners appointed to draft a constitution for Kentucky,
being chosen by Washington because of his integrity. He was also
appointed first Chief Justice of Kentucky but declined the office.
John Buchanan (1772-1844), of Scottish ancestry, was Chief Justice of
Maryland, and Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals for thirty-seven
years. His brother, Thomas, was associated with him on the bench.
David Torrance (1840-1906), Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of
Connecticut, was born in Edinburgh.




SCOTS AS AMBASSADORS


Some of those who have represented this country at foreign courts
previously held office in the Cabinet or were Members of the Senate
are noted under these headings:

John Graham (1774-1820), Minister-Plenipotentiary to Brazil (1819),
was brother of George Graham, Acting Secretary of War in the cabinets
of Madison and Monroe. Charles Johnston McCurdy (b. 1797), of Ulster
Scot descent, was Minister to Austria (1851-52) and Justice of the
Supreme Court. Miller Grieve (1801-78), born in Edinburgh,
Representative in the Georgia Legislature, Chairman of Board of
Trustees of Oglethorpe University, was Charge d'Affaires at
Copenhagen. William Hunter (1774-1849), of Scottish parentage, a
scholar and linguist, United States Senator from Rhode Island
(1812-20), was Minister-Plenipotentiary to Brazil in 1834. William
Bradford Reed (1806-76) was Envoy-Extraordinary and
Minister-Plenipotentiary to China. Lewis Davis Campbell (1811-82),
Chairman Ways and Means Committee in the thirty-fourth Congress, was
United States Minister to Mexico. Robert Milligan McLane (1815-98),
son of Allen McLane, was United States Minister to China (1853-55),
Mexico (1859-60), and France (1885-88). John M. Forbes (d. 1831),
descendant of the Scottish family of Forbes, was Secretary of Legation
to Buenos Ayres (1823) and Charge d'Affaires (1825-31). James Hepburn
Campbell (1820-95) Member of Congress and Minister to Sweden and
Norway (1864-67). John Adam Kasson (1822-1910), descendant of Adam
Kasson (1721) from Argyllshire, had a distinguished career, the list
of honors held by him is long. Whitelaw Reid (1837-1912), one of the
half dozen most distinguished representatives of this country abroad
was of Scottish descent on both sides. Wayne MacVeagh (b. 1833), of
Scottish origin, was United States Minister to Turkey (1870-71),
Ambassador to Italy (1893-97), and was also Attorney-General under
President Garfield. Thomas Barker Ferguson (b. 1841), diplomat and
inventor, was great-grandson of James Ferguson who emigrated from
Scotland at end of seventeenth century. He was Commissioner of Fish
and Fisheries (1878-87), Envoy-Extraordinary and
Minister-Plenipotentiary to Sweden and Norway (1893-97), etc. His
grandfather was a Member of the South Carolina Provincial Legislature
and Member of the Council of Safety. Whiteside Godfrey Hunter, born in
Londonderry in 1841, of Scottish ancestry, was a Member of Congress
and Envoy-Extraordinary and Minister-Plenipotentiary to Guatemala and
Honduras. Richard Renshaw Neill (b. 1845), was Secretary of United
States Legation at Lima, Peru, and has been Charge d'Affaires there
eight different times. Hugh Anderson Dinsmore (b. 1850), of Ulster
Scot origin, was Minister Resident and Consul General in Corea
(1887-90) and later Member of Congress (1892-1906). John Wallace
Riddle (b. 1864), held several diplomatic posts culminating in
becoming Ambassador to Russia (1906-09). Thomas Cleland Dawson (b.
1865), son of a native of Clackmannan, was Secretary of the American
Legation to Brazil (1897-1904), Minister Resident and Consul General
to Santo Domingo (1904), and author of "South American Republics," a
standard work (2 v. 1903-4). George Brinton McClellan Harvey the
present Ambassador to Great Britain is descended from Stuart Harvey
who came from Scotland in 1820.




SCOTS AS STATE GOVERNORS


MAINE. Robert Pinckney Dunlap (1794-1859), eighth governor, and Hugh
Johnston Anderson (1801-81), fourteenth Governor (1844-47), were of
Ulster Scot descent. Abner Coburn (1803-85), twenty-fourth Governor,
was also most probably of Scottish or Ulster Scot descent.

NEW HAMPSHIRE. Jeremiah Smith, fourth Governor (1809-10), was of
Ulster Scot parentage. His son, of the same name, was an Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court of the state. Samuel Bell (1770-1850), a
descendant of one of the Ulster Scot settlers of 1718, was three times
elected Governor (1819-23) with little or no opposition. John Bell
(1765-1836), his brother, was thirteenth Governor (1828-29). Joseph
Merrill Harper (1789-1865), who served as acting Governor in 1831, was
of Ulster Scot descent. Samuel Dinsmoor (1766-1835), sixteenth
Governor (1831-33), a distinguished factor in the history of his
state, was of Ulster Scot descent on both sides. His eldest son
(1799-1869), also named Samuel, served as twenty-fourth Governor
(1849-52). Noah Martin (1801-63), of Ulster Scot descent on both
sides, was the twenty-fifth Governor. Charles Henry Bell (1823-93),
son of Governor John Bell, was forty-first Governor of the state. John
Butler Smith, forty-seventh Governor (1893-95), was a descendant of
one of the settlers of 1718. John McLane (1852-1911) fifty-seventh
Governor (1905-06), was born in Lennoxtown, Scotland. He was host at
the Russian-Japanese Conference at Portsmouth.

VERMONT. Charles James Bell, fiftieth Governor (1905), was descended
from one of the Londonderry, N.H., settlers of 1718. John Wolcott
Stewart, thirty-third Governor (1870-72), was descended from Robert
Stewart who went from Edinburgh to Londonderry, Ireland, and whose son
was one of those who emigrated from there to Londonderry, N.H., in
1718. His grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War.

MASSACHUSETTS. William Claflin (1818-1905), twenty-third Governor, was
a descendant of one of the Scots prisoners taken at the battle of
Dunbar in 1650.

RHODE ISLAND. General Ambrose E. Burnside (1824-81), Governor
(1867-69). William Gregory (1849-1901), forty-second Governor
(1900-01), was of direct Scottish descent.

CONNECTICUT. George Payne McLean, forty-first Governor (1901-03), was
of Scottish descent.

DELAWARE. Charles Polk (1788-1857), thirteenth Governor (1827-30), and
President of the Constitutional Convention of his state in 1831, was
of Ulster Scot descent. John P. Cochran (1809-98), twenty-sixth
Governor (1875-79), was of the same origin.

PENNSYLVANIA. Thomas McKean, Governor (1799-1808), is already noticed
under Signers of the Declaration of Independence. William Findlay
(1768-1846), fourth Governor (1817-20), of Ulster Scot descent, was
also United States Senator and Treasurer of the Mint at Philadelphia.
William Freame Johnston (1802-72), Governor from 1848 to 1852, was of
Scottish parentage. He did much to develop the oil region of
Pennsylvania, and was also President of the Allegheny Valley Railroad.
James Pollock (1810-90), Governor (1855-58). It was through his
efforts that "In God we trust" was placed on the coinage. John White
Geary (1819-73), Governor from 1867 to 1873, was of Ulster Scot
descent.

MARYLAND. John Francis Mercer (1759-1821), eleventh Governor
(1801-03), was a descendant of the Mercers of Aldie, Perthshire.
Robert Bowie (1749-1818), twelfth and fifteenth Governor (1803-06,
1811-12), and Robert Milligan McLane (1815-98), forty-second Governor
(1884-85), were of direct Scottish descent. Frank Brown, forty-fifth
Governor (1892-96), was descended from Abel Brown who emigrated from
Dumfries, c. 1730.

VIRGINIA. James Barbour (1776-1842) was eleventh Governor (1812-14).
Barbour County, Florida, was named in his honor. David Campbell
(1779-1859), twenty-first Governor (1837-40), was of Scottish descent
on both sides. Thomas Walker Gilmer (1802-44), twenty-second Governor
(1840-41) was a descendant of the Scottish physician, Dr. George
Gilmer. John Mercer Patton (1797-1858), Lieutenant-Governor and acting
Governor (1841), was son of Robert Patton who emigrated from Scotland.
His mother was a daughter of Gen. Hugh Mercer. John Rutherford
(1792-1865), twenty-third Governor (1841-42), was most probably of
Scottish descent. William Ewan Cameron, thirty-sixth Governor
(1882-86) descended from the Rev. John Cameron, a graduate of Aberdeen
University, who came to America, c. 1770. Henry Carter Stuart (b.
1855), Governor (1914-18), descended from Archibald Stuart who fled
from Scotland for political reasons and settled in Virginia in 1726.

WEST VIRGINIA. William Erskine Stevenson (1820-1883), second Governor
(1869-71) was born of Ulster Scot parentage. William Alexander Mac
Corkle (b. 1857), eighth Governor (1893-97) is of Scottish descent.
His grandfathers, Captain John MacCorkle and Captain John McNutt, fell
at the battle of Cowpens, 1781.

NORTH CAROLINA. Nathaniel Alexander (1756-1808), thirteenth Governor
(1805-07), was of Scottish descent. William Alexander Graham
(1804-75), thirtieth Governor (1845-49), was son of Gen. Joseph
Graham, a Revolutionary officer. He was also Secretary of the Navy in
1850, and projected the expedition to Japan under Commodore Perry. Tod
R. Caldwell (1818-74), fortieth Governor (1871-74), and David Lindsay
Russell, forty-eighth Governor (1897-1901), were both of direct
Scottish descent.

SOUTH CAROLINA. General William Moultrie, son of Dr. Moultrie, was
Governor in 1785-87 and 1794-96. Edward Rutledge, tenth Governor
(1798-1800), is already noticed under the Signers of the Declaration
of Independence. "No measure of importance was adopted by the
legislature without his taking part in it, while many originated with
himself." Andrew Pickens, (1779-1838), nineteenth Governor (1816-18),
was a son of Andrew Pickens, the noted Revolutionary general. John
Geddes (1777-1828), twentieth Governor (1818-20), was of Scottish
descent. Stephen Decatur Miller (1787-1838), twenty-fifth Governor
(1828-30), also served as United States Senator. George McDuffie
(1790-1851), twenty-eighth Governor, the greatest orator and statesman
of Georgia, was of Scottish parentage on both sides. McDuffie County
in Georgia is so named in his honor. Patrick Noble (1787-1840),
thirtieth Governor (1838-40), was grandson of an Ulster Scot
immigrant. Robert Kingston Scott (1826-1900), forty-fifth Governor
(1868-72), was the grandson or great-grandson of a refugee from
Culloden.

GEORGIA. David Brodie Mitchell (1766-1837), ninth Governor (1809-11,
1815-17), was born in Scotland. He was described as "a conscientious,
cultured, and conservative man, of great energy, public spirit, and
animated by the purest patriotism." George McIntosh Troup (1780-1856),
the "Hercules of State Rights," fourteenth Governor (1823-27), was of
Scottish descent on both sides. He was one of Georgia's most
illustrious Chief Magistrates. A county in the state is named after
him. John Forsyth (1780-1841), fifteenth Governor (1827-29), was also
United States Secretary of State. George Rockingham Gilmer
(1790-1859), sixteenth Governor (1829-31, 1837-39), was the grandson
of a Scottish physician, Dr. George Gilmer. He was also Member of
Congress. He also wrote a work, "Georgians," 1855, containing much
valuable matter relating to the early settlers of his state. Charles
James McDonald (1793-1860), nineteenth Governor (1839-43), and George
Washington Crawford (1798-1872), twentieth Governor (1843-47), were
both of Scottish descent. James Johnson, twenty-fifth Governor (1861),
was grandson of a Scottish immigrant. He rendered great service to his
state in its reconstruction after the war. Alexander Hamilton Stephens
(1812-83), grandson of an adherent of Prince Charles Edward, was
Vice-President of the Confederacy (1861-65), chief Confederate
Commissioner in the Hampton Roads Conference in February, 1865, Member
of Congress from Georgia (1873-82), Governor of the state (1883), and
author of "The War Between the States" (1868-70) and of a "History of
the United States" (1883). John Brown Gordon (1832-1904), thirty-fifth
Governor (1886-90), was the great-grandson of one of seven brothers
who emigrated from Scotland, all of whom served in the Revolutionary
Army. As Governor his administration was faultless, and the New York
Sun declared his inauguration "worthy of Thomas Jefferson."

FLORIDA. Francis Philip Fleming (b. 1841), fourteenth Governor
(1889-93), was of Scottish descent. Alexander Walker Gilchrist,
nineteenth Governor (1909), a descendant of Nimrod Gilchrist, who came
from Glasgow in 1750.

ALABAMA. Israel Pickens (1780-1827), third Governor (1821-25),
Democratic Member of Congress from North Carolina (1811-17), United
States Senator (1826), was of Scottish descent. Reuben Chapman
(1802-82), eleventh Governor (1847-49), was also of Scottish ancestry.
Robert Miller Patton (1809-85), seventeenth Governor (1865-68), was
Ulster Scot on his father's side and Scottish on his mother's. Robert
Burns Lindsay, born in Dumfriesshire in 1824, a linguist and a
scholar, educated at the University of St. Andrews, was nineteenth
Governor (1870-72). George Smith Houston (1811-79), twenty-first
Governor, and Joseph Forney Johnston (b. 1843), twenty-seventh
Governor (1896-1900), were both of Scottish descent.

TENNESSEE. Joseph McMinn (d. 1824), fifth Governor (1815-21), was most
probably of Scottish descent. Samuel Houston, seventh Governor
(1827-28), is noticed under Texas. Neil S. Brown, fourteenth Governor
(1847-49), was grandson of Angus Brown, a Scot who fought in the
Revolutionary War under Gen. Francis Marion. William Bowen Campbell
(1807-67), sixteenth Governor (1851-53), was also of Scottish descent.
Benton McMillin (b. 1845), Governor (1899-1903), Envoy-Extraordinary
and Minister-Plenipotentiary to Peru in 1913, of Ulster Scot descent.

KENTUCKY. John Adair (1797-1840), eighth Governor (1820-24), was of
Scottish parentage. "His term was marked by great legislative
activity for the promotion of education in the state, and by the
abolition of imprisonment for debt." The state library was founded
under his auspices. Adair county was so named in his honor. John
Breathitt (1786-1834), Lieutenant-Governor (1828-32), and eleventh
Governor (1832-34), was the son of a Scottish emigrant. "A man of high
character and his public career irreproachable." Breathitt county was
named after him. James Fisher Robinson (1800-92), twenty-second
Governor, was of English and Scottish descent.

OHIO. Duncan McArthur (1772-1840), an early Governor (1830-32), was of
Scottish ancestry. He also held the rank of General in the war of
1812. Jeremiah Morrow (1770-1852), Governor (1822-26), and Allen
Trimble (1783-1870), Governor (1826-30), were both Ulster Scot
descent. James E. Campbell (b. 1843), Governor (1890-92), was
previously Member of Congress. James M. Cox (b. 1870), forty-sixth
Governor (1913-15) is of Scottish ancestry.

INDIANA. Noah Noble, fifth Governor (1831-37), was grandson of a
Scottish immigrant. David Wallace (1799-1859), sixth Governor
(1837-40), and Samuel Bigger (1802-46), were also of Scottish
ancestry. Thomas Andrews Hendricks, Governor from 1873 to 1877, is
already noticed under Vice-Presidents.

MICHIGAN. Robert McClelland (1807-80), Governor (1851-53), afterwards
Secretary of the Interior; and Austin Blair (1814-94), war Governor,
who sent over 83,000 soldiers from his state during the Civil War,
were both of Scottish ancestry.

WISCONSIN. The mother of Henry Dodge, first and fourth Governor
(1836-41, 1845-48), was Anne Nancy Hunter, of Ulster Scot parentage.
William E. Smith (1824-83), thirteenth Governor (1878-82), was born in
Scotland.

ILLINOIS. William Lee Davidson Ewing (1795-1846), Senator and acting
Governor (1834), was of Ulster Sc