Scotlands Mark on America | Page 8

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,