The book under consideration here marks the second in a series on Scottish colonial soldiers compiled by emigration authority David Dobson. (The first volume was published as two parts in one.) Working from manuscripts in the Acts of the Privy Council and the Calendar of British State Papers and published sources such as the Aberdeen Journal, the Edinburgh Advertiser, and the Georgia Gazette, the author has uncovered information on an additional 750 Scottish colonial solders not found in his earlier book. One such soldier was "John Wright, born in High Calton, Edinburgh, during 1728, an army sergeant who fought in the French and Indian War and in the American War of Independence, witnessed to death of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, died in Joppa, Edinburgh, in 1838, father of a Roman Catholic priest in Montreal."
The book under consideration here marks the second in a series on Scottish colonial soldiers compiled by emigration authority David Dobson. (The first volume was published as two parts in one.) Working from manuscripts in the Acts of the Privy Council and the Calendar of British State Papers and published sources such as the Aberdeen Journal, the Edinburgh Advertiser, and the Georgia Gazette, the author has uncovered information on an additional 750 Scottish colonial solders not found in his earlier book. One such soldier was "John Wright, born in High Calton, Edinburgh, during 1728, an army sergeant who fought in the French and Indian War and in the American War of Independence, witnessed to death of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, died in Joppa, Edinburgh, in 1838, father of a Roman Catholic priest in Montreal."
David Dobson is the foremost Scottish historian on Scottish emigration to Europe, colonial North America, and the Caribbean. This work traces Scottish soldiers who emigrated to various European countries and to the North American colonies in the 17th century.
"In the winter of 1650-51, one hundred fifty ragged and hungry Scottish prisoners of war arrived at Massachusetts Bay Colony, where they were sold as indentured laborers for 20 to 30 pounds each. Among them was Thomas Doughty, a common foot soldier who had survived the Battle of Dunbar, a forced marched of 100 miles without food or water, imprisonment in Durham Cathedral, and a difficult Atlantic crossing. An ordinary individual who experienced extraordinary events, Doughty was among some 420 Scottish soldiers who were captured during the War of the Three Kingdoms, transported to America, and sold between 1650 and 1651. Their experiences offer a fresh perspective on seventeenth-century life." - publisher
Between 1735 and 1748 hundreds of young men and their families emigrated from the Scottish Highlands to the Georgia coast to settle and protect the new British colony. These men were recruited by the trustees of the colony and military governor James Oglethorpe, who wanted settlers who were accustomed to hardship, militant in nature, and willing to become frontier farmer-soldiers. In this respect, the Highlanders fit the bill perfectly through training and tradition. Recruiting and settling the Scottish Highlanders as the first line of defense on the southern frontier in Georgia was an important decision on the part of the trustees and crucial for the survival of the colony, but this portion of Georgia's history has been sadly neglected until now. By focusing on the Scots themselves, Anthony W. Parker explains what factors motivated the Highlanders to leave their native glens of Scotland for the pine barrens of Georgia and attempts to account for the reasons their cultural distinctiveness and "old world" experience aptly prepared them to play a vital role in the survival of Georgia in this early and precarious moment in its history.
The battle of Cowpens was a crucial turning point in the Revolutionary War in the South and stands as perhaps the finest American tactical demonstration of the entire war. On 17 January 1781, Daniel Morgan's force of Continental troops and militia routed British regulars and Loyalists under the command of Banastre Tarleton. The victory at Cowpens helped put the British army on the road to the Yorktown surrender and, ultimately, cleared the way for American independence. Here, Lawrence Babits provides a brand-new interpretation of this pivotal South Carolina battle. Whereas previous accounts relied on often inaccurate histories and a small sampling of participant narratives, Babits uses veterans' sworn pension statements, long-forgotten published accounts, and a thorough knowledge of weaponry, tactics, and the art of moving men across the landscape. He identifies where individuals were on the battlefield, when they were there, and what they saw--creating an absorbing common soldier's version of the conflict. His minute-by-minute account of the fighting explains what happened and why and, in the process, refutes much of the mythology that has clouded our picture of the battle. Babits put the events at Cowpens into a sequence that makes sense given the landscape, the drill manual, the time frame, and participants' accounts. He presents an accurate accounting of the numbers involved and the battle's length. Using veterans' statements and an analysis of wounds, he shows how actions by North Carolina militia and American cavalry affected the battle at critical times. And, by fitting together clues from a number of incomplete and disparate narratives, he answers questions the participants themselves could not, such as why South Carolina militiamen ran toward dragoons they feared and what caused the "mistaken order" on the Continental right flank.
Drawing upon research conducted in both Scotland and the United States in manuscript and in published sources, David Dobson has here amassed all the genealogical data that we know of concerning members of the Society of Friends in Scotland prior to 1700 and the origins of Scottish Quakers living in East New Jersey in the 1680s. While there is great deal of variation in the descriptions of the roughly 500 Scottish Quakers listed in the volume, the entries typically give the individual's name, date or place of birth, and occupation, and sometimes the name of a spouse or date of marriage, name of parents, place and reason for imprisonment in Scotland, place of indenture, date of death, and the source of the information.
