Directory of Scots in the Carolinas, 1680-1830. Volume 2

Description

The great 18th-century Scottish emigration to the Carolinas was a response, in large part, to the failure of the Jacobite rebellion in 1715, a phenomenon which set in motion a chain emigration of Scottish Lowlanders, followed by one of Highlanders. Publication of David Dobson’s Directory of Scots in the Carolinas, 1680-1830 in 1986 was the first attempt to build a comprehensive list of Scottish settlers in that region. Since 1986, Mr. Dobson has gathered an overwhelming amount of new information on early Scottish immigrants to North and South Carolina based on his research in Scotland, England, and the U.S., but especially at the National Archives in Scotland. This sequel to the 1986 volume encases those findings. In all, the compiler has found evidence on nearly 1,000 Scots not mentioned in the original work and, for the most part, not found in his other publications on Scottish emigration. As one might expect from such a disparate body of sources, the descriptions of these Scots vary considerably, though there is a solid foundation of genealogical detail: age, place and date of birth, and often names of parents, names of spouses and children, occupation, place of residence, and date of emigration from Scotland. This is an important addition to the literature of Scottish emigration to colonial America, and, given the difficulty of identifying the participants in this extraordinary emigration, one worth waiting for.