#scots-american

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On March 17th 1725 Lachlan McIntosh was born near Raitts, Badenoch.

Not a name most of you will be familiar with, Lachlan’s father John Mòr McIntosh, was the leader of a group of about 100 Scots, who settled a town called New Inverness, (later renamed Darien), when young Lachlan was about 11 years old.

Lachlan McIntosh eventually decided to enter business life and he moved to Charleston, South Carolina. At the start of the Revolutionary War, he was a wealthy merchant and a leader in the independence movement in Georgia. In January 1776, he was commissioned Colonel of the Georgia Militia and repelled a British assault at the Battle of Rice Boats on the Savannah River.

Promoted Brigadier General in the Continental Army, he was in charge of defence of Georgia’s southern flank from British incursions from Florida. In 1777, he was in a bitter political dispute with Speaker of the Georgia Provisional Congress Button Gwinnett which resulted in McIntosh killing Gwinnett in a duel, true wild west style!

The duel didn’t seem to harm him as in May 1778, McIntosh was promoted Major General in command of the Western Continental Army and he led regiments during the siege of Savannah. After the battle of Charleston in May 1780, McIntosh was taken prisoner and remained in captivity until he was exchanged in February, 1782.

After the war, he was appointed a commissioner to treaty with the southern American Indian tribes and was part of the delegation that officially welcomed President George Washington to Georgia in 1791.

He continued to aid the state of Georgia in many ways throughout the rest of his lifetime, until his death February 20th, 1806. He is buried in the Colonial Cemetery in Savannah as seen in the second pic.

More about Lachlan here https://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/served/mcintosh.html

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James Patrick Kinnon, commonly known as Jimmy K was born on April 5th 1911 in Paisley. Jimmy was the founder Narcotics Anonymous.

During his lifetime, he was usually referred to as "Jimmy K." due to NA's principle of personal anonymity on the public level. He never referred to himself as the founder of NA, although the record clearly shows that he played a founding role.

When Kinnon was seven years old he befriended a local alcoholic whom he referred to as Mr. Crookshank. Kinnon would often find him drunk and beaten. One day he found Crookshank badly beaten up and unresponsive. Kinnon ran for help. Over the following weeks Kinnon did not see Crookshank and, after numerous inquiries, his mother took him to see his friend. They went to an institution of which Crookshank was now a resident. He was wheelchair-bound and incoherent. Upon leaving the facility, Kinnon told his mother that when he grew up he was going to help people like Mr. Crookshank.

He and his parents moved to the United States in the 1920s settling in Philidelphia, while there he went to private school and had plans of entering the priesthood. He began using alcohol and pills which started his years of addiction until he got clean in 1950. He never followed through with his goal of becoming a priest. Kinnon stopped using all mood and mind-altering substances on 2 February 1950. He began attending Alcoholics Anonymous.

Jimmy K. met others members in AA had struggled with drug addiction in the past. He and other members started putting together their own meetings to address drug addiction. They of course, were not yet called Narcotic Anonymous. But Jimmy and the other members wanted to start a fellowship for drug addiction as many people suffered from it.

In 1953, they were given permission by the Alcoholics Anonymous organization to use the 12 steps and 12 traditions for their own fellowship. It is then that Narcotics Anonymous was formed officially. Jimmy K. continued to help people with drug addiction which also helped them stay sober. He stayed focused on his goal of creating this fellowship even through the rough times.

Most of Narcotics Anonymous early literature was written by Jimmy Kinnon and is still used worldwide today in over 62,800 NA meetings. Jimmy stayed clean and worked with the organization for the next thirty five years, he died of lung cancer in 1985.

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September 6th 1826 saw the birth of Alison “Eilley” Bowers (nee Oram) at a farm near Forfar.

Although she had little interest in religion, she was dissatisfied with her prospects should she remain in Scotland, and is said to have joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints as means to get across the Atlantic, and so it was after marrying the first of her three husbands, Stephen Hunter at aged just 15, she emigrated to America at 17. Other sources say she never became an actual follower of the Mormons, as they are generally known nowadays, but her Husband was baptised into the faith. I admit a lot of her life story is conjecture and on every occasion I have researched her new information arises.

Following the Mormon custom of her day, her husband, Stephen Hunter, took several wives after they had settled in Utah. Eilley, however, did not enjoy the polygamous lifestyle and soon divorced Hunter. In 1853, she married Alexander Cowan.

The two moved to the Carson Valley where they purchased 300 acres in Washoe Valley. In 1857, Cowan, who was also Mormon, returned to Salt Lake City during troubles between the church and the U.S. government.

Eilley chose to divorce Cowan rather than return to Utah and moved to Johntown, a mining camp below Virginia City, where she opened a boardinghouse.

During this time, she acquired a handful of mining claims from boarders unable to pay their debts and met a Comstock miner, Lemuel “Sandy” Bowers, who would become her third husband.

The two combined their mining holdings and, as luck would have it, ended up owning one of the Comstock’s earliest major silver strikes. Within a short time, the Bowers were among Nevada’s first mining millionaires.

Deciding to spend their seemingly limitless wealth, in 1864, the Bowers’ began building the huge stone mansion on Eilley’s acreage in Washoe Valley. While the home was under construction, they traveled to Europe to purchase furnishings.

When it was completed, the mansion was one of the most magnificent homes in the state and the Bowers were willing party hosts. During the next four years, they indulged themselves on the finest clothing, furniture, and collectables.

In 1868, however, Sandy Bowers suddenly died of silicosis at the age of 35. By then, the original mine had become tapped out and he had invested much of their money in several unprofitable mining ventures.

After the estate was finally settled, Eilley found herself penniless. Despite her best efforts to hold on to the mansion, she was unable to keep it. Her misfortune continued when, in 1874, her adopted daughter, Persia, died at the age of 12.

Since her days in Salt Lake City, Eilley had been intrigued by the occult. Apparently during that time she acquired a crystal ball for fortune telling and had prognosticated for friend, although other sources say she brought the “Seer Stone” from her home in Scotland

In 1875, following her many financial and personal setbacks, Eilley set up shop in Virginia City as the “Washoe Seeress.” Despite skeptics, she practiced her arcane arts for nearly a decade, until the decline of the Comstock.

In the 1880s, she moved to San Francisco, where she worked in various jobs, including–as she had so many years before operating a small boardinghouse. In 1898, she was placed in a rest home in Oakland, where she died in 1903 at the age of 77.

The Bowers Mansion survives and in 1946, it was purchased by Washoe County with the assistance of the Reno Women’s Civic Club and public donations; 20 years later, the property was updated and renovated. Today, it’s Bowers Mansion Regional Park. The home has been restored and refurbished with historic pieces donated by Nevada residents. The grounds contain hiking trails, picnic areas, spring-fed swimming pools, a playground, an amphitheater, and more.

Read more about this Eilley's story here

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On September 8th 1912, Alexander MacKendrick, the US born Scottish film director, screenwriter and teacher was born.

I’ve said it before, just because you weren’t actually born in Scotland it doesn’t make you any less Scottish than others. Many things can attribute to you being Scottish and Proud, people like Elsie Inglis or Eric Liddell, neither of whom were born, or indeed died here are both celebrated and championed as Scottish.

In my opinion Alexander MacKendrick falls into the same category, his parents had emigrated to the US and after the death of his father his mother reluctantly gave up custody of the seven year old Alexander to his Grandfather, who took him back to Glasgow, where he grew up. attended Hillhead High School from 1919 to 1926 and then went on to spend three years at the Glasgow School of Art.

MacKendrick’s first work was in animation, and got work in London working on ads for the cinema, he wrote his first film with fellow Scot, playwright, and his cousin, Roger MacDougall, Midnight Menace was released in 1937, it was a minor hit, but it got them noticed, although the war years saw him shooting numerous short documentaries and propaganda films.

After the war he found work with the famous Ealing studios and in 1948 made his directing debut with a film that would endear him to Scots the world over, Whisky Galore. Amongst the films that he wrote were The Maggie, about an American businessman in Scotland is conned into shipping a valuable load of cargo to a Scottish island on a Clyde Puffer, MacKendrick took inspiration for this story from Neil Munro’s stories about Para Handy and The Vital Spark, like Whisky Galore beforehand, Ealing studios filmed most of the film on location in Scotland, this time on Islay.

MacKendrick teamed up with his cousin, MacDougall and John Dighton for one of my favourite films of the post war, black & white era, The Man in the White Suit, which was also a big hit and one of the most popular films of its time.

Hollywood came calling and in 1957 he directed and co-wrote the screenplay for Sweet Smell of Success, a vehicle for the highly popular Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. He was praised for his directing and the film is still popular nowadays, a film site I read often, Rotten Tomatoes, gives it a 98%, few films on the site get that high a rating.

After just three more films, he was offered an academic job as the Dean of the Film Department of the California Institute of the Arts, which he accepted and held from 1969, Alexander MacKendrick suffered from emphysema for many years and this stopped him returning home to Scotland, he died of pneumonia in 1993, aged 81.

Alexander Mackendrick may have been born and died in the USA, but I think he deserves his place as one of the many others not actually born here, who we would would use the term, Scottish & Proud.

Pics include Mackendrick on the set of The Sweet Smell of Success with Burt Lancaster

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On February 5th 1723 John Witherspoon, clergyman, writer, President of Princeton University, signatory to American Declaration of Independence was born.

Witherspoon was educated at Edinburgh University and was ordained as a minister in 1745. One of his ancestors was John Knox who had been a major force in the Reformation of the church in the middle of the 16th century.

Witherspoon’s first charge was as minister of the Auld Kirk in Beith in Ayrshire where he preached for twelve years. He was regarded as a brilliant orator and was “head hunted” by a number of churches in Scotland (and abroad) before moving to Paisley.

While he was at Paisley, Witherspoon met 21-year-old Benjamin Rush who was born in America of Scottish parents, and attended the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), Rush had then enrolled at the University of Edinburgh’s medical school. Armed with letters from Benjamin Franklin, Rush convinced the 42 year old Witherspoon to leave Scotland and become president of the College of New Jersey in 1768 and a delegate to the 2nd Continental Congress.

Witherspoon was soon supporting the independence fight in America because he believed that his native land had “gone soft on religion”. Of course, the Presbyterian church’s principles of egalitarianism and the natural antipathy of the Scots to the English rulers were factors too.

Witherspoon became what in today’s politics would be regarded as a senator. And in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he demanded the deletion of a phrase that complained that the king of Britain had sent to America “not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries.”

However, when some of the representatives from the thirteen American colonies gathered to decide whether to break completely with Britain, some of the delegates realised the difficulty of taking on the might of the British Empire.

It was Witherspoon who urged them to sign the Declaration of Independence, saying “There is a tide in the affairs of men, a nick of time. We perceive it now before us. To hesitate is to consent to our own slavery.”

It is worth noting also that of the 56 men who signed the document, 21 had some Scottish ancestry. Witherspoon was the only clergyman to sign this historic document, which has been compared to the Declaration of Arbroath which proclaimed Scottish freedom for the first time, although many historians dismiss this nowadays.

Witherspoon also became a member of the congress which conducted the war and later helped to draft the peace agreement which brought the war to an end.

After leaving Congress in 1782, Witherspoon was involved in the rebuilding of Princeton College (destroyed during the war). He was its President from 1768 until his death in 1794. More than any other university, Princeton in those days had students from all over the United States, not just from its home state and so Witherspoon’s influence on the country was that much more significant.

As with most white gentry of the era Witherspoon was involved in the slave trade.

Beginning in 1779, he acquired two enslaved laborers for his country estate. About eight years later, both mysteriously disappeared. New research suggests that at least one may have been freed and settled on his own land. Their demise, sale or escape are other, less cheery, possibilities.

Another two enslaved individuals were listed among Witherspoon’s possessions in an inventory dated November 1794, alongside six cows, 10 horses, 12 pigs and 24 sheep. He also recruited the sons of wealthy Southern planters to finance Princeton through donations and tuition.

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November 9th 1903 saw the birth near Pittsburgh of Margaret Fay Shaw, the American writer who did much to record the music and culture of South Uist.

It was a love affair which developed between a young American musician and one of Scotland’s most picturesque islands. The story started when the visitor first heard a babble of animated conversation in a language which she didn’t recognise as she was travelling through a remote community.

And that experience not only led to Margaret Fay Shaw becoming an ardent champion of the charms of Canna and South Uist and striking up a friendship with a famous author, but also compelled her to collect an unprecedented seam of music and verse from the early days of Hebridean culture.

The talented artist, who had dreams of becoming a concert pianist in her own right, Margaret was passionate about music from a very young age.

Arriving in South Uist in 1929 to collect Gaelic songs, she forged an enduring affinity with the island, and spent the remainder of her days amassing and collating an astonishing number of melodies and stories, whilst taking photographs and filming a way of living which, even a century ago, was ceasing to exist.

She married John Lorne Campbell in 1935 and, two years later, they purchased Canna, whereupon she spent the next seven decades promoting the places which she regarded as her spiritual home and where she was most comfortable.

A studious individual with a beetle-browed resolve to track down as precise details as she could, Margaret was never happier than when unearthing another hidden gem.

And she was meticulous in her research of the myriad ballads, poems and other pieces of artistic heritage which had been created by the islanders over generations.

Her approach to the subject was the philosophy that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, which helps to explain why she has left such a treasure trove behind her.

She wrote extensively on Canna, about her work, publishing the seminal book of songs ‘Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist’ in 1955 and her autobiography ‘From the Alleghenies to the Hebrides’ in 1993.

Their family friend Compton Mackenzie wrote his famous novel Whisky Galore while he was on Canna.

In the ensuing years, she stayed at Canna House until her death at the grand old age of 101 in 2004.

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On February 14th 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, patent no. 174461.

With the help of Thomas A. Watson, a Boston machine shop employee, Bell developed a prototype. In this first telephone, sound waves caused an electric current to vary in intensity and frequency, causing a thin, soft iron plate–called the diaphragm–to vibrate. These vibrations were transferred magnetically to another wire connected to a diaphragm in another, distant instrument. When that diaphragm vibrated, the original sound would be replicated in the ear of the receiving instrument. Three days after filing the patent, the telephone carried its first intelligible message—the famous “Mr. Watson, come here, I need you”—from Bell to his assistant.

His early experiments included ways to improve and use telegraphy. The telegraph conveyed messages through a system of electrical sounds that, when decoded, could be translated into words. It was dependent on skilled technicians and never became a home appliance. Rather, it required you to go to a telegraph office to send or receive a message, or perhaps a messenger did this for you. Bell sought something revolutionary: to transmit not only the sound of the human voice, but audible words. With the telephone, Bell wrote in 1878, "It is possible to connect every man's house, office or factory with a central station, so as to give him direct communication with his neighbors."

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On April 21st 1838, the naturalist John Muir was born.

Born in Dunbar, East Lothian, his parents were Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye. He was the third of eight children: Margaret, Sarah, David, Daniel, Ann and Mary (twins), and the American-born Joanna. His earliest recollections were of taking short walks with his grandfather when he was three.

In his autobiography, he described his boyhood pursuits, which included fighting, either by re-enacting romantic battles from the Wars of Scottish Independence or just scrapping on the playground, and hunting for birds' nests As a child, he was raised under a strictly religious upbringing.

John Muir was a naturalist, conservationist, explorer, and writer. At age 11, his family immigrated to the United States from Scotland and settled in Wisconsin. Muir learned to love the wilderness at an early age and even carved working locks out of wood. At age 21, he entered the University of Wisconsin, but left after three years. After suffering an eye injury while working in Indiana, Muir resolved to work in the wilderness.

In 1868, after roaming the North American continent, he landed in San Francisco. Muir explored California and was awestruck by its natural beauty. He soon became a successful writer, describing the landscapes and detailing the devastation of alpine meadows and forests by grazing sheep and cattle.

As a result of his efforts, Congress established Yosemite National Park in 1890. Muir was also involved in the creations of Sequoia, Mount Rainier and Petrified Forest National Parks. To protect the parks from poachers and land prospectors, Muir, and his supporters, formed the Sierra Club in 1892. He served as its president until his death in 1914.

Find out more about John Muir on a web site dedicated to hime, including a 20 minute documentary. https://johnmuir.org/