Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607 - 1785

by David Dobson

Before 1650, only a few hundred Scots had trickled into the American colonies, but by the early 1770s the number had risen to 10,000 per year. A conservative estimate of the total number of Scots who settled in North America prior to 1785 is around 150,000.

Who were these Scots? What did they do? Where did they settle? What factors motivated their emigration? Dobson's work, based on original research on both sides of the Atlantic, comprehensively identifies the Scottish contribution to the settlement of North America prior to 1785, with particular emphasis on the seventeenth century.

Genres: History, Scotland

280 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

David Dobson is a a Research Fellow at The University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Research Fellow at the St. Andrews Institute of Scottish Historical Research. His research interests focus mainly on the Scottish Diaspora and his publications include Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1683 - 1783; Scottish Trade with Colonial Charleston, 1683 - 1783; and over 115 historical and genealogical source books.

Reviews

[Tom Darrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is broken up into four sections. The first (1607-1660) discusses mostly how Scots migrated to mainland Europe and Ireland rather than America and served as mercenary soldiers. Also, Scots lived, albeit in small numbers, in colonies controlled by other European nations, like the Dutch and Swedes. He provides numerous examples of trans-Atlantic trade by Scottish ships to debunk the myth that Scots didn't set up their own colonies because they were inexperienced sailors.

Parts two through four cover information from 1660 to 1785 and are broken down by region (New England, Chesapeake, Canada, West Indies, Carolinas, etc.). The divisions are somewhat arbitrary with New York getting its own section in one chapter but being lumped in with the Mid-Atlantic colonies in another. Some of the stories and people he refers to are brought up in more than one section. He might have been a bit more successful focusing on a specific region all at once and then moving on to another.

The book is clearly well researched, but doesn't get bogged down in statistics. He makes a generalization (ex. that many Scottish tutors moved to the Chesapeake region), provides a few examples and then moves on. Some of the generalizations and statements get a bit repetitive, however... like how many Scottish merchants there were or how criminals were transported to the colonies.

Overall, this is a good introductory source for anyone doing research on their Scottish family history. You might catch an example of a family member used as one of his examples, but you would have to go to his sources to find more detailed information. Dobson is the author of numerous directories of data, which focus on specific regions, so that would be where one should look for more detailed information.