IN THE MONTH OF JANUARY 1736, the first group of Scottish Highlanders arrived in the fledgling British colony of Georgia. They settled on the banks of the Altamaha River along the southernmost border of the province in a town they first called New Inverness, later to become Darien. These immigrants had been recruited, screened, and selected by representatives of the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia in America.¹ According to William MacKenzie, a professor of history at the University of Edinburgh in the 1840s, these Scots were carefully “picked men” because of their “military qualities.”² It was the design...

THE TRACT OF LAND in the New World known at various times as the land of Ayllón, Gualé, La Florida, Carolina, and ultimately Georgia became the scene of the first attempts at settlement and colonization within the present boundaries of the United States and the theater for many of the international conflicts that arose in the years following its discovery. Herbert Bolton and Mary Ross labeled the territory along the southern frontier of the British colonies in America, between the Savannah and St. John’s rivers, as the “Debatable Land” because of the 250-year-long contest among the Spanish, French, English, and...

THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND in the first half of the eighteenth century were in a state of flux. By 1735, when Captain George Dunbar and Lieutenant Hugh Mackay arrived in Scotland to recruit settlers for the new colony of Georgia in America, the changing circumstances in the Highlands were enough to encourage many to emigrate. Scotland, particularly the Highlands, had traditionally proven to be fertile ground for military recruitment for service in Europe.¹ The Georgia recruiters, however, were not there just for soldiers; they wanted families. This was not the first time that the Scots were enlisted to man an...

THE SUMMER OF 1735 was a busy time in the Highlands of Scotland for the recruiters from the colony of Georgia. News of the colony had already spread throughout the country via frequent reports in the Caledonian Mercury and Edinburgh Eccho, giving accounts of the progress and success of the settlements in America.¹ One especially encouraging article appeared in the 27 June 1734 edition of the Caledonian Mercury, reporting that “the people settled there [Georgia] is about 500, who have already cleared from 2 to 4 acres of land each, and planted them with corn, potatoes, pease, beans, yams, cabbages,...

THE MORNING OF 10 January 1736 launched a day filled with excitement, anticipation, and, no doubt, some trepidation for the newly arriving immigrants from the Highlands of Scotland. On board ship was a mixture of people preparing to make a new start in a new world: ardent Jacobites and strong supporters of the Hanoverian government, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, a mariner, a surgeon, three tailors, one joiner, one weaver, four men listed as gentlemen, twenty-five farmers, seventy men named as servants or laborers, a minister, and the complement of women and children that made up the families of this settlement on...

THE BEGINNING OF 1737 brought renewed fears of impending danger to the colony of Georgia and to the settlement of Darien. In February, reliable reports of Spanish preparations in St. Augustine “to invade and unsettle the colony of Georgia” were sent to Savannah from Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Broughton of South Carolina.¹ Additional information about the military buildup of the Spanish invasion forces from Cuba came to light when Governor Richard Fitzwilliam of New Providence, Bahama Islands, sent a letter, along with several dispositions from English seamen who were prisoners in Cuba, to the Duke of Newcastle.² The Spanish laid in “quantities...

AFTER THE SMOKE OF BATTLE had lifted, the bodies of the dead had been buried, and the survivors had gone, the scene left behind at Fort Mosa was one of total defeat for the British forces in Florida. Captain John Mohr Mackintosh, now a prisoner of the Spanish, spent three months in close confinement in St. Augustine before being sent to Havana, Cuba, and eventually to San Sebastian, Spain.¹ He contacted his “friend and namesake,” Alexander Mackintosh of Lothbury, a year later from his prison cell in Spain, expressing his concern for his family left behind in Darien: “You are...

THE COLONY OF GEORGIA owed a debt of gratitude to this determined group of Highlanders. They had been recruited as a community to secure the southern frontier of Georgia against her enemies and had performed that duty with distinction. After 1748 the unique trustee period of Georgia’s infancy came to an end and Georgia became a royal colony. The significant contributions of the Highland community gave way to the individual efforts of the Highland Scots themselves. The Highlanders at Darien could set aside their broadswords and turn their energies to cattle farming, the timber industry, Indian trade, mercantilism, rice plantations,...