Notes
Annotated Index
References listed in full in the main sources are listed in the index by a short title. For abbreviations used in these citations, see main sources.
A plan of Annapolis dated 1718 shows a layout of rectangular blocks, not on a perfect grid and intersected by streets radiating from two open circles, but not a town of winding streets. The layout was the same in a plan of 1781 and is unchanged today. The larger circle is for the State House, spelled Stadt House in the 1770s. The building seen by William was the third Stadt House, designed by Joseph Horatio Anderson, architect, about 1772, and built by Charles Wallace in 1772–79. By a change in his contract, Wallace was allowed to roof it with sheet copper imported from England. The roof, but not the cupola, was completed in the summer of 1774. On September 2, 1775, a hurricane ripped off nearly all the copper, which was damaged beyond repair, and Wallace then framed a steeper roof and covered it with shingles. Further progress was impeded by the war and the building only came into use in 1779. During the eight months in 1783–84 when Annapolis was the national capital the Continental Congress met in the Senate Chamber. In 1785–88 the cupola was replaced by the present wood-framed dome, sixty feet higher, and designed and built by Joseph Clark. In 1902–1905 the building was extended to twice its former volume, but with little alteration of the existing elevations or the original rooms inside. See M. L. Radoff, The State House of Annapolis (Annapolis: Maryland Hall of Records Commission, 1972).
Argyle, Duke of, 51
John Campbell (1723–1806), fifth duke of Argyll. Inherited the estate and castle of Inveraray in 1770. William Mylne was employed to supervise important alterations, and presumably to design some or all of them, in 1770–72. See I. G. Lindsay and M. Cosh, Inveraray and the Dukes of Argyll (Edinburgh University Press, 1973).
Augusta, 22–25, 27–29, 33–35, 37–38, 40–49, 53–57, 59, 92
See Cashin, Colonial Augusta; Norwood, “History of the White House Tract”; “Fort Augusta,” Georgia Magazine (Aug.–Sept. 1966): 20–22.
Merchant in Savannah from 1763 and possibly earlier. Granted one thousand acres of land in Saint Paul’s Parish on November 1, 1774. Filed a loyalist claim in London for £1,613 and was allowed £300. Great-grandson, on his mother’s side, of Robert Mylne (1633–1711). Married but without issue. See AO 12 and 13 at PRO; Grant Book M, State of Georgia Archives; Robert Mylne, family history, BAL.
Nephew of George Baillie and probably son of John Baillie, factor at Penston, between Tranent and Haddington, Scotland. See Robert Mylne, family history, BAL.
Baltimore, 72
Port and town in Maryland that grew very rapidly in the second half of the eighteenth century, with a cosmopolitan population of ambitious tradesmen and merchants. In 1787 it had 1,955 houses, 152 stores, and 9 churches. See J. Morse, An American Geography (London, 1792).
Barnard, Edward (d. 1775), 37, 46–47
Merchant and landowner near Augusta. Lieutenant of His Majesty’s Troop of Rangers in Augusta, a force of “provincial regulars.” Appointed captain of rangers in the Ceded Lands, 1773. Close friend of Robert and Mary Mackay. See Cashin, Colonial Augusta; “Fort James,” Georgia Magazine (Feb.–Mar. 1968): 19–21.
Barrisdale (d. 1792), 65
Allan MacDonald, former factor and tacksman of Kingsburgh on the Isle of Skye, and husband of Flora McDonald. (MacDonalds were so numerous in the islands that a man was often identified by the name of his estate or farm.) William Mylne’s use of the name Barrisdale may be a corruption of Bernisdale, which was near and possibly within Allan’s “tack” (i.e., tenancy) of Kingsburgh. He is unlikely to have been tenant of Barrisdale, which is on the mainland at the head of Loch Hourn. He had served as a lieutenant in the Royalist militia in Scotland in 1745–46. See also McDonald, Flora.
Bedlam, 15
Colloquial name of the famous lunatic asylum properly called Bethlehem Hospital, “bedlam” has become a synonym for disorder. There was a chilling description of the madness of the inmates in the very successful novel by Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (London, 1771).
Big Elk, 38
The second bridge across the Thames in the City of London. Designed in handsome neoclassical style by Robert Mylne and built under his direction in 1760–70. See Ruddock, Arch Bridges.
Black River, 63
River in South Carolina, flowing into Winyah Bay. A ferry over Black River was first authorized in 1725. Possibly this was the ferry used by William Mylne, and near the line of the present Route 701. See G. C. Rogers, History of Georgetown County, SC (Columbia, S.C., 1970).
Bordentown, 74
Village in New Jersey on the east bank of the Delaware River, calling point of passage boats.
Boston, 6–7, 10, 12, 19–21, 46, 60
First settled in 1630 by English Puritans who were at odds with conventional English society, Boston led the colonies in practical opposition to British control of trade from 1763 onward.
The name given to the action of some citizens who tipped into Boston harbor the cargo of the ships sent from London with East India Company tea on December 16, 1773. See Griswold, The Boston Tea Party.
Botetourt, Lord (Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt [1717–70]), 68, 70, 72
Appointed governor-general of Virginia in London in 1768, he went immediately to the colony, the first governor-general for several decades to reside there. He became very popular and after his death a statue was commissioned by the House of Burgesses. It was carved in London by the English sculptor Richard Hayward, using a wax medallion for a model. It was erected at Williamsburg in 1773 and was unharmed during the Revolution. Later it was mutilated, then partly repaired, and stood outside the college until 1958. It is now in the basement concourse of the library. See DAB; Statue of Lord Botetourt (College of William and Mary Library Contributions No. 7. Williamsburg, 1971).
Boundary house, 64
A historical marker at the boundary line between North and South Carolina on U.S. 17, which is on or near the route followed by Mylne at this point, records the existence of a boundary house in 1775.
Broad River, 24, 37, 41–43, 53
A large tributary of the Savannah River on its right bank in upper Georgia. Traverses the northern half of the Ceded Lands.
See also Browns (family)
Brown, Thomas (1750–1825), 36–37, 47, 53–54, 59
Son of Jonas Brown (1719–99), a prosperous merchant, shipowner, and industrialist at Whitby, Yorkshire. Thomas planned a large investment in the Ceded Lands of Georgia, in partnership with his father and James Gordon; the latter, however, failed to bring any funds to the venture. On arrival in Savannah in 1774 Brown was sworn in as a magistrate and always thereafter took a Loyalist position. At New Richmond on August 2, 1775, he faced nearly one hundred Sons of Liberty alone and refused to join the association against trade with Britain, which he saw as an oath of allegiance to the Continental Congress. He was taken to Augusta, tortured, partly scalped, tarred and feathered, and dragged through the streets. He escaped in a dreadful condition to a Loyalist camp at Ninety-Six in South Carolina and almost immediately became involved in raising Loyalist military forces in the backlands. He formed a policy of creating a backlands force including the Indian tribes to attack the rebels in the rear when British troops arrived on the coast. This policy became the British southern strategy, with Brown, as lieutenant colonel, commanding a corps called the Florida Rangers and sustaining the threat of Indian attack on the rebels throughout the war years. He was a fearless soldier and a skillful motivator of the tribes, for which he was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs of the eastern (and more important) district when John Stuart died in 1779. He commanded the force which reoccupied Augusta for the Crown in 1780 and held “the White House,” the old stone-built trading-post that had belonged to Robert Mackay, in a dramatic four-day siege, during which he was seriously wounded. Though he built a new fort—and incidentally resumed the development of his township of Brownsborough—Augusta was taken by the rebels in June 1781. In the postwar years he received large grants of land in the Bahamas and on Saint Vincent and was a highly successful planter. When he filed a Loyalist claim in 1787 for loss of 7,800 acres (including the 5,000 reserved by James Gordon in the Ceded Lands and presumably the area of Brownsborough), he sent medical certificates to London stating that the journey to England would be dangerous to his health, after his recent involvement in shipwreck and severe exposure. Abnormally, his excuse was accepted and his brother, Jonas Brown, Jr., of Kingston-upon-Hull, was permitted to negotiate the claim for him. A sum of £3,500 was allowed and presumably paid to Jonas. See Cashin, The King’s Ranger; AO 12 and 13 at PRO.
Browns (family), 40
Probably the family of Alexander Brown, “cautioner” or guarantor for William Mylne in his bridge contract, 1765, and presumably the Alexander Brown who traded as wine merchant in Craig’s Close, Edinburgh, in 1773–78. Related to the Mylnes through Elizabeth, wife of Robert Mylne (1633–1711). See Robert Mylne, family history, BAL; Williamson’s Directory.
Bruce, Sir William (ca. 1630–1710), 1
Scotland’s leading architect after the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 and virtual founder of the profession in Scotland. Also held several political offices in the same period. See Colvin, Biographical Dictionary.
Brunswick, 64
A town on south shore of Cape Fear estuary in North Carolina. Founded to be the provincial capital and was the residence of three royal governors, including Tryon before he moved to New Bern. It was the port of clearance from the Cape Fear estuary. A very large parish church was begun in 1759, but by 1909 only the walls were standing. The town has also virtually disappeared. See A. M. Waddell, History of New Hanover County and the Lower Cape Fear, vol. 1 (1909), 10–25.
Buchanan, Thomas, and Walter Buchanan, 77
Merchants in New York. Walter was established there before 1763, when Thomas (1744–1815) arrived from Glasgow, where he had studied at the university and trained in the merchant business of his father, who was Walter’s cousin. Thomas married Almy Townesend, of a patriot family, and supported non-importation in 1766. Although in later years his political position was more often Loyalist, he avoided confiscation of his property and continued trading, chiefly with Scotland and Jamaica, for thirty years after the Revolution. It has been claimed, but apparently without foundation, that Thomas was the consignee of the cargo of tea that was shipped to New York from London on the Nancy in 1773. It has also been said that his partnership with Walter was dissolved in 1772, at variance with William Mylne’s use of the partnership’s name in 1775. See DAB; I. C. C. Graham, Colonists from Scotland (Cornell University Press, 1956), 125–26.
Buckingham House
See Tryon’s Palace
Bull, William (1710–91), 21
Son of a lieutenant-governor of South Carolina who died in 1755, Bull succeeded to the office in 1759 and was also acting governor for most of the time until he was stripped of power by the patriots in 1775. He stayed in the colony until British troops departed finally from Charleston in 1782, when he sailed with them to London and spent his last nine years of life there. See DAB.
Buxton Spa, 84
Cameron, Alexander (d. 1781), 35
A Scotsman, whose real name was possibly McLeod. Related to John Stuart by marriage and resident in Georgia by 1737. Became Stuart’s deputy superintendent to the Cherokee in 1768 and lived much among them but in 1779 was made superintendent in the “western district,” when Thomas Brown took the eastern district including the Cherokee. See Cashin, The King’s Ranger.
Cape Fear River, 64–65
A large river of North Carolina, of several branches, whose estuary provided the colony’s deepest and safest inlet for shipping, although not without shoals. The point of arrival of large numbers of Scottish emigrants in the early 1770s.
Catawbas, 23
Ceded Lands, 6, 35–38, 43, 47, 53–54, 59–60
See Records of the Commissioners for the Ceded Lands, at Surveyor General’s Department of Georgia, Atlanta; Cashin, Colonial Augusta; Harper, Travels of William Bartram; De Vorsey, Indian Boundary, chap. 7; Alden, John Stuart, chap. 17; Robert S. Davis, ed., The Wilkes County Papers, 1733–1833 (Easley, S.C., 1979); Alex M. Hitz, “The Earliest Settlers in Wilkes County,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 40, no. 3 (1956).
Charlestown (now Charleston), 6, 10, 12, 19–23, 26, 28–30, 32–33, 39–41, 45, 48–49, 51, 54–55, 58–59, 61, 63, 67, 91–92
Provincial capital of South Carolina and throughout the eighteenth century the main seaport and center of trade on the southern seaboard of British North America. Many merchants’ houses of pre-1770 survive, including about ten in King Street where William Mylne lodged. These houses are generally detached, of two stories, built of brick and rendered, with three windows or two windows and a door facing the street, and their longer dimension perpendicular to the street. Facing the end of Broad Street is the imposing Exchange built in 1767–71 by John and Peter Horlbeck; its design is attributed to William Rigby Naylor. It is also of rendered brickwork but embellished with a three-bay portico and pediment, a central cupola and Venetian windows with balustraded balconies to each side. It also served as Custom House and during the British occupation in 1780–82 had a prison in its cellar—hence its present name, the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon. Cobbled pavings and some wharfside buildings remain along the original waterfront. The site of Charleston consisted of a marshy peninsula and the whole adjacent coastal plain was considered unhealthy for Europeans. See This Is Charleston (Charleston, S.C.: Carolina Art Association, 1976).
Cherokees, 6, 23, 34–35, 38, 56, 59
For general description, see De Vorsey, “The Colonial Georgia Backcountry,” in Cashin, Colonial Augusta; De Vorsey, The Indian Boundary, Harper, Travels of William Bartram; Charles M. Hudson, “The Genesis of Georgia’s Indians,” in Jackson and Spalding, Forty Years of Diversity.
Chesepeak Bay ferry (now Chesapeake), 72
Had Mylne taken the ferry crossing of twenty-one miles from somewhere near Williamsburg, he would have gone by a route that traversed none of northern Virginia, nor the towns of Annapolis and Baltimore.
See references under Cherokees
See references under Cherokees
Cleland’s Yards
See Ferguson (Walter)
College of William and Mary, 68
Chartered in 1693, with construction of its frontal building started in 1694, is the oldest college building surviving from British America. It is called the Wren Building because it was described in a book published in London in 1724 as “first modelled by Sir Christopher Wren, adapted to the nature of the country by the gentlemen there.” It burned, except for the walls, in 1705, was rebuilt in 1710–16 but burned twice more in the nineteenth century. In 1928–31 it was restored following the design of 1716, with the help of a plan drawn by Thomas Jefferson in 1772 in connection with a proposed extension that was abandoned after only the foundations had been built. The rooms on the ground floor that Mylne mentions can be identified today, but he does less than justice to the building by omitting mention of the refectory (now the Great Hall) on the ground floor and the grand long gallery on the floor above. For references see Williamsburgh (now Williamsburg).
Congarees, 55
A district near present-day Columbia, South Carolina; below the confluence of the Broad and Saluda rivers the river is called the Congaree.
Cooley, Thomas, 82–83
Cooper River, 61
River in South Carolina, lying on the eastern side of the Charleston peninsula.
Creeks, 6, 23–24, 34–35, 38, 46–47, 53, 56, 59
See references under Cherokees
Curling, Captain Alexander, 12, 14, 20–21
Master of the London, which carried on regular trade between London and Charleston.
Delaware River, 74
The tidal estuary extends from Delaware Bay past Philadelphia up to Trenton. There was no impediment to navigation until a bridge was built at Trenton in 1806.
Drummond, George (1687–1766), 3
Probably Edinburgh’s greatest lord provost (i.e., leader of the town council), elected many times between 1725 and 1764. See M. Hook et al., Lord Provost George Drummond, 1687–1766 (Edinburgh: Scotland’s Cultural Heritage, 1987).
Dublin, 82–83
Capital city of Ireland. Recognized in the second half of the eighteenth century as the second city of the British Empire, the seat of a strong and independent Irish parliament. Population was about 130,000 in 1750 rising to 200,000 by 1800. See John Harvey, Dublin (London: Batsford, 1949); J. T. Gilbert, ed., Calendar of Ancient Records of Dublin, vols. 12–14 (Dublin, 1889–1944).
Dunmore, Lord (John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore [1732–1809]), 72
Last royal governor of Virginia. He sat as a representative Scottish Peer in the House of Lords in 1761–70 and 1776–84 and was appointed governor of New York in 1770 and transferred to Virginia in 1771. In 1773 he went to the northwest frontier of the province and built Fort Dunmore, on the site of modern Pittsburgh, for defense against the Indians. After a force of white militia had defeated the Shawnee in 1774, Dunmore made a treaty with the Indians. He was a respected and popular governor until he twice dissolved the provincial Assembly because it supported American rejections of control by the British Parliament. In June 1775 he went on board a warship for safety and attempted from there to govern the colony and subdue it by force; but a year later he disbanded his troops and left for England. From 1787 to 1796 he was again in the colonies as governor of the Bahamas. See DNB; DAB; Cashin, The King’s Ranger.
East India Company, 6–7, 10–11, 20–21
The company was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600. See The Annual Register, 1773; Griswold, The Boston Tea Party.
Edinburgh, 1, 3, 5, 7–10, 39–40, 54, 57–59, 61–62, 78–83, 91–92
Capital of Scotland, which had lost its national parliament in 1707 and was subject to the parliament of the united kingdom of England, Scotland, and Wales sitting in London. The courts, established church, and some other elements of government remained separate. See A. J. Youngson, The Making of Classical Edinburgh (Edinburgh University Press, 1966); Ruddock, “North Bridge, Edinburgh.”
Elliock, James Veitch, Lord, 8–9, 39, 45, 78–80, 82
Judge of the highest Scottish court, the Court of Session.
Creek headman of exceptional character and influence, on whom John Stuart, David Taitt, and Thomas Brown relied greatly in their dealings with the Creek Nation. See Alden, John Stuart; Cashin, The King’s Ranger.
The Exchange (Charleston), 20–21
See Charlestown (now Charleston)
The Exchange (London), 14
The center of commerce in London. An imposing building ranged round an open court and lying between Cornhill and Threadneedle Street. Built in 1667–71 to the design of Edward Jerman, it had undergone major repairs after a fire in 1747 and some improvements by George Dance, clerk of the city works, in 1767–68. It was finally destroyed by fire in 1838. See Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, 460; Maitland, History of London, vol. 2, 898–903.
Ferguson (Walter), 52
Writer to the Signet (i.e., solicitor and attorney) in Edinburgh. He proposed building on land that he had “feued” adjoining the site of the intended Register House for Scotland at the east end of the New Town and north end of the new Edinburgh North Bridge. His intention was contested by the feu superior, backed by the town council, who held control of development in all other parts of the New Town. The Court of Session ruled against the superior on July 30, 1773, and the House of Lords in London rejected an appeal on March 3, 1774, giving victory to Ferguson.
Florida, 31
Fort Augusta, 23
See “Fort Augusta,” Georgia Magazine (Aug.–Sept. 1966); T. Heard and Thomas H. Robertson, “The Town and Fort of Augusta”; and Larry E. Ivers, “The Soldiers of Fort Augusta,” in Cashin, Colonial Augusta.
Fort Charlotte, 43
Stone fort built in 1767 by Andrew Williamson with £1,000 from the South Carolina Assembly for frontier protection when Fort Moore was abandoned. It was one mile below the confluence of the Broad with the Savannah River and adjacent to a ford. See Alden, John Stuart, 189n.
See “Fort James,” Georgia Magazine (Feb.–Mar. 1968): 19–21.
Fort Moore, 22
A fort built in 1716 on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River about three miles downstream from the site of Augusta for protection of the Indian trade. Abandoned in favor of Fort Charlotte in 1765. See Alden, John Stuart, 189n.
Fort Natchez, 53
A British outpost on the east bank of the Mississippi over two hundred miles from the mouth. Taken by a Spanish force sent from New Orleans in 1778.
The “Forty-Five,” 5
Popular name for the Jacobite rising that took place in 1745, when the “Young Pretender,” Prince Charles Edward Stuart, returned to Scotland and “raised the clans” against the Hanover monarchy. After initial successes he led his army south as far as the middle of England, but was then persuaded to withdraw to Scotland and suffered heavy defeat at Culloden, near Inverness, in April 1746. After five months in hiding he escaped to France, from which he had hoped for decisive military support which never arrived. It was the last of the militant Jacobite risings in Great Britain. See A. J. Youngson, The Prince and the Pretender (London, Croom Helm, 1985).
George III (1738–1820), 6–7
King of the united kingdom of England, Scotland, and Wales, 1760–1820. The first of the Hanoverian kings to be truly British.
Important seaport in South Carolina with an extensive hinterland of rich plantations in the 1770s, exporting rice, indigo, and timber. It was planned in 1735–37 as a grid of five streets parallel to the waterfront with nine crossing them at right angles. Merchants owning property on the landward side of Bay Street (now renamed Front Street) were permitted to build wharves and stores on the waterfront side. These merchants’ houses may be those to which William Mylne attributed fine prospects. The town lies on Winyah Bay, a long tidal inlet into which the Sampit, Black, Great, and Little Peedee rivers all discharge. See G. C. Rogers, History of Georgetown County, SC.
Georgia, 6, 19, 22–25, 28, 34–38, 46–47, 53–56, 58, 65
Gibb, Dr. (Robert), 63
Son of Francis Gibb, a writer (i.e., solicitor and attorney) in Edinburgh. Studied medicine at Edinburgh University. Emigrated in 1754 to Georgetown, South Carolina, where he practiced medicine. Later he bought large plantations on which he had fifty-six slaves. Died at Georgetown 1777 when facing banishment for refusing an oath of abjuration of the Crown. His estate was confiscated and sold by the State of South Carolina in 1782. He died a bachelor and his only sister filed a loyalist claim in London for £4,300 for loss of his estate. She was awarded £3,000. See G. C. Rogers, History of Georgetown County, SC, 93; AO 13/132 at PRO.
Gordon, James, 36–37, 41–48, 50, 53, 59–60
Native of Orkney and evidently respected as a gentleman. He went into partnership with Jonas and Thomas Brown to purchase a tract of the Ceded Lands and settle it with British emigrants. Though he failed to raise his share of the capital he traveled to Georgia some months ahead of Thomas Brown, having borrowed £30 from Jonas to pay his fare. On behalf of the partnership he was issued, presumably in his absence, with warrants for a survey of 1,000 acres on the Broad River and 4,000 on its tributary Chickasaw Creek on November 16, 1773. On his own account he either bought (as he inferred later) or rented the plantation of New Richmond, of more than three hundred acres on the Carolina side of the Savannah about two miles above Augusta, and on which LeRoy Hammond had built a very expensive house in 1771. He signed the Loyalist resolution in St. Paul’s Parish, which was published in the Georgia Gazette on October 12, 1774. After Brown left Augusta in August 1775, Gordon remained, met their second ship-load of immigrants at Savannah in December, led them to Brownsborough and maintained them with food and clothing for twelve months, but he failed to prevent their complete dispersal during the next few years. He returned to working his plantation on the Carolina side with some slaves, escaping persecution as a Loyalist through “the favour and protection of the rebel general Williamson,” but some time after Brown had retaken Augusta for the Crown in 1780 he was forced by the rebels to flee his plantation by canoe with only three trunks of personal effects. These he left with Brown at the new fort, which fell in 1781. In 1786 in Nova Scotia Gordon filed a loyalist claim on the British government, including among the property he had lost two stills valued at £150, which he had intended to operate in partnership with Andrew Robertson. Most of his claim was struck out as referring to property for which the Browns had provided all the funds, but Gordon himself received £117. He had taken a wife from among his slaves and with her settled in the Bahamas in 1787. Their attachment was such that after her death he refused to bury her body and kept it, dressed and bejewelled, in a protective cage. See Records of the Commissioners for the Ceded Lands, at the Surveyor-General’s Department of Georgia, Atlanta; AO 12 and 13 at PRO; Cashin, The King’s Ranger.
Gordon, Sir John, Baronet (ca. 1725–95), 79–81, 88
Baronet, of Earlstone in Galloway. Married Anne Mylne in 1775. As he died childless his title passed to a nephew, also John, whose father had established a plantation in Jamaica before 1775 and called it Earlstone after the family home. The family seat, Earlstone Castle in Kirkcudbrightshire, was a tower house of early fortified type, acquired by the Gordons by marriage in 1615. See Mylne Papers, GD1/51, at SRO; D. McGibbon and T. Ross, Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, vol. 3 (1889), 521–23.
Gordon, Lady,
See Mylne, Anne
Governor’s palace, 71
Located in Williamsburg, Va., was built between 1706 and 1720 under the supervision of, and possibly designed by, Henry Cary, a builder and architect. The interior was remodelled in the 1750s, but the whole palace was destroyed by fire in 1781. It was rebuilt on the original foundations in the 1930s. The “additions . . . made from time to time” that Mylne mentions must include some of the work around 1750 and the ballroom wing completed in 1754. For references, see Williamsburgh (now Williamsburg).
One of the many wynds, too narrow to be called streets, that stretched from the High Street of old Edinburgh down the hillside to the flat ground near the Nor’ Loch. In 1715 William Mylne’s grandfather built a “land,” or tenement, of dwellings there. Most of the property passed to his children and grandchildren, but much of it was destroyed by fire in 1756. William lived there from his return to Edinburgh in 1758 until his departure in 1773. The south approach to the new bridge that he built in 1765–73 was immediately adjacent and parallel, and must have cast deep shadow over the wynd and at least the lower parts of the building. See Robert Mylne, family history at BAL; Plan of the City and Castle of Edinburgh by Willm. Edgar, 1765.
Hallifax (correctly Halifax), 67
Town on the Roanoke River that became the first seat of revolutionary government in North Carolina. See H. T. Lefler and W. S. Powell, Colonial North Carolina (New York, 1973).
Hatfield (or Hatefield), John, 19–20, 28, 33, 40–41, 45, 56, 58
Merchant in Charleston, at least from 1765 when he married Sarah Swallow there. Sarah was probably the daughter of Mrs. Swallow, a tavern keeper. Hatfield received land grants of 950 acres, mostly in Craven County, in 1764–75. He and his family remained in America after the Revolution. He was apparently known to William Mylne and intended to be his postal address before William left London. In 1773–75 he lived or traded in King Street. A twentieth-century historian has stated that King Street “was then chiefly the resort of hucksters, peddlers and tavern keepers.” See land grant books at South Carolina Archives, Columbia; L. Sellers, Charleston Business on the Eve of the American Revolution (New York, 1970), 81.
Hawks, John (1731–90), 65
English architect taken to North Carolina by William Tryon in 1764, having been at some time previously “in the service of Mr Leadbeater,” presumed to be Stiff Leadbetter, a London architect who on his death in 1766 was succeeded in the office of surveyor to St. Paul’s Cathedral by Robert Mylne. Hawks designed the capitol/governor’s house for Tryon at his newly chosen provincial capital, New Bern, and also contracted in 1767 to oversee the building of it. He has been called “America’s first professional architect,” but he was also an able accountant and held a number of public offices before, during, and after the Revolution. See DAB; F. Kimball and G. S. Carraway, “Tryon’s Palace,” New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin 24 (1940): 13–22; A. T. Dill, “Eighteenth-Century New Bern: Part VI,” North Carolina Historical Review 23 (1946): 142–71; Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, 508.
Hearts of Steel, 75
A large body of Presbyterian tenants in Ulster, Ireland, who protested in 1771–73 against the imposition of huge rent increases as their leases became due for renewal and consequently lost their holdings to newcomers. Adopting the name “Hearts of Steel” they roamed the country maiming the cattle and wrecking the property of the newcomers. By intimidating witnesses or juries, they at first obtained the release of those of their number who were arrested and tried. When the tide turned and some members were executed, thousands left Ireland for America and the movement collapsed; but in the colonies they soon formed a significant and strongly anti-British component of the Continental army. See W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 4 (1882), 348–55.
Otherwise Kinloch and Hogg, or Kinlochs. Evidently bankers and represented in the Edinburgh directories by Thomas Hogg, banker in Kinlochs Close. Of Kinlochs who might have been Hogg’s partners) the most likely are David Kinloch of Gilmerton, Esq., with an address in the Exchange, and Robert Kinloch of Kinmonth, Esq., of Blackfriars Wynd. See Williamson’s Directories.
Huntington, Lady (Selina Hastings, countess of Huntingdon [1707–91]), 17
Widow of the ninth earl of Huntingdon (d. 1746), she was a friend of Whitefield, the Wesleys, and other evangelical leaders, supported many chaplains and itinerant preachers, financed the building of chapels in several towns, the establishment of a seminary in North Wales, and mission work in America. She was particularly keen to reach the upper classes with her evangelical message. See DNB.
Islay, 5
Large island off the west coast of Scotland.
A suburb about two miles north of the center of the City of London. The New River, which was a channel supplied from the springs of Chad well and Am well twenty miles north of London and first cut in 1609–13, flowed south through Islington to a circular storage pond near the crossroads now known as the Angel, providing piped water for most of the city. Houses were built by the New River Company near the river at Islington in 1768, and Robert Mylne had his office and residence as engineer to the company there. See Samuel Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (1904 ed.), I, 58–99; Richardson, Robert Mylne.
A major river of Virginia with an estuary several miles wide over a length of at least sixty miles. William Mylne probably crossed it by ferry to Jamestown, the port for Williamsburg standing four miles from it on the north shore of the estuary.
Ker, 28
Possibly George Kerr, tinplate worker, of Netherbow, Edinburgh.
Kinlochs
See Hogg and Kinlochs.
Learmont, Jock, 15
Probably John Learmonth, tanner, of Saint Mary’s Wynd, Edinburgh, or William Learmonth, vintner, of Halkerston’s Wynd, or a relative of either. The nickname “Jock” is applied to Scotsmen of any name.
Leger and Greenwood, 20
Seaport for Edinburgh. Only two miles from the Old Town of Edinburgh, on the shore of the Firth of Forth, it had the largest trade on the east coast of Scotland in the eighteenth century. See H. Arnot, The History of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1779), 570–603.
Little River, 23–25, 35, 38, 43
Tributary of the Savannah River on the Georgia side; its confluence with the river is some twenty miles above Augusta. In 1763–73 it was the northern limit of white settlement.
Livingston, Charles, 17, 29, 33, 45, 49, 51–53, 76, 78–80, 89
Writer (i.e., solicitor and attorney) in Edinburgh who had been William Mylne’s legal agent for some years prior to 1773. See Mylne Papers, GD1/51 at SRO; Williamson’s Directories.
London, 3, 6–7, 10–11, 14–16, 21–22, 24, 27–28, 34–36, 39, 47, 49, 51, 58, 78, 80, 83, 91–92
Capital of the United Kingdom on the north bank of the River Thames, a city of some seven hundred thousand inhabitants, including the suburbs, in the 1770s. Considerable development had been taking place outside the walls, starting with the royal residence and center of national government at Westminster, just over a mile to the west, and spreading north, east, and south on the other side of the river. These and later expansions have remained outside the boundary of the City of London, an area of only one square mile. See Weinreb and Hibbert, London Encyclopaedia.
McDonald, Flora (1722–90), 65
Heroine of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s escape from the royal army in the western isles of Scotland in 1746, after the failure of the last attempt to restore the Stuarts to the throne of Great Britain by force of arms. Rising rents and several bad seasons in the islands forced her emigration in the summer of 1774 with her husband Allan McDonald (see Barrisdale), two of their sons, and eight indentured servants. They spent some time with relations at Mount Pleasant, North Carolina (now Cameron’s Hill), before Allan bought 525 acres of land, already partly cleared, in Anson County. Almost immediately, in June 1775, Allan took the lead in forming a local loyalist militia, largely of Scottish highlanders. He was one of their officers in the disastrous Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge in February 1776, and was captured and imprisoned for eighteen months. Flora stayed on the land until she lost it by confiscation in 1777. She obtained a safe conduct to rejoin Allan, now free in New York. In failing health she accompanied him to Nova Scotia to rejoin a British regiment, but she left for London in 1779 and got back to the Isle of Skye in July 1780. Allan remained in Nova Scotia until his regiment was disbanded in 1783, when he received a grant of land, but went to London to present a loyalist claim for compensation for his losses in North Carolina. In response to a claim for £1,341 he received only £440, and went to Skye to join Flora. They survived in the islands without a fixed home until Flora’s death in 1790. Allan moved back into his old home at Kingsburgh, now tenanted by his daughter’s father-in-law, and died there two years later. See DNB; A. R. MacDonald, The Truth About Flora MacDonald (Edinburgh, 1938); E. G. Vining, Flora (Philadelphia, Lippincott), 1966.
Mackay, Francis, 57
Probably Francis Mackay of Browen (also spelled Bruan) in Latheron Parish, Caithness, who married Catherine Calder at Wick on October 20, 1733. Presumably a kinsman of Robert Mackay. See Wick Parish Register, 1701–56, at SRO.
Mackay, Mrs. (Mary, née Malbone [d. 1797]), 50, 60
Widow of a Mr. Chilcott. She accompanied her daughter Catherine to Augusta when Catherine married John Francis Williams around 1769. Mary married Robert Mackay, probably in 1771. She lived in Augusta with their son Robert Mackay II (“Bob”) during the Revolution and was in poor circumstances until he became a merchant. See Mackay-Stiles Papers, University of North Carolina Library, no. 470, vol. 42; Robert Mackay Papers, Colonial Dames of America Collection, Georgia Historical Society; W. C. Hartridge, The Letters of Robert Mackay {II} to His Wife (Athens, Ga., 1949); M. F. Norwood, “History of the White House Tract”; H. Callahan, “Colonial Life in Augusta,” in Cashin, Colonial Augusta, 96–119.
Mackay, Robert (d. 1775), 28–30, 41, 46–47, 50, 55–60, 76, 80
Merchant in Augusta. Probably born in Caithness, northern Scotland, ca. 1730, but the detailed published records of the Church of Scotland and the Scottish Episcopal Church do not support the belief of Robert II in later years that his paternal grandfather was “the minister or clergyman of Wick.” Robert Mackay emigrated, according to his son’s story, to Kingston, Jamaica, as a young man, later lived at Havana, Cuba, and Charleston and Beaufort, South Carolina, before reaching Augusta. He was established there by 1767 as one of the leading merchants who supplied and bought from the men who traded with the Indians. At some time he formed a partnership with John Francis Williams but dissolved it in 1770. He was owner of the five-hundred-acre “White House Tract” on the northern fringe of Augusta, with a large white house of stone that had long been used as a trading post (see Brown, Thomas). He married Mary Malbone Chilcott about 1771 and Robert II was born in 1772. He signed the Loyalist resolution in Saint Paul’s Parish that was published on October 12, 1774. Died at Augusta on October 30, 1775. For references, see Mackay, Mary. Also see Cashin, The King’s Ranger; Fasti Eccles iae Scoticarae, vol. 7 (1928), 77–143; J. B. Craven, History of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Caithness (Kirkwall, Orkney, 1908).
Mackay, Robert II (“Bob”), (1772–1816), 60
Son of Robert and Mary Mackay, born June 23, 1772, at Augusta. Lived there with his mother during the Revolution, was then educated in Edinburgh for six years; later became a prosperous merchant, as well as port warden and justice of the peace, in Savannah. For references, see Mackay, Mary.
McLean, Andrew, 46
Mad Turkey, 38
Bankers in the Luckenbooths, Edinburgh. Listed as “Mansfield Hunter and Co.” in 1774–75 and “Mansfield Ramsay and Co.” in 1775–78. See Williamson’s Directories.
Millar, Mr., 77
Probably Patrick Millar, banker, of James’s Court, Edinburgh, or one of several Millars, merchants, of the Luckenbooths in High Street, Edinburgh.
Minories, 16
Street in London occupied in 1720 chiefly by gunsmiths but taken over by mixed trading in the nineteenth century. The street was “improved” to the plans of George Dance, Jr., about 1768. See Weinreb and Hibbert, London Encyclopaedia.
Mobile, 53
A seaboard settlement in West Florida, near the head of the estuary of the Alabama River. Founded by Bienville, governor of French Louisiana, in 1710, it was garrisoned by the British when West Florida was ceded to them in 1763. It fell to a Spanish force from New Orleans in 1779.
Mobility, 75
Used to mean “mob,” occasionally before and commonly during the American Revolution; usually civilians gathered for a show of strength.
Moorfields, 15
The moor outside the wall of London was drained in 1527, but a considerable area of open space remained in the eighteenth century, with Bedlam (Bethlehem Hospital) built along its southern margin just outside the city wall. See Maitland, History of London.
Mother. See Mylne, Elizabeth (née Duncan)
Mumford, Colonel, 67
Possibly Robert Munford (d. 1784), a Virginian aristocrat who served in the French-Indian wars in 1758. He was lieutenant of Mecklenburg County, Virginia, and representative in the legislature from 1765, and courageous on the side of liberty before and during the Revolution; but notable also as a lover of literature and author of plays, verse, and a translation of Ovid. See DAB.
Mungo, 14–16, 50, 55, 60–61, 63
William Mylne’s dog, who accompanied him from Edinburgh.
Murray, 65
A member of the family Murray, which held large property at Philiphaugh, by Selkirk in southern Scotland. Filed a loyalist claim in London that included no acres, a “capital mansion,” ten negroes, bonds, and interest due, all in Georgia and valued together at £4,387, as well as large land holdings in North Carolina. He left Georgia for Britain in 1776 but returned in 1778 and immediately joined the Royal Army, as a result of which his property was confiscated in 1782 and he and his family returned to Great Britain. See AO 13/36 at PRO.
Mylne, Anne (1745–1822), 3, 12–18, 25–30, 33, 39–45, 47–59, 61–77, 78–79, 80–84, 88, 91–92
William’s sister. Married Sir John Gordon in 1775, becoming Lady Gordon. See Mylne Papers, GD1/51, at SRO, which contain many letters and other documents.
Mylne, Elizabeth (née Duncan) (d. 1778), 10, 17, 29, 33, 40, 45, 52, 58, 77, 79–81, 84, 91
Mother of Robert, William, Elizabeth (Selby), and Anne.
Mylne, Robert (1633–1710), 1
Master mason to King Charles II and Queen Anne. A very successful and accomplished mason/architect. See R. S. Mylne, Master Masons; Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, 570–71; Robert Mylne, family history, BAL.
Mylne, Robert (1733–1811), 1, 3, 8–9, 12–13, 16–18, 27, 29–34, 39, 45, 49, 51–52, 76, 78, 80–83, 85–88, 91–92
William’s elder brother. See R. S. Mylne, Master Masons; Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, 571–77; C. Gotch, “The Missing Years of Robert Mylne,” Architectural Review (Sept. 1951): 179–82; Richardson, Robert Mylne; Ruddock, Arch Bridges.
Mylne, William (1734–90)
See R. S. Mylne, Master Masons; Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, 578; C. Gotch, “The Missing Years of Robert Mylne”; Ruddock, Arch Bridges; Ruddock, “North Bridge, Edinburgh”; J. T. Gilbert, ed., Calendar of Ancient Records of Dublin, vols. 12–14 (Dublin, 1889–1944); Mylne Papers, GDI/51 at SRO; Mylne Papers at BAL; Betham abstracts of prerogatory wills, vol. 49, fol. 141, at Public Record Office, Dublin.
Mylne, William Chadwell (1781–1863), 82, 88
Only surviving son of Robert Mylne (1733–1811). Civil engineer and occasional architect. Succeeded his father as engineer to the New River Company, 1811–61. See Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, 578; R. S. Mylne, Master Masons.
Netherclift, Thomas (d. 1793), 57
Merchant in Savannah at least from 1766 to 1793. He obtained many grants of land in coastal parishes in 1769–75 and represented Saint Paul’s Parish in the provincial assembly in 1774. Friend and associate in business of Robert Mackay. See Georgia Gazette; Norwood, History of the White House Tract; Robert Mackay Papers, in Colonial Dames of America Collection, Georgia Historical Society.
Neuse River, 67
River in North Carolina, joined by the Trent River at New Bern, then opening into an estuary that discharges into the huge shallows of Pamlico Sound. Seagoing vessels had to pass the narrow Ocracoke Inlet from the sound to the Atlantic. See C. C. Crittenden, “Ships and Shipping in North Carolina, 1763–1789,” North Carolina Historical Review, 8 (1931): 1–13.
Newburn (correctly New Bern), 65–67
Capital of North Carolina from 1765, when William Tryon became governor, until the end of the Revolution. Its potential for external trade was limited by the navigational difficulties (see Neuse River) and in 1775 it was still a small town.
New Orleans, 53
Founded and built as capital of the French province of Louisiana in 1718–22; both town and province were in Spanish hands in the 1770s.
New Richmond, 37, 40, 43, 47, 54, 59, 91–92
A plantation of 300–450 acres on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River about five miles upstream from Augusta. (William’s estimate of three miles is inaccurate.) Occupied by James Gordon at least from mid-1774 (but said in his loyalist claim to have been paid for only in 1775 at £300, not including the house) it was also the location of Thomas Brown’s clash with the Sons of Liberty on August 1, 1775. See AO 12 and 13 at PRO London; W. Brown, The King’s Friends (Providence, 1965); Robert Mills, Atlas of South Carolina (1825); Cashin, The King’s Ranger.
See also Islington.
New Windsor, 22–23
New York, 10, 12, 20, 48, 55, 58, 61–62, 67, 77, 92
First settled by the Dutch in 1614 as New Amsterdam, taken over by the British in 1664 as New York. In the early 1770s a rapidly expanding city of about twenty thousand inhabitants, the center of trade and finance for the middle colonies and of growing educational and social importance. Well connected by ferries and packets to other islands and the mainland. It filled the space between both shores of the southern end of Manhattan Island, with a consequent irregular street plan much of which still exists. The domestic, commercial, and public buildings were of stone and brick, both the buildings and population betraying a considerable but declining Dutch influence. Rebel activity and fire caused considerable destruction in 1775–76. See B. Ratzer, Map of New York City (1767); J. Morse, American Geography (1792); W. P. Cumming, British Maps of Colonial America (Chicago, 1974), 83.
Nicoll, John, 79
Clearly a creditor of William Mylne, but of various Nicols and Nichols listed as trading in Edinburgh in 1773–78 none is named John and only one, David Nicol, a smith, seems a likely creditor.
Norfolk, 72
Virginian seaport on the southern shore of the entry to Chesapeake Bay; a port of growing trade in the 1770s.
North, Lord (Frederick North, second Earl of Guildford [1732–92]), 6, 7
Prime minister of the Tory government in London under King George III from 1770 to 1782.
North Bridge, Edinburgh, 5, 7–9, 76
High masonry bridge of five arches built 1765–75 to connect the old town of Edinburgh with the newly planned “New Town” to the north. See Ruddock, “North Bridge, Edinburgh.”
North Carolina, 6, 19, 26, 36, 38, 55, 67–68, 75
Major river in upper Georgia west of the Ogeechee and running south-southeast to a confluence with the Ocmulgee to form the Altamaha River.
Ogeechee River, 24, 38, 43, 47
River in Georgia west of and roughly parallel to the Savannah. In upper Georgia it was the western limit of permitted white settlement by the proclamations of 1763 and 1773.
Ogilvey (correctly Mr. Charles Ogilvie), 57–59
A merchant who after living for some years in Charleston had gone home to run his business from Britain; visited South Carolina in 1773, leaving Charleston again for London in August 1774. When he went to South Carolina again in 1780 he sided with the restored colonial government, which resulted in confiscation of his very extensive estate in 1782. Large loyalist claims were made by his heirs. See AO 12 and 13 at PRO.
Oglethorpe, General James Edward (1696–1785), 22
English soldier and philanthropist who, though educated at Eton and Oxford, had strong Jacobite sympathies in early life; became the leading trustee of the new colony of Georgia, accompanying the first party of settlers who landed at the site of Savannah in 1733 and living in the colony for most of its early years. See DNB; DAB; Milton L. Ready, “Philanthropy and the Origins of Georgia,” and P. Spalding, “James Edward Oglethorpe’s Quest for an American Zion,” in Jackson and Spalding, Forty Years of Diversity.
A group of islands off the north coast of Scotland and a port of call for emigrant ships that set out from ports on the east coast of Britain.
Ottaway River, 68
Now called Nottaway River. A fairly small river in Virginia flowing southward to enter the Albemarle Sound in North Carolina.
Penn, William (1644–1718), 74
Quaker founder of the colony of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, 26, 55, 72–73, 75
Pensacola, 53
The largest white settlement in West Florida, which was a British territory after 1763. John Stuart, the superintendent of Indian affairs, was there organizing supplies of arms for Britain’s Indian allies in 1776–77. After his death in 1779 it held out against the Spaniards until 1781.
Philadelphia, 10, 12, 19–20, 46, 48, 73–74
Founded by William Penn as capital city of his newly chartered territory of Pennsylvania in 1682 and laid out to his order with a chessboard pattern of streets to reach from the Delaware River to the Schuylkill. By 1770 it was the largest city in any of the colonies, with at least thirty thousand inhabitants. It was the meeting-place of the first Continental Congress in September 1774 and of the second Congress in May 1775. it was a well-appointed city with a city hall, the Colony House, a college and Pennsylvania Hospital, all built in the 1740s or 1750s, and the new Stone Prison, of 1774. The main street running from river to river, called Market or High Street, was one hundred feet wide, allowing the market to occupy the middle of the street. The market had been rebuilt and enlarged in 1773 to a total length of 1300 feet, stretching three whole blocks from Front street to Fourth. It consisted of a wide middle aisle under a continuous ceiling for the buying public; wide brick piers at each side supporting the roof and ceiling and also providing part-enclosed spaces, under the overhang of the roof, for the sellers’ stalls. See W. Birch and Son, The City of Philadelphia as It Appeared in 1800, 28 plates (Philadelphia, 1800).
Potowmack River (now Potomac), 72
A large river on the boundary between Virginia and Maryland.
Pouderhall (or Powderhall), 10–11, 15, 32, 39, 56, 59, 80–81
A house about one and a half miles northeast of old Edinburgh, on or close to the old Bonnington road and on the south side of the Water of Leith, which is called in one of William Mylne’s letters “Powderhall Water.” Described in 1883 as a “quaint little mansion-house . . . down in a dell,” it was bought or built by Thomas Mylne, William’s father. William’s mother lived there until her death, as did Anne until her marriage in 1775. In 1774, and probably for several years after, “little Will” was also there in the care of Anne and later of her mother. After the latter’s death in 1778 Robert and Elizabeth Selby moved into Powderhall. When Elizabeth died it was advertised for sale in 1798 and sold for £2,000 in 1800. It was demolished in the twentieth century. See Mylne Papers, GD1/51, at SRO; letters of Robert Mylne, in Mylne Papers at BAL; J. Grant, Old and New Edinburgh, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1883), 88–93.
Queensborough, 46
A township beside the Ogeechee River settled in the late 1760s by a large group of “Scotch-Irish” families (i.e., Presbyterians from the northern counties of Ireland). By 1771 about 270 Irish families were there. See De Vorsey, The Indian Boundary; De Vorsey, De Brahm’s Report of the General Survey in the Southern District of North America (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971).
Ramsay, 28
Robert Ramsay, tailor, of Gray’s Close, Edinburgh.
Rappahanock River, 72
Roanoke River, 67
A large river in North Carolina. At the time of Mylne’s travels it was lined with plantations and used for inland navigation.
Robertson (or Robinson), Andrew, 35–36, 41–46, 56
Kinsman of the Mylnes, but the relationship has not been determined. Settled in South Carolina in 1756 and moved to Georgia in 1773. For service to the governor in “settling accounts” between Indians and their white creditors, he received free grants in the Ceded Lands. He signed a Loyalist protest in Savannah in August 1774; in 1777 he took an oath to fulfil his duties as a magistrate under the rebel government, but no oath of allegiance. He had bought a plantation on the Carolina side of the Savannah River about eight miles below its confluence with the Broad River, and he lived there from 1775 to 1780, when he moved at the order of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown into Augusta and there lost all his slaves and movable property when the revolutionary forces recaptured the town. He reached London with his wife and seven children in 1782, with his Georgia lands confiscated and his Carolina property abandoned. In response to his Loyalist claim he received an immediate pension of £100 per annum and much later a lump sum of £1,220. See AO 12 and 13 at PRO; Records of Commissioners for the Ceded Lands, State of Georgia Archives; South Carolina Royal Grant Book 36, pp. 39–42, State of South Carolina Archives.
Robinson, Duncan, 28
Probably Duncan Robertson, merchant, of Saint Bernard’s Street, Leith.
Saint Augustine, 31
Capital city of East Florida and a vital seaport for trade and war in the eighteenth century.
Saint Pauls, 15
Saint Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built in 1675–1710.
The parish surrounding Augusta, created in 1758.
Saint Pierre, Louis de, 42–43
Frenchman trying in 1773–74 to establish wine-making at New Bordeaux (site of present Bordeaux in McCormick County, S.C.), close to Savannah River on the Carolina side some miles downstream from the confluence with the Broad River. When visited by William Bartram in June 1776 he had “a very thriving vineyard consisting of about five acres” as well as “very extensive . . . plantations of Indian corn (zea), rice, wheat, oats, indigo, convolvulus batata, etc.” He wrote a book on grape and wine production in the colonies, which was published in London in 1772. See Harper, Travels of Wm. Bartram, 237, 393; South Carolina Gazette, Oct. 18 and Nov. 22, 1773.
Savannah, 22, 26, 32, 37–38, 41, 44, 46–47, 50–51, 53–54, 56–57, 59–60
First settlement and capital of Georgia. It has a good natural harbor that was developed after 1750 in the tidal estuary of the Savannah River. The charming street plan, with open tree-planted squares placed on the intersections of streets, rather than occupying blocks between the streets, was laid down when the settlers first arrived. See Peter Gordon, View of Savannah (1734).
Savannah River, 22, 24–25, 31, 35, 37, 40, 42–43
A large river that forms the boundary between Georgia and South Carolina. In the eighteenth century it was navigated by boats of at least twenty tons burden from Savannah to Augusta, with some merchants running regular services. There was some carriage of crops from further inland in canoes. See Cashin, Colonial Augusta; Harper, Travels of Wm. Bartram, 200.
Schuyl Kill River (correctly Schuylkill), 74
River forming the western boundary of the original plan of Philadelphia.
Selby, Elizabeth (née Mylne) (d. 1797?), 33, 52, 81
Sister of Robert, William, and Anne. Eloped and married Robert Selby in the autumn of 1758 against her parents’ wishes. Continued his plumbing business based at Powderhall after his death. See Mylne Papers at BAL; Mylne Papers, GD1/51 at SRO.
Selby, Robert (d. 1788), 40, 52, 54, 61–62, 76, 82
Plumber in Bailie Fyfe’s Close, Edinburgh, 1773–84, replaced by James Selby in 1786–88. Married Elizabeth Mylne in 1758. They had three daughters, who were sent to a boarding school in Yorkshire. Two of them survived him and were executors of his will. William Mylne thought Selby “had good hands,” and he was apparently successful as a plumber, but less so in “wild projects” that he embarked on. “Twice,” William wrote in 1789, “did I save him from ruin, when he took to his bed in vexation at his folly, and all from a desire of money.” See Mylne Papers at BAL; Mylne Papers, GD1/51 at SRO; Williamson’s Directories.
Selbys (family), 16–17, 29, 40, 52, 58, 76, 79
Shawanese (correctly Shawnees), 56
Tribe located mainly in western Virginia.
Skye, 5
Large island off the west coast of Scotland, from which substantial numbers emigrated to the colonies in the early 1770s.
Smith, Roger, 20
The name applied to bands of radicals who convened in many colonial ports and towns at various times from the Stamp Act protests of 1765 to the end of the Revolution. They commonly used strong-arm methods both in recruiting support for their own views and in demonstrating to the British and the Loyalists that tampering with colonists’ freedom was going to produce violent reactions.
South Amboy, 75
A coastal town of New Jersey from which one could travel by packet boat directly to New York or, alternatively, go by road to Elizabethtown and take a shorter ferry—but still twenty-eight miles—to New York. William Mylne’s letter suggests that he went by the former route. A regular service of passenger “waggons” ran between Burlington and Amboy from 1707. See A. M. Gummere, “Friends in Burlington,” Pennsylvania Magazine 8 (1884).
South Carolina, 6, 12, 19, 21–22, 25, 34–37, 39, 42–43, 55, 58, 75
South Carolina Gazette, 20–21
Southampton Courthouse, 68
Town in Virginia, now called Courtland and the county town of Southampton County. Several wooden piles very close to the present road bridge seem a likely remnant of the wooden bridge crossed by William Mylne, or a successor to it. It appears that the bridge would have been at least 300 feet long.
Stephen’s Creek (also Stevens Creek), 22, 25, 29–30, 32, 43, 92
A substantial tributary of the Savannah River on the South Carolina side, joining it about seven miles above Augusta. It has been widened and deepened in recent decades by dams erected on the Savannah. The land on both sides of the Creek is forested, probably as densely as when William lived there, but many of the trees—perhaps thirty to fifty percent—are conifers, which is unlikely to have been the case in the 1770s.
Strange, Mrs. (Isabella, née Lumisden, later Lady Isabella [d. 1806]), 79
Wife of Robert Strange. Intellectual, witty, and an effective businesswoman, Mrs. Strange remained a staunch and open supporter of the Stuarts’ claim to the British Crown long after other Scots people had abandoned it as a lost cause. See DNB.
Strange, Miss (Mary) Bruce (1748–84), 53, 76, 79
Friend of Anne Mylne; the eldest daughter of Sir Robert and Lady Isabella Strange and said to have “inherited some of her father’s gift.” See DNB; Mylne Papers, GD1/51, at SRO.
Strange, Mr. (Robert, later Sir Robert [1721–92]), 49
A talented draftsman and engraver. He was born Robert Strang in Orkney, fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, and engraved his portrait. Strange is believed to have evaded a search party at his fiancée’s home by hiding under her hooped skirt. He lived mostly in London but also on the Continent. Having criticized the elitism of the Royal Academy of Arts and its exclusion of engravers from its membership, he achieved no royal favor until he engraved a picture of the Kings children and was knighted in 1787. See DNB.
Stuart, the Honorable John (1718–79), 23–24, 34–35, 46–47, 53
Son of Bailie (i.e., magistrate) John Steuart, a merchant in Inverness, Scotland, who could claim distant blood relationship with the Pretender to the Scottish throne and had strong, but at times carefully concealed, Jacobite sympathies. The son engaged in commercial ventures in London, Spain, and Charleston with little success. He performed well, however, in social and civic activities but failed to obtain a civil appointment until 1763 when he became superintendent of Indian affairs for the southern colonies, a post created by the British government to “win friends and influence chiefs” among the tribes who occupied land to the west of the white-settled areas, and answering to the British commander-in-chief in the colonies. His salary was initially £600 per annum, raised to £1,000 in 1768, and over ten years he obtained land grants of more than fifteen thousand acres in South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida and became the owner of two hundred slaves. It was often his task to restrain the greed of colonial governors for more of the tribes’ traditional territories. Having suffered from gout since the mid-1760s, in the 1770s he employed two deputies to live in regular contact with the Indians, Alexander Cameron with the Cherokees and David Taitt with the Creeks. He lived at Charleston until the new assembly of South Carolina ordered his arrest in June 1775. He then fled to Saint Augustine and on to Pensacola in July 1776, trying to make the tribes ready to fight on the British side. In 1778 there were several setbacks and he was censured by the British government for these and for a prodigious increase in his expenses. He died at Pensacola in the following year. See DAB; Alden, John Stuart; Cashin, The King’s Ranger; Cashin, Colonial Augusta.
Susquehana River (now Susquehanna), 73
Important navigable river, in Pennsylvania for most of its length but entering the head of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland at a point less than twenty miles south of the Pennsylvania boundary and thirty miles north of Baltimore. Navigation was an obstacle to any plan for bridging it, making the ferries very important for trade.
Swallow, Mrs., 20
A Scotsman trained in mathematics and surveying, appointed as John Stuart’s commissary to the Creeks in 1772 and later as deputy superintendent. The appointment ended with Stuart’s death in 1779, after which Taitt saw military service at Charleston and Mobile, was imprisoned by the Spanish when Mobile fell in 1780, and when released took ship from Charleston for England in January 1782. See Alden, John Stuart, 297; Cashin, The King’s Ranger; “David Taitt’s Journal of a Journey Through the Creek Country, 1772,” in Newton D. Mereness, Travels in the American Colonies (New York: Antiquarian Press, 1961), 493–565.
Tarrborough (now Tarboro), 67
Incorporated as a town at Joseph Howell’s Ferry in 1760, although previously a tobacco inspection post and served by a missionary from 1748. It was first planned as a square of five-and-a-half blocks each way. Howell’s petition to build a bridge and charge toll was also granted by the Provincial Assembly in 1760. In 1803 the bridge—certainly rebuilt since William Mylne’s visit—was described as “five hundred and forty feet long and about thirty feet above the water.” See Rocky Mount Telegram, Dec. 12, 1967; Daily Southerner, Bicentennial edition, July 13, 1976; Colonial Records of North Carolina, vol. 6 (1888).
Tarr River (now Tar River), 67
A river in North Carolina navigable up to Tarboro and beyond until 1919, at first by “long flat-bottomed boats capable of carrying many barrels of naval stores” (i.e., tar); in the 1890s and after by steam-driven boats. See Daily Southerner, Bicentennial edition, July 13, 1976.
13 Geo III c 44.
Three Sisters Ferry, 55
A public ferry on the Savannah River near modern Clyo and some thirty-five miles upstream from Savannah. See Harper, Travels of Wm. Bartram, 381.
Timothy, Peter, 20
Son of a French Huguenot printer, protegé of Benjamin Franklin who was cofounder of the South Carolina Gazette in 1732. The paper was edited and run by Peter’s father, Lewis, from 1733 to his death in 1738, when Peter was thirteen, then by his mother until Peter was old enough to take it over. As owner, editor, and printer, he made it always a beacon of justice, freedom, and independence. In 1781 he was taken prisoner to Saint Augustine and was drowned at sea. See DAB; M. Steedman, “Charlestown’s Forgotten Tea Party,” Georgia Review 21, no. 2 (1967).
Tower Hill, 17
The Tower of London, first built by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century, stood by the east wall of the city, for protection against attack from the Thames estuary. In the eighteenth century it was still surrounded by a wide moat or ditch filled with water from the Thames. Within the tower were the royal mint, the office of the Crown jewels, and an office of records, as well as military barracks, stores, and state prisons. Between the moat and the city was a wide space known as Tower Hill, used as a place of general resort, as well as for hustings. As a place of execution it saw the last person beheaded in Britain, the Jacobite Lord Lovat in 1747, but it ceased to be a place of execution after some of the Gordon Rioters were hanged there in 1780. See Maitland, History of London, vol. 1, 146–76; Weinreb and Hibbert, London Encyclopaedia.
Trent River, 67
Tributary of the Neuse River in North Carolina, joining it at New Bern.
Tryon, Governor (William [1725–88]), 65, 67
Governor of North Carolina (1765–71) and New York (1771–78). An officer of the Foot Guards from 1752, he married a relative of Lord Hillsborough who in 1763 became first commissioner for trade and plantations in the British government. Tryon was sent to North Carolina as lieutenant-governor in 1764 and became governor a year later. He immediately established the provincial capital at New Bern (see Tryon’s Palace). He was criticized for neglect of the backcountry. The settlers there banded themselves together under the name of the “Regulators,” but Tryon applied a harsh riot act and crushed them by force just before his transfer to New York in 1771. In New York he promoted new settlement to the west and speculated heavily in land himself. He resigned his governorship in 1778 to take up a military command but was sent home to England unfit for service in 1780. He died in London in 1788. See DAB; DNB; W. S. Powell, ed., The Correspondence of William Tryon, 2 vols. (Raleigh, 1980).
Tryon’s Palace, 65–67
The building called, at first derisively, Tryon’s Palace, was built in New Bern, N.C., as a combined governor’s residence and seat of government. It was designed by John Hawks and built under his supervision in 1767–71. His several designs show that he modeled it on Nuneham Park, Oxfordshire, in England, designed and built in 1756–64 for Lord Harcourt by Stiff Lead-better, for whom Hawks had worked. As William Mylne observed, however, some features resembled those of Buckingham House (now Palace), Queen Charlotte’s house on the outskirts of London, more than those of Nuneham. Hawks’s first design was for a Palladian house of three stories and seven bays, with pavilions of two stories and three bays attached by quadrant passages, all like Nuneham. In the final design the house was reduced to two stories but otherwise similar to Nuneham, while the pavilions were of four bays like Buckingham House. In both designs, and in the house as built, the quadrants were roofed open passages with a colonnade in front and solid rear wall, like those of Buckingham House but unlike Nuneham, where the quadrants were the fronts of solid two-story buildings containing several rooms as well as access corridors to the pavilions. Tryon’s Palace was built entirely of brick and roofed with shingles, “a covering,” wrote Tryon, “when well executed and painted, more beautiful than slate or tyle.” A pediment over the main entrance was occupied by the arms of the king. Rooms in the principal story were fifteen feet high and those on the bedroom floor twelve feet. They were richly decorated, with fireplaces made of marble from Siena as well as Philadelphia. Skilled workmen were brought from Philadelphia, and a plumber from London. The interior plan closely followed that of Nuneham, with a large entrance hall, two staircases in the middle of the house, and a council chamber thirty-six feet by twenty-two feet as the largest room. There was a formal garden overlooking the Trent river. Tryon and his family moved in in June 1770 and the provincial assembly first met in the council chamber on December 5. The cost of the house, being more than £10,000 sterling and to be raised by a poll tax on the whole province, caused bitter resentment in areas far from the coast and New Bern, a material addition to other grievances that led to bloodshed in the “Regulators” revolt in 1770–71. After the Revolution it was little used; President Washington was entertained to dinner and dancing there in 1791, and thought that it was falling into ruin. In 1798 the main house was gutted by fire. In 1852 both pavilions were standing, but by 1940 only one remained. In the 1950s this pavilion was restored, the rest of the palace rebuilt to the original design, and the gardens also restored. See references under John Hawks. Also see A. T. Dill, Governor Tryon and His Palace (Chapel Hill, 1955); W. S. Powell, ed., The Correspondence of William Tryon, 2 vols. (Raleigh, 1980); J. Young and T. Lewis, A Tryon Treasury (New Bern, 1986); John Hawks’s plan of garden (ca. 1770) and memorandum on design of the house (1783), Archivo de Francisco de Miranda, tomo 5, ff. 95–97, Academia Nacional de la Historia, Caracas, Venezuela; John Hawks plans, Colonial Office papers, PRO; Colen Campbell et al, Vitruvius Britannicus, vol. 1 (London, 1715), plates 43–44, and vol. 5 (London, 1771), plates 99–100; H. M. Colvin, ed., History of the King’s Works, vol. 5 (London, 1976), 133–38, and plates 5–7.
Virginia, 26, 55, 68, 72–73, 75
House carpenter in Augusta. Signed the Loyalist resolution in Saint Paul’s Parish, published on October 12, 1774.
Wapping, 16
In the eighteenth century, a village just to the east of London on the north side of the Thames and employed solely in service to the maritime trade of the port.
West End, London, 15
In the eighteenth century the city’s west end was at about Ludgate Hill just west of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Today’s West End is a theater district a mile further west and quite outside the small area that is still administered as the City of London.
Westminster Bridge, 16
The stone bridge built in 1735–50 at Westminster, the seat of government of Great Britain, one mile up the Thames from the City of London. It was the first large “modern” bridge in Britain and considered one of the finest in Europe. Designed and directed by engineer Charles Labelye, a Frenchman born in Switzerland. See Ruddock, Arch Bridges.
Whitby, 36–37
Williams, Mrs. (Catherine Chilcott), 50, 60
Daughter of Mary Malbone Chilcott (later Mary Mackay) of Rhode Island. Catherine married John Francis Williams about 1769 and went to live at Augusta. She was separated from him before his death in 1775 and lived with her mother and stepfather, Robert Mackay. She later married Andrew McLean, a merchant in Augusta and business associate of Robert Mackay. McLean died in 1784. Catherine married John Course, a lawyer in Augusta, in 1789. For references, see Mackay, Mary.
Williams, John Francis (d. 1775), 46
Trader and/or merchant in Augusta, probably from before 1756. His partnership with Robert Mackay was dissolved in June 1770. He married Catherine Chilcott about 1769. He was later described by Mackay as a “strange mortal” and fraudulent in business. He died while at Savannah in January 1775 to prove the debts due to him from the Indian nations, before payment by the provincial government. For references, see Mackay, Mary. Also see Cashin, Colonial Augusta.
Williamsburgh (now Williamsburg), 68–69, 71–72, 75
Provincial capital of Virginia planned by Lieutenant-Governor Francis Nicholson in 1699 on a site of 220 acres. He chose a regular layout and generous space standards, with each individual building lot of half an acre for a house and garden. The central street (Duke of Gloucester Street) was ninety-nine feet wide. In 1782 many lots were still empty but the southern half of the street, from Market Square to the Capitol, was fully built up. The rebuilt capitol, finished in 1933, is a replica of the one built in 1701–5 and destroyed by fire in 1747; but the provision of rooms and their positions in the building are much the same as those of the later capitol described by William Mylne. The second capitol was raised on the foundations of the first, with the same H-shaped plan. The two-story portico mentioned by Mylne had the king’s arms carved in wood in the pediment, but the rebels took them down and burned them in or before 1777. See M. Whiffen, Public Buildings of Williamsburg (New York: 1958); Colonial Williamsburg: Official Guidebook (1979); H. Jones, The Present State of Virginia (London, 1724).
Williamson, Mr., 43–44
Almost certainly Andrew Williamson (ca. 1730–86), a planter at White Hall in South Carolina, six miles west of Ninety-Six and perhaps fifteen miles east of the Savannah River. Williamson contracted with Lieutenant-Governor Bull in 1765 to erect Fort Charlotte. He became an officer of the rebel militia early in the Revolution and was quickly promoted by steps to brigadier-general. After commanding a force of up to two thousand South Carolinians for several years, he withdrew his militia of about 360 men from Augusta into South Carolina in May 1780, a few weeks before Thomas Brown reoccupied the town for the Crown. In June Williamson surrendered to a Royalist officer at Ninety-Six. He was suspected of conniving with the enemy and was rescued from hanging only by the protection of British troops, but he later cleared his name sufficiently to remain in South Carolina to the end of his life. He was clearly an officer of humanitarian principles, having banned all revenge and looting when his force entered Augusta in February 1779, and also protected James Gordon from “persecution,” probably for several years. See DAB; Cashin and Robertson, Augusta and the American Revolution; Cashin, The King’s Ranger; Alden, History of the American Revolution.
“Willy” (or “Will”), 18, 26, 40, 45, 53, 77, 79, 84
William Mylne’s illegitimate son.
Seaport town of North Carolina, on the north, or east, side of the Cape Fear River. The original street plan was a chessboard of streets parallel and perpendicular to the riverfront. The central perpendicular street was Market, and a map drawn in 1769 showed only one block completed on each side of Market Street, with others partly built. See Plan of Wilmington, 1769, by C. J. Saulthier, British Library, London; drawing by T. E. Hyde, 1826, Wilmington Public Library.
Wilson, Captain, 12
Probably James Wilson, master of the ship Portland, which reached Charleston one day before the London in December 1773. See South Carolina Gazette, Dec. 6, 1773.
Wilson, John, 9
Overseer of the repair and completion of North Bridge, Edinburgh, from 1770 to 1775.
Wright, Sir James, Baronet (1716–85), 6, 34–36, 46–47, 53, 56
Last royal governor of Georgia, 1761–82. Born in London, son of a chief justice of South Carolina, he was attorney-general of that province by 1739 and later became its agent in London. In 1760 he was appointed lieutenant-governor and in 1761 governor of Georgia. His attempts, from 1774 onward, to restrain the patriotic movement failed, and after a period of imprisonment in his own house, he escaped to a warship in February 1776 and sailed to England. When Savannah was taken by British troops in 1778, he returned and tried to govern the province until he was ordered home in 1782. For the loss of his property, which had been confiscated in 1778 and was valued at £33,000, he was given a pension of £500 per annum. He died in Westminster, where he was buried in the north cloister of the abbey. See DNB; AO 12 and 13, at PRO, London.
A township in Northeastern Georgia touching on the boundary of white settlement set by the Proclamation of 1763, in the angle between the Little River and Williams Creek. Wrightsborough, which was named for the governor, Sir James Wright, was established in 1768 by a group of fifty Quaker families who came from North Carolina, just the sort of disciplined settlers the governor wanted. Its population was at least six hundred by 1775. See De Vorsey, The Indian Boundary.