four schools, and within nine years Londonderry paid one-fifteenth of
the state tax. Previous to the Revolution of 1776 ten distinct
settlements were made by colonists from Londonderry, N.H., all of
which became towns of influence and importance. Notable among the
descendants of these colonists were Matthew Thornton, Henry Knox, Gen.
John Stark, Hugh McCulloch, Horace Greeley, Gen. George B. McClellan,
Salmon P. Chase, and Asa Gray. From 1771 to 1773 "the whole emigration
from Ulster is estimated at 30,000 of whom 10,000 were weavers."

In 1706 the Rev. Cotton Mather put forth a plan to settle hardy Scots
families on the frontiers of Maine and New Hampshire to protect the
towns and churches there from the French and Indians, the Puritans
evidently not being able to protect themselves. He says, "I write
letters unto diverse persons of Honour both in Scotland and in
England; to procure Settlements of Good Scotch Colonies, to the
Northward of us. This may be a thing of great consequence;" and
elsewhere he suggests that a Scottish colony might be of good service
in getting possession of Nova Scotia. In 1735, twenty-seven families,
and in 1753 a company of sixty adults and a number of children,
collected in Scotland by General Samuel Waldo, were landed at George's
River, Maine. In honor of the ancient capital of their native country,
they named their settlement Stirling.

Another and an important cause of the early appearance of Scots in
America was the wars between Scotland and England during the
Commonwealth. Large numbers of Scottish prisoners taken at Dunbar
(1650) and at Worcester (1651) were sold into service in the colonies,
a shipload arriving in Boston Harbor in 1652 on the ship _John and
Sara_. The means taken to ameliorate their condition led in 1657 to
the foundation of the Scots Charitable Society of Boston--the earliest