Scotland's Mark on America by George Fraser Black
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residence at Elizabeth. In the same year Perth (so named in honor of
the Earl of Perth, one of the principal proprietors, now Perth Amboy) was made the capital of the new Scottish settlement. During the following century a constant stream of emigrants both from Scotland and from Ulster came to the colony. One of the principal encouragers of the Scottish colony in New Jersey was George Scot or Scott (d. 1685) of Pitlochrie, who had been repeatedly fined and imprisoned by the Privy Council of Scotland for attending "Conventicles," as clandestine religious gatherings were then called in Scotland, and in the hope of obtaining freedom of worship in the new world he proposed to emigrate "to the plantations." To encourage others to do the like he printed at Edinburgh (1685) a work, now very rare, called "The Model of the Government of the Province of East New Jersey, in America; and Encouragement for Such as Design to be concerned there." Scot received a grant of five hundred acres in recognition of his having written the work, and sailed in the _Henry and Francis_ for America. A malignant fever broke out among the passengers and nearly half on board perished including Scot and his wife. A son and daughter survived and the proprietors a year after issued a confirmation of the grant to Scot's daughter and her husband (John Johnstone), many of whose descendants are still living in New Jersey. Walter Ker of Dalserf, Lanarkshire, banished in 1685, settled in Freehold, and was active in organizing the Presbyterian Church there, one of the oldest in New Jersey. The Scots settlers who came over at this period occupied most of the northern counties of the state but many went south and southwest, mainly around Princeton, and, says Samuel Smith, the first historian of the province, "There were very soon four towns in the Province, viz., Elizabeth, Newark, Middletown and Shrewsbury; and these with the country round were in a few years |
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