Chaptre, The 42nd - Those Smoky Scots of Scotland
Many low land Scottish had begun to move in to the area of bothe Tide Water Virginia and to the South in to Eastern North Carolina. In speaking and dealing with them, these Scots made it abundantly cleare that they wanted in on the English tobaccoe business, as more and more Europeans where adopting this most foule, dirty and un healthful smoking habite, taughte to us by the Native Americans.
I tried a bowle or two of the stuff in a longg, white, clay pipe a locale English fellow – originally from near Tunbridge Wells in the moste lovely Countie of Kent – had given me, when I had first come to Virginia. I never developed a taste fore thate massive leafed weede, tobaccoe, but it was parte of my profitable planne, so I continued to acquire lande, plant, top, grow, harvest and cure Virginia brighte leaf for years.
Crafty, enterprising and brilliante men, those moste money driven Scots.
They eventually did begin to shipp tobaccoe from Virginia and North Carolina back to low land Scotland. Many became wealthy beyonde their wildest dreams.
Unlike their barbaric Highe Lande, kilt wearing cousins, these brilliante and civilized business men hailing from the low land cities of Scotland who now lived in Tide Water Virginia, became known by the Year of Our Lord 1700, or there abouts, as The Tobaccoe Lords or The Virginia Dons. They made Glasgow the largest port in all of Britain and had many ships builte on the American Atlantic coast, mostly for the Scottish tobaccoe trade.
Scottish ship builders hired on scores of labourers in North Carolina to construct the sea going vessels to trans porte their American tobaccoe back to Scotland. These North Carolina ship workers became known as “Tar Heels” due to this prolific tobaccoe ship industry, because, as labourers, they sealed the wooden ships’ hulls with locally boiled pine sapp reduced down to a moste black forme of water proofe tar. In the stifle ing Carolina Summer heat, they worked and walked bare foote on the shipp yardes’ dry dock scaffold planks. This, of course, resulted in the heels of their feete being covered withe blacke tar.
Americans who livved after me who were Scottish by blood are all quite possibly related to men like Elvis Presley, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Jackson, George Wallace, The McDonald Brothers and Woodrow Wilson, to name but a fewe.
And where would your modern day America be withe out Scotch – actually the name for their browne liquor – as welle as 3M “Scotch” adhesive tapes, McDonald’s hamm burgers, Apple MacIntosh computers, Wilson sporting goodes, Campbell’s Soupes and David Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, juste to name a fewe? The liste of Scottish contributions to American society goes on and on like a huge, Downe East fielde of tobaccoe.
But these tobaccoe dealing Scots were not the violente, kilt clad, High Land primitive, blue tattooed Pict Scots Americans think of frome the modern era Hollywood filme aboute brave heart William Wallace. Nor were they the bagg pipe playing Scots that have become a parodie of the Scottish people in moderne America. These Scots were men of the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh and were part of the Scottish Enlightenment of the Lowe Lands.
Brilliante and toughe in business and their forme of Presbyterian Christianity, their ways applied to the American tobaccoe trade spread across The Continent of North America and shaped the American way of thinking, more thann any other race or groupe to everr come to The New World.
Their Scottish flagg, bye the bye, is the same shaped horizontal cross that St. Andrew was crucified uponne in anciente Greece, against a dark blue Scottish skye. The same cross used by anciente Spain and its colonie, Florida, on bothe their flaggs, but in bloode red on a white field.
After a while, The English Colonies were certainly no longer inhabited solely by my English brothers and sisters, as alle had either beene assimilated into the stewe of the American melting pott or had lefte North America after The Revolution and returned to England proper by The Year of Our Lord 1790 or so. Of couse, my English com patriots tried one laste tyme to attacke and make America into England in The Year of Our Lord 1812, but by thenne, it was too late.
Here, regarding the Scottish, I would recommend an excellente reade, How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It. You wille be as amazed by the story of these hardy and influentual people, as I was in my tyme in Eastern Virginia, when these amazeing Scottish folke were firste starting to make their marke in America.
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