Lecture: “Scottish Highlanders in Colonial and Revolutionary North Carolina”

The Joel Lane Museum House presents a lecture on “Scottish Highlanders in Colonial and Revolutionary North Carolina” by Andrew Collins.

This talk will first explore the emigration of Scots to North America colonies and specifically North Carolina during the eighteenth century. Many Scottish Highlanders who emigrated to North America arrived in the port town of Wilmington and then traveled up the Cape Fear River, where they settled and formed a unique Scottish community in the colony of North Carolina. This Scottish community began taking shape only a few decades before the American Revolution. During the Revolution, many Scottish Highlanders took up arms as loyalists to Great Britain. This talk will bring the history of emigration and settlement of Scottish Highlanders in North Carolina to life, as well as their involvement in the American War for Independence.

About the Speaker: Andrew Collins is a graduate student in the History Department at North Carolina State University. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from NCSU in 2016 and is currently in his final year of a Master’s degree program. As an undergraduate student at NCSU, he began researching the Scottish Highlanders in North Carolina with questions surrounding their loyalism to Great Britain. That research project has snowballed into a Master’s thesis that is focused on the life of the Scottish community in North Carolina immediately after the American Revolution. In addition to his academic life, Andrew works at a local brewery as a brewer’s assistant.