- 1 - DOWN UNDER THE NEWSLETTER OF CLAN LESLIE SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND. (CLANZ) Vol. 8 No 8, Jan Feb March 2014 FROM THE CHIEFTAIN. As we draw close to the end of another year, I look back and wonder where the time has gone. It has been a year of ups and downs and our Commissioner, Barrie Leslie, who is not in the best of health, still Malcolm Leslie. continues to battle on with his sterling work. I along with all our members, hope that the coming year will see a great improvement in his situation. I hope to see an increase in membership of CLANZ in the New Year and would encourage all members to approach family and friends, who have an affiliation with Clan Leslie to join our ranks. The leadership of the Society is unfortunately ageing and it would be wonderful to see younger generations coming forward to take up the reins. Past Chieftain George Leslie has taken up the challenge and is seeking members in South East Asia, where he tells us, there are considerable numbers of people with Scottish forebears . PRIVATE JOHN ALEXANDER LESLIE. No 299890. The Gaelic word “Clann” translates as children or 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force. family and as the festive season approaches, I like to think of Clan Leslie as a world-wide family John Alexander Leslie was born in Timaru New who, although very distant, are connected by blood Zealand in 1920 and was killed in Italy on the 24th and history. December 1943 and is remembered in the Cassino Memorial Panel 15. He was in the 26th Infantry I would like to wish all our members a Merry Battalion. His address when he enlisted was 80 Christmas and a Happy New Year, or as it is in Fitzgerald, Avenue, Christchurch. New Zealand Gaelic “Aighearach Nollaig a sona A’Bhliadhna”. and his occupation was a butcher. John was the son of John Brown Leslie and his Malcolm Leslie. wife Catherine Teresa Leslie, 34 Rathmore Street Chieftain. Timaru, South Canterbury. New Zealand. Clan Leslie Society of Australia & New Zealand. Barrie Leslie, Gordon, NSW 1 - 2 - PANTON, LESLIE & COMPANY negotiations between the Company and the U.S. ST AUGUSTINE. FLORIDA Government, arrangements were made for such debts to be paid through the transfer of property rights. As a result, Panton-Leslie was able to Panton, Leslie and Company, established in 1783 acquire, at one time, over three million acres of and headquartered in Pensacola from 1785-1830, land. was the Sears and Roebuck of its day, dealing in a variety of goods and servicing over a large John Leslie was descended from the Leslie’s of geographical area. The company had trading posts Aikenway, from whom I am also descended. scattered as far north as Memphis (then known as Chickasaw Bluffs) and as far west as New Orleans, Barrie Leslie, Gordon, NSW. including posts at Mobile and at several locations in Florida, the Bahamas, and in the Caribbean. Many thanks to Alastair for the above story. William Panton and John Leslie were merchants Alastair McIntyre GOTJ, FSA Scot from Scotland who emigrated to Georgia. When Electric Scotland the American Revolution heated up, they—being http://www.electricscotland.com Loyalists—relocated to St. Augustine in British 167 Raleigh St. East Florida. Accompanying them were other Chatham, ON Scots including Thomas Forbes, William N7M 2N4 Canada Alexander, and Charles McLatchy. They were all experienced merchants involved in the Indian trade, and together they formed Panton, Leslie and Company (known as John Forbes and Company FLODDEN FIELD after 1805). When dawn broke on the morning of 10th By the time the Company received its license in September, 1513, the landscape of hell was 1783, British East Florida had again become revealed. On the gently undulating northern ridges Spanish East Florida, and in 1784 we find John of Branxton Hill more than 10,000 men lay dead or and Thomas Forbes, William Alexander, and dying. In the midst of the carnage were the naked, William Panton joining other loyalists in the plundered bodies of King James IV of Scotland, Bahamas. In 1785, however, William Panton and his half-brother, Alexander Stewart, Archbishop of John Forbes relocated again to Pensacola and St Andrews, George Hepburn, Bishop of the Isles, established the Company’s headquarters there. two abbots, nine great earls of Scotland, fourteen lords of parliament, innumerable knights and By 1795 the company had a monopoly on the noblemen of lesser degree and many thousands of Indian trade from present day Memphis to St. farmers, ploughmen, weavers and burgesses. It was Augustine, possibly due to the fact that one of their the appalling aftermath of the battle of Flodden, Pensacola stockholders (or partners according to the greatest military disaster in Scotland’s history. one source) was Alexander McGillivray, chief of the Creeks. They also traded with the Seminoles, In the grey light of that terrible dawn, sentries Upper and Lower Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, posted around the captured Scottish cannon could Cherokees, and other Indian tribes. Even though make out where the brunt of the battle had been under Spanish domination, many of these tribes joined. Below them, at the foot of the slope ran the preferred British goods, and the Panton-Leslie trickle of a nameless burn, now choked with Scots were favored traders. As a result, by the late slaughter, a wrack of mangled bodies, broken 1700s, the Company had annual business activities pikeshafts, shattered shields and everywhere blood that exceeded $200,000. and the sickening stench of death, vomit and voided bowels. In 1795, when the northern boundary for the Florida’s moved up to the 31st parallel, Natchez Not all of the bodies were yet corpses. Through a and St. Stephens in Alabama became part of the long dark night the battlefield had not been a silent United States, making it harder for the Company to graveyard. Trapped under lifeless comrades, collect money owed to it by those residing in that crippled, hamstrung or horribly mutilated, fatally area, especially the Indians. However, through wounded men still breathed, Bladed weapons 2 - 3 - rarely kill outright and they were often used to in the shape of the Border Reivers, the beginning bludgeon men to their knees or into of a long period of political uncertainty and the last unconsciousness. In the churned mud of the medieval battle in the history of Britain. The last battlefield some men will have lost their footing, time a king was to die, leading his army. fallen and been hacked at before they could get up. Many bled to death, maimed, lacerated by vicious It was also an epic. As two huge armies mustered cuts, screaming, fainting and screaming once more and marched into history, extraordinary scenes had in their death agonies. Some will have been put out been witnessed. At Ellemford, high in the of their misery by parties of English soldiers Lammermuirs above Duns, where sheep now graze scouring the field by torchlight for plunder, on the flanks of the hills. Where buzzards hang in stripping the bodies, ransacking them for the updrafts and an elegant bridge crosses the valuables. But other men will have lingered on in Whiteadder, King James IV and his army camped. unspeakable pain, praying to their God, passing in Huge guns were trundled down the hill trails, and out of consciousness, slowly bleeding to death, dragged by oxen and by the 21st August 1513, The fury of the battle of Flodden field may have almost 30,000 men had massed in this beautiful, been stilled and awash with death and defeat, but now lonely valley. Two days later, the largest force all was not yet over. ever to leave Scotland crossed the Tweed at the fords below Coldstream. They had declared war, they had entered the realm of the Tudors, of the ferociously ambitious and bull-like Henry VIII. Meanwhile Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, and the Bishop of Durham carried the standard of St Cuthbert before their battle-hardened troops. In front of the high altar of the great cathedral, Howard had watched the bishop bless the flag of the Haliwerfolc. The lands of Palatinate of the Prince-Bishops of Durham, reached to the Tweed and beyond and in an early definition of Englishness, their people were known as the Holy Flodden Field. Man’s Folk, the Haliwerfolc. Ancient allegiances were being roused and summoned. In an instant the plunderers and scavengers looked up and the sentries by the cannon stood to, Between 2nd and 9th September two vast armies frantically peering through the morning light. They circled each other in a small corner of North could hear the rumbling thunder of hoofbeats – Northumberland, like heavyweight boxers looking and then, suddenly, riders erupted over Barelees for weaknesses or waiting for wrong moves. After Rig. With 800 horsemen at his back, Lord the Earl of Surrey had despatched a herald, the Alexander Home galloped hard across the horrors Rouge Croix, it was finally agreed that battle of the battlefield and up the slopes of Branxton would be joined on 9th September. Supplies for Hill. They had not come back to Flodden to rejoin almost 70,000 men, horses and camp followers a lost battle but to rescue their captured ordnance were running dangerously low and neither army and they very nearly succeeded. After a sharp could remain in the field much longer. skirmish, the English gunners managed to load and get off a volley at Home’s squadron and they Realising the strength of the Scot’s entrenched scattered, and so it ended.