I I * JJOURNAL <fy .$. # 4* 4* O F A <& $* <$> LADY OF I | QUALITY:<^w 7 <5jS 4* 4* VJ" J&. 4* Being the ^(arrative of a 4. 4* 4* | Journey from | 4* 4* | SCOTLAND | 4* 4* 4* to the If^est Indies^ ZNortb Carolina, 4* **** ^^^ _t ^^ Vv?* TJ TOr ^ and Portugal, in the years ^ 4* 4* 1774 to 1776. "f* EVANGELINE WALKER ANDREWS, 4* 4* 4* Y z# Collaboration with "f* 4* 4* 4* CHARLES McL,EAN ANDREWS, 4* X Farnam Professor of American History in Yale University. X * $ 4- 4* ^ NEW HAVEN: Yale University Press, 1923. J .^ LONDON : Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press. Copyright, 1921," by Yale University Press. Printed in the United States of America. Published, December, 1921. Second printing, July, 1922. Third printing, March, 1923. PROPERTY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK To JAMES SPRUNT, Chronicler of the Cape Fear. CONTENTS Introduction, 1 Chapter I. The Voyage to the West Indies, 19 Chapter II. Antigua and St. Christopher, 78 Chapter III. Residence in North Carolina, 144 Chapter IV. Sojourn in Lisbon, 216 Appendices : I. The Highland Emigration, 257 II. The Martin Family, 259 III. "Olivees" and the Hamiltons, 273 IV. Brunswick, 277 V. Description of North Carolina, 279 VI. Wilmington, 282 VII. James Innes and Francis Corbin, 285 VIII. James Murray and John Rutherfurd, 289 IX. The Rutherfurd Children, 299 X. The Children's Inheritance, 307 XI. A Group of Provincial Leaders, 313 XII. A Few North Carolina Loyalists, 319 XIII. Archibald Neilson, 328 XIV. Captain John Abraham Collet, 330 ILLUSTRATIONS | Map of the Voyage, End papers Plan of Lauriston and New Town, opposite page 1 1 The Island of Antigua, 78 The Parishes at Basseterre, 120 The Lower Cape Fear, 142 Entries of the Jamaica Packet and the Rebecca, 144 The Town of Wilmington, 156 Plan of the City of Lisbon, 242 Note. The map of the Parishes of Basseterre, the map of the Lower Cape Fear, the plan of the Town of Wilmington, and the Entries of the Jamaica Packet and the Rebecca are heliotypes from photographs of the original documents. The remaining maps and plans are from drawings by W. A. Dwiggins. INTRODUCTION T.A. is HE finding of an interesting manuscript much like the sighting of an unexpected island by a mariner sailing in strange seas, for the exploration of either, whatever may be the ultimate value of the discovery, affords all the excite- ment that accompanies an adventure into the unknown. Nor has this "Journal of a Lady of Quality," stumbled upon accidentally in a search for other material, failed in any par- ticular to fulfill the expectations of its discoverers or the promise of its charming title and opening pages; and one can only marvel that such a treasure should have lain so long unproclaimed. That an incredulous reader may not have to speculate regarding the genuineness of the Journal, the editors hasten to say that it is no twentieth century fabrication, but that the manuscript from which the present text is printed is known as Egerton, 2423, and is even now in the British Museum. It is a quarto volume labelled "Travels in the West Indies and South Carolina, 1774, '75"; and in the Museum Cata- logue it is entered as a "Journal by a Lady, of a Voyage from Scotland to the West Indies and South Carolina, with an account of personal experiences during the War of Inde- pendence, and a visit to Lisbon on her return 25 October 1774 December 1775." Quite a long description that, but withal an inaccurate one; and surely he was a careless re- tainer of the British Museum who did the labelling, for even a cursory reading of the beautiful manuscript shows that 2 THE JOURNAL OF A LADY OF QUALITY "North Carolina" should be substituted for "South Caro- lina," and that the narrative itself deals, at most, with only the preliminary events of the American War for Independ- ence and continues nearly to the beginning of February, 1776. As a narrative, the Journal falls naturally into four parts, dealing respectively with the voyage from Scotland to the Indies life West ; with and experiences in the West Indies at Antigua and St. Kitts, and the voyage from St. Kitts to the Cape Fear River; with life on the Cape Fear just before the American of with the vari- War Independence ; and, finally, ous adventures and experiences of Miss Schaw and her com- panions in Portugal on her way back to Scotland. Nowhere in our manuscript does the name of the author occur, and, for the most part, the names of persons referred to are in blank; so that only after much following of clues and search- ing in the records of England, Scotland, Ireland, the West Indies, and America have the editors been able to trace the careers of those who play the leading parts in the story. With the blanks filled out as far as possible, with but few corrections in spelling and capitalization, and with here and there a change in the diverting, but somewhat erratic, punc- tuation, the Journal, in the form now presented, is the same as that of the British Museum manuscript. But of more importance than these slight changes in form is the fact that two other copies of the Journal are known to exist, one of which, the Vetch manuscript, owned by a de- scendant of the Schaws and recently bequeathed to a de- scendant of the Rutherfurds, the two families that play the chief roles in the Journal, we have not been allowed to examine, even for purposes of textual comparison. The other, now in the possession of Mr. Vere Langford Oliver, the dis- tinguished author of a history of Antigua, was purchased by him a few years ago in the belief that it was unique; and although this is not the case, it is of particular value in that INTRODUCTION it gives the name of the author and is dedicated to Alexander r "the and fellow traveler of the Schaw, Esq , Brother, Freind, Author, his truly affect. Jen. Schaw, St. Andrews Square, March 10, 1778." Mr. Oliver, who has compared his copy with that in the British Museum, says that although there are differences in binding and pagination, the two manuscripts are in the same handwriting and differ but slightly in phraseology. Our belief is that both are copies of the same in been the for manuscript, which, turn, may have original ; these letters, written to a dear friend, probably a woman back in Scotland, by this same "Jen. Schaw" while on her eventful journey to the West Indies and North Carolina, were prob- ably copied many times for circulation among relatives and friends. Thus, from 1904, when the editors of the present volume came upon the British Museum manuscript, these other manuscripts have been appearing, first Colonel Vetch's and later Mr. Oliver's, to claim the title for the only and original; and almost comically, have been masquerading, like three Dromios, somewhat to the confusion and dismay, but also to the amusement, of some of the discoverers of the prize. If further proof were needed, both of the authenticity of the Journal and also of the accuracy and truthfulness of the author in describing places, events, and individuals, that is supplied by the notes and appendices of this volume, in which Professor Andrews has checked up or amplified each point of personal and historical interest. Scholarly research has been applied to the work of this delightful "Lady of Quality," but she holds her ground firmly and ably, as with ease and fluency she discusses manners and customs, climate and scenery, sugar-culture and farming, friends, their houses, amusements, recreations, and sorrows, and, fortu- nately for posterity, happenings and human beings as she saw both in the West Indies and North Carolina just before the American War for Independence. Rarely is she caught 8 THE JOURNAL OF A LADY OF QUALITY Revolution: and had she come earlier, we should have lacked a chronicler of a period of our own revolutionary history for which there exists no finer contemporary document than her Journal. Not only does she describe graphically and inter- estingly the natural scenery and social life of the places she visited for she is a gifted letter writer, as other extant let- ters of hers prove but she gives us pictures of political life in North Carolina during the stormy pre-revolutionary days which are typical, not only of the Cape Fear, but also of many other colonial centres, and which help us to under- stand, even if they do not induce us to accept, the conserva- tive point of view held by those who in such troublous times remained loyal to their mother-country. From the moment of her arrival at Brunswick until she sailed for Portugal in the autumn of 1775, Miss Schaw gives a running account of affairs in the Cape Fear, both social and political, as seen by one of the group of loyalists and conservatives, of whom many undoubtedly were forced into active opposition to the colonial government by the violence of the extreme radicals. In this connection it is interesting to learn that of the men of Brunswick and Wilmington whom the Schaws knew well, those who moved to the Cape Fear from Charleston, such as Richard Quince, William Dry, Joseph Eagles, James Moore, and others, became the nucleus, as it were, of the united provincial group, which often, and especially after the actual outbreak of hostilities, opposed those "newcomers and for- eigners" of English or Scottish birth, such as Dr.