[pg 76]
CHAPTER II.—Emigrants.
Their ship, a large, slow trader, plying between English and Scottish ports and Norfolk, Virginia, sailed from Greenock on the twenty-seventh day of August. She belonged to the Colonial Merchant Marine and was owned and operated by three rich planters, whose exports of tobacco and imports of plantation supplies and labor guaranteed half a cargo for each voyage.
The usual passenger list from America consisted of planters with their families visiting the “Old Country;” or their children coming over to be educated in European universities. The list and cargo of the return trip, as usual, consisted of emigrants, slaves and supplies for the plantations, a few merchants, adventurers and travelers. There were twenty-five cabin and sixty-three steerage passengers. The majority of the steerage were indentured servants and slaves; though there were perhaps as many as twenty emigrants, artisans, trades people and petty farmers who traveled in that manner, husbanding their small capital to purchase lands in the new country. Of the cabin passengers, ten were returning planters and members of their families; the other fifteen consisted of five gentlemen and their families, who, like Archibald Campbell and his wife, followed kindred or friends and expected to enjoy better material conditions and greater freedom in the New World.
Among these were David Clark and his family, natives of Argyllshire and the only persons aboard Mr. and Mrs. Campbell had known prior to the voyage. Mrs. Clark, who was Mrs. Campbell’s sister, had expected to [pg 77] make the trip to America with the McDonald Colony, but had been prevented by a serious illness.
The voyage proved slower than usual, owing to the prevalent light winds. The ocean was as placid as an inland lake, the weather quite warm and sultry; and nearly every day there was a light shower or thunder storm.
A friendly spirit, such as exists in isolated rural communities pervaded the ship. Class distinctions were eliminated. Even those sailing as steerage passengers were allowed greater deck privileges because of the extreme heat of their quarters; and thus made the acquaintance of the planters and their families and shared in the general cordial spirit.
Each planter became a zealous emigrant agent for his community and plantation, promising employment to such of the passengers as might settle in his neighborhood. Their efforts induced quite a few to change their original plans, and decision as to location rather than social cast finally grouped the passengers, those becoming intimates who expected to be neighbors in the new country.
There were three distinct groups. Those destined for the Northern Neck and for the York and James river plantations headed by the three planters, made the most numerous and affluent party. Those crossing the Blue Ridge into the Virginia Valley, intending to settle at the McDonald Settlement on the headwaters of Jackson river, nearly all Presbyterians from Ulster or Dissenters from Scotland, made a second, nearly as strong numerically, though not so rich a party. A third group of twenty-two persons consisting of four former small land owners who had lost their holdings, three recently released political prisoners and their families, with a Baptist [pg 78] preacher, William Hickman, driven from home by misfortune or persecution, intended settling where class and religious restrictions were unknown or disregarded; and therefore were headed for the extreme frontier settlements on the Ohio.
One cabin passenger was treated as a pariah by all. Mrs. Campbell asking her husband about him was told: “O that Spaniard, Carlo Sebastian! ‘He’s a spirit,’ that is, one who lives in a seaport town and lures young people to his tavern, where they are kidnapped and held prisoners until they can be sold and transported to the colonies as indentured servants. He started in that way and still continues the practice, though his business has grown until now he contracts with the government and buys at first hand political prisoners and criminals. Under the English code there are three hundred offences punishable with death; sometimes the judge trying the case deems this too severe; and having the option, sentences such prisoners to transportation. Sebastian buys and resells them to the planters. He has a third source of supply from rural or peasant laborers who find conditions of life almost impossible at home and yet have no means of getting away. Under the law, such can only labor in the fields of their own parish. When they find it impossible to subsist on the very small wage they earn at home they indenture themselves to him, willing to pay five years of service for transportation to the Colony; where labor is the only thing that is high. At the end of their bondage, they emigrate to the frontier, take out a patent for land and start in for themselves as landed proprietors, usually becoming substantial citizens.