A Year in Europe

by Walter W. Moore

It was in 1773 that Boswell and Dr. Samuel Johnson were entertained at the hospitable home of Allan Macdonald and his famous wife. The great lexicographer and moralist was delighted with his hostess and describes her as "a woman of middle stature, soft features, gentle manners, and elegant presence." He asked her, as a special favor, to let him sleep in the bed which had been occupied by the unfortunate Prince, a request which she readily granted, adding, to his immense gratification, that she would also furnish him with the identical sheets on which the Prince had lain, and which, by the way, she kept till the end of her days, taking them with her to North Carolina and back, and in which, at her own request, her body was wrapped after her death. Before leaving the house next morning, Dr. Johnson laid on his toilet table a slip of paper containing the pencilled words, Quantum cedat virtutibus aurum, which Boswell renders, "With virtue weighed, what worthless trash is gold."

She Moves to North Carolina.

Through no mismanagement or extravagance of his own, but in consequence of losses incurred by his father, by the part he had taken in the Pretender's cause, Allan Macdonald had become seriously embarrassed, and so, in the hope of mending his fortune, he determined to emigrate to North Carolina, where many other families from Skye had already settled. Accordingly, in 1774, with his wife and their nine children, he sailed for Wilmington, and, after receiving various attentions there, whither the fame of his wife had preceded them, they went up the Cape Fear River to Cross Creek, now called Fayetteville, and after some months in Cumberland county, where they were regular worshippers in the Presbyterian Church, purchased a place on the borders of Richmond and Montgomery counties, which they named Killiegray.

Misfortunes in the New World.

Their life in America was a sad one. Two of their children died, a bereavement made the more trying to the mother because of the absence of her husband, whose duties as a military officer required his presence elsewhere. The Revolutionary War was on the point of breaking out, and Governor Martin, seeing the honor paid to Allan Macdonald by the Highlanders, made him brigadier-general of a command of his countrymen, which became a part of the ill-fated army that was defeated by the American patriots at the battle of Moore's Creek. He was captured and committed to Halifax jail, Virginia, as a prisoner of war. With misfortunes thickening around her, her husband in prison, her five sons away from home in the service of the King, her youngest daughter enfeebled by a dangerous attack of typhus fever, and her adopted country in the throes of war, Flora Macdonald resolved, on the recommendation of her imprisoned husband, to return to Scotland, and, having obtained a passport through the kind offices of Captain Ingram, of the American army, she went to Wilmington, and later to Charleston, whence she sailed in 1779.

Her Return to Scotland and her Last Days.

During this voyage she had the last of her notable adventures, in a sharp action between the vessel on which she sailed and a French privateer. She characteristically refused to take shelter below during the engagement, but appeared on deck, and encouraged the sailors, assuring them of success. She had an arm broken in this battle, and was accustomed to say afterwards that she had fought both for the house of Stuart and the house of Hanover, but had been worsted in the service of both.

When peace was restored between Britain and America, her husband was released from his long imprisonment, and returned as speedily as possible to Skye, where they continued to live comfortably and happily for eight or nine years. She died on the 5th of March, 1790, and was buried in the churchyard of Kilmuir, in the north end of Skye, her funeral being more numerously attended than any other that has ever taken place in the Western Isles.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Three or four months after our visit to Inverness, I had the pleasure of meeting the sculptor of this striking statue, Mr. Alexander Davidson, of Rome, and of talking with him at large about the heroine of the Highlands.