George Brough and his family lived in the Parish of Evie
& Rendall on the north coast of the largest of the Orkney Islands of
Scotland called The Mainland. The Orkney
Islands lie in the region of the globe where the North Sea meets the Atlantic
Ocean and is a wet, cold place, where the summer high temperatures rarely
exceed the mid-fifties.
Agricultural Orkney consisted of small tenant farms until
the mid-1700’s when the landed gentry elected to raise rents on the farmers as
they consolidated their holdings in favor of larger commercial farms and larger
grazing ranges for sheep herds. Unable
to pay the increased rents, many tenant farms were left with little options but
to migrate elsewhere. This is the
situation George Brough found himself in 1774.
At the age of thirty-five, George Brough and his wife
Barbara (Leask) Brough, along with their four children, Thomas, Christain,
James and Helen travelled to Kirkwall for passage to America and a new life. Unable to pay his family’s passage, he signed
a contract of indentured servitude for the cost of passage to a Thomas Brown,
who was gathering Scotsmen to immigrate to America. George gave his reason for emigration as
“sustained loss by his cattle dying and cannot support his family.”
In September, 1774 the Broughs boarded the ship Marlborough along with approximately 50 other
Scotsmen in Kirkwall, joining others contracted to Thomas Brown from Whitby,
England, for the voyage to Savannah, Georgia.
That November the Marlborough
docked in Savannah and soon thereafter the indentured servants began their
eight-day trek from the port city of Savannah up a road that paralleled the Savannah
River to the plot of land just north of Augusta and south of the Little River
in St. John’s Parish which would become their new home.
Twenty-five year old English aristocrat Thomas Brown had
been granted 5,600-acres around the Little River near Augusta, Georgia where he
intended to establish the settlement of Brownsborough. He envisioned recreating a typical English
manor with a fine manor house, stables, etc.
Upon arriving, the indentured servants began clearing the
land and erecting a house for Brown, along with cottages for the indentured
servants, a barn and kitchen.
Being loyal to the crown, Brown was in conflict with the
local Sons of Liberty which resulted in a life altering event. Here is how Brown described it, “I was ordered to appear before a committee then sitting
in Augusta, and on my refusal to attend, a party consisting of 130 armed men
headed by the committee surrounded my house in South Carolina and ordered me to
surrender myself a prisoner and subscribe a traitorous association. I
told them my determination to defend myself if any person presumed to molest
me. On their attempting to disarm me, I shot one of the ringleaders (a
Captain Borstwicke). Being o’erpowered, stabbed in many places, my skull
fractured by a blow from a rifle, I was dragged in a state of insensibility to
Augusta. My hair was then chiefly torn up by the roots; what remained,
stripped off by knives; my head scalped in 3 or 4 different places; my legs
tarred and burnt by lighted torches, from which I lost the use of two of my
toes and rendered incapable of setting my feet to the ground for 6
months. In this condition, after their laying waste a very considerable
property, I was relieved by my friends and conveyed to the interior parts of South
Carolina.”
Brown lost a portion of his scalp and two toes in the fiery
confrontation, and gained the nickname “Burnt-foot Brown”.
Eventually escaping the Ninety-six region of
South Carolina. Captured in Charles
Town. Brown then sailed for Savannah
where the Marlborough was landing with his last shipment of
colonists. Just about the time his latest settlers were off the ship,
Brown found it necessary to turn and sail for St. Augustine in East Florida
where he raised a regiment called the Florida Rangers (later the King’s
Rangers) and led raids on the southern frontier for the next 4 years
With Brown gone, the indentured servants were
left to their own devices.
(Note: I am not sure what transpired at
Brownsborough after Thomas Brown fled to Florida but we do know that William
Manson, an indentured servant of Brown’s who arrived aboard the Marlborough in the second group in 1775, enlisted with the patriots in
July 1776 under Capt. John Bowie of the South Carolina State Troops at Ft.
Charlotte, SC on the Savannah River.
Also Magnus Tullock a 13-yr old passenger on the Marlborough’s second voyage to Savannah enlisted as a fifer under Capt.
John Bowie.
A statement in The Kings Ranger, by Edwar
Cashin, reads, "The events of July 1776 (Thomas Brown’s escape) quickly forced
established residents and the newly arrived “to choose between independence and
the king.””)
Unfortunately, the trail of George Brough
ends and there is no further record of him that I have been able to
locate. But the first US census in 1790
does list his eldest son Thomas Brough as a resident of Abbeville, South Carolina
(approx. 60-miles north of Brownsborough in the Old 96 region) with wife Nancy
(Calhoun) and daughter Margaret.
Whatever happened to George and his wife Barbara (Leask) along
with their other children Christain, James and Helen remains a mystery
▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
George Brough was born about 1739 in Orkney, he married
Barbara Leask on 24 December 1759 in Evie, The Mainland, Orkney Islands,
Scotland
There
children were:
Thomas
Brough born 18 December 1760 Evie, Orkney married Nancy Calhoun (1766-1834)
Abbeville, SC
Christain
Brough born 19 November 1762 Evie, Orkney
James
Brough christened 4 July 1765 Evie, Orkney
Helen
Brough born 28 December 1767 Evie, Orkney
▲▲▲▲▲▲▲
Some information on Thomas Brown was taken
from the following:
Making of a Loyalist by Wayne Lynch, Journal
of the American Revolution, Jan 1, 2014.
Edward Cashin, The King’s Ranger, (New
York, Fordham University Press, 1999
Brown to Cornwallis, Volume I, 16 July 1780,
reprinted in Ian Saberton, The Cornwallis Papers (East Sussex, Naval
& Military Press, 2010)
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