Details

Item details

Date

October 4, 2019

Name

The Involuntary American: A Scottish Prisoner's Journey to the New World

Description

The Involuntary American: A Scottish Prisoner’s Journey to the New World
A Massachusetts Archaeology Month Event
Friday, October 4 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Presented by Dr. Carol Gardner
American Ancestors Research Center, 99-101 Newbury Street, Boston, MA
Cost: FREE

Tens of thousands of immigrants came to New England during the 1600s: some voluntarily, some not. Carol Gardner will discuss the fates of 420 Scottish prisoners of war shipped to New England and sold as forced laborers in 1650 and 1651. Their experiences—as soldiers, captives, involuntary immigrants, servants and later free men—offer a unique perspective on life in New England during the 1600s.

Dr. Gardner is the author of a recently published book, The Involuntary American: A Scottish Prisoner’s Journey to the New World. The book chronicles the life and times of Thomas Doughty, an illiterate Scottish foot soldier captured at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, transported to Massachusetts, and sold for £20-30 to a Puritan industrialist. Recent discoveries by a team of archeologists from Durham University in England played a key role in her research. Before being shipped to New England, Thomas Doughty and other Scottish prisoners were held in Durham Cathedral. Excavations at that site provided new information on the Scottish prisoners’ early lives and their ordeals as prisoners of war. Those findings are featured in an exhibit at Saugus Ironworks National Historic Site, “Unwilling Immigrants: From the Scottish Battlefield to the New World 1650,” through October 2019.

About the Speaker:

Carol Gardner earned a Ph.D. in English from Johns Hopkins University and taught at Johns Hopkins, Wake Forest, and Florida State Universities. She has published fiction and nonfiction in a wide variety of books and periodicals, including The World of Baseball series, BluePlanet Quarterly, Baltimore Review, Portland Press Herald, and The Washington Post. She lives in Alna, Maine.

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