One of the most impressive historical remembrance projects of recent years is the Scottish Soldiers Project initiated by the University of Durham’s Department of Archaeology after human remains were found in mass graves on the grounds of Durham Cathedral in 2013. After intensive archaeological and documentary analysis, it was confirmed that these were the remains of the prisoners of war transported from Scotland after one of the British Civil Wars’ bloodiest battles, the Battle of Dunbar, a hour-long rout which occurred on September 3, 1650. Following their defeat by Oliver Cromwell’s well-seasoned troops, thousands of Scottish prisoners of war embarked on a death march to Durham, where (if they survived) they would experience disease and deprivation, with as many as 1700 men dying over the next year. These are the bodies buried in unmarked graves uncovered five years ago, and re-interred in a much more respectful ceremony just last week. A smaller group of Dunbar survivors—about 150 men–escaped the exhaustive miseries of Durham through another kind of turmoil: transport across the Atlantic into indentured servitude in the New World. Following the English Revolution’s very last battle, the Battle of Worcester (exactly one year to the day later), more Scottish captives followed in their wake.
1661 Dutch prints of the Battles of Dunbar and Worcester a decade before, British Museum; the remains near Durham Cathedral, and the reburial ceremony on May 18, BBC News.
As you can read on the project blog, an initiative that began as scholarly, and even scientific, became and remains very personal, assimilating the contributions of thousands (?) of descendants of the Scottish prisoners in the United States, and most particularly here in New England, as a band of Dunbar survivors were transported to Massachusetts Bay where they began their North American lives as bond labor at the Saugus (then Hammersmith) Iron Works north of Boston or in sawmills in southern Maine. Another 272 men were transported to Massachusetts as “servants” in November of 1651, and dispensed to their “positions” by Charlestown merchant Thomas Kemble. After these Scottish prisoners of war served their terms of 6-8 years of forced labor, they were free to establish new lives elsewhere—and so they contributed to an evolving New British community and identity.
Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site.
At least four of the seventeenth-century Scottish prisoners of war found their way to Salem after their indentures were completed: Allester Mackmallen (Alester M’Milan) came to Salem in 1657 and never left, as did apparently his neighbor from back home, Allister Greimes (Grimes), George Darling operated a tavern in the vicinity of “Coy Pond” on the Salem-Marblehead line, and Philip McIntire settled ultimately in nearby Reading but was notably the great-great-grandfather of Salem’s iconic architect, Samuel McIntire. All of these men were imprisoned at Dunbar and marched to Durham–and beyond. My colleague Emerson Baker contributed to the Scottish Soldiers Project in a big way, and while he notes their original “alien” identity in Puritan Massachusetts, he also recognizes their ability to succeed and assimilate, particularly in the southern Maine region which would become known as “Berwick” after the town adjacent to Dunbar. It’s the same for the Scottish soldiers of Salem: though Greimes would be the beneficiary of public charity during the final years of his life, both Mackmallen and Darling left considerable property to their heirs. There’s a Darling Street in Marblehead and a whole historic district named after Samuel (and Philip) McIntire. These prisoners of war made their mark, in a world not of their choosing.
The Darling property in Sidney Perley’s Essex Antiquarian, Volume 13; Prints of Benjamin Blyth’s pastel portrait of Samuel McIntire, 1786, and McIntire’s rendering of the Ezekiel Hersey Derby House on Essex Street–originals in the Peabody Essex Museum, of course.
Appendix: The site manage of Historic New England’s Boardman House tells me that it was long identified as the “Scotch House” and the barracks for the Scottish prisoners of war working at the nearby Iron Works. It was actually built in 1692, on a site adjacent to where the real barracks was situated.
Boardman House and Mass. Tercentenary Commission marker, 1930s, Library of Congress.
