It was in 1960 that Duncan A. Bruce, author of The Mark of the Scots and The Scottish 100, first came to Scotland. An American, he is also undeniably a Scot. His paternal grandparents, Archibald Bruce and Mary MacTavish Bruce, were Gaelic-speaking Highlanders who were attracted to Pennsylvania in 1890 by the offer to Archibald of a good job as supervisor of the carpentry department of the Johnstown Pennsylvania Streetcar Company. Duncan Bruce's maternal grandfather, James Grant Colley, was also Scottish-born and Mr Bruce was acutely aware of his "Scottishness" from his earliest days - even though his father never even set foot in Scotland before he died in 1967.

"I know it's hard for people in Scotland to understand," says Duncan Bruce, "but there are many people in the United States who consider themselves unambiguously to be Scots. I consider myself a Scot although also an American. I was brought up to be Scottish and was baptised and raised a Presbyterian. My family was very religious. In fact my grandfather Archibald founded a Presbyterian church which still stands to this day.

"My parents moved to Pittsburgh when they got married and that is where I was born. I can remember other Scottish expatriates coming to our house for dinner from time to time - and they would talk about Scotland. My grandmother, Mary, would show me pictures of Princess Elizabeth - now the Queen - in the Illustrated London News; she was as proud of being British as she was of being Scottish. That said, during the Second World War, she would always highlight the achievements of such men as Field Marshal Montgomery or General Douglas MacArthur - both of Scottish descent. She never mentioned any English victors.

"One of my earliest childhood memories is of a race that I ran at the Scottish highland games in Pittsburgh when I was about four years old. The Scottish Picnic, as this annual event was called, was the largest nationality outing in the USA - 75,000 people took part every year. I also remember, as a little boy, marching behind the pipers. We were all filled with enthusiasm at being Scottish."

James Grant Colley, Duncan Bruce's maternal grandfather, was born in Cambuslang, to the south of Glasgow, where his father, Frederick Colley, was an expert roll-turner for the Lanarkshire Steel Company. According to family legend, Frederick Colley rolled the rails for the Forth Bridge. James Colley left Scotland for America in 1889, the year before the famous bridge opened, and he also made for Johnstown which was an important steelmaking centre - as it still is today. But 1889 went down in family history as a year of mixed memories. It was the year of the catastrophic Johnstown floods - the worst disaster in the history of the United States until September 2001. A total of 2,200 people were killed. Fortunately none of Mr Bruce's ancestors was among the victims even though some were there at the time.

"When I first came to Scotland," recalls Duncan Bruce, "I made for Cambuslang which is not far from Glasgow's Prestwick Airport where I had landed, and I found the street where my grandfather was born. I had no idea what I was looking for as I had never seen a photo - I simply had an address: 6 Colebrooke Street. I still remember it. I located my grandfather's old tenement home only to discover that it was in the process of being demolished. Workmen had been stripping the tiles off the roof.

"As it was a Saturday and work had stopped for the weekend, I was able to go onto the site and I wandered around, finding some old keys and other bits and pieces, tiles from the fireplace etc., which I took as souvenirs. I also took a photo of what remained of the building, which I have kept to this day. It's sad that all the tenements in Cambuslang have now been torn down. I believe only one row remains."

While from early childhood Duncan Bruce had heard stories of the War of Independence and the exploits of Robert Bruce, he only really became deeply interested in Scottish history in the late 1960s. "I've been reading avidly ever since," he says. "I had been brought up with a number of preconceived ideas of Scotland - if you have ever been to Pittsburgh, you would understand why. In my neighbourhood there were older generations from virtually every country in Europe. While we all got on quite well, there was considerable rivalry. My grandparents and parents were convinced that the Scots were special and that they were destined to achieve and prosper through sheer hard work. We were somehow different and advantaged - simply because we came from Scotland. There was a strong recognition that the Scots had achieved an extraordinary amount for such a small and relatively poor nation.

"To me, the most fascinating period of Scottish history is that of the latter half of the eighteenth century. With the possible exception of the Athenian state, I don't believe there has ever been such a period of creativity concentrated in one small place. The late eighteenth century in Scotland saw the emergence of so many great men. There was the architect Robert Adam, the painters Ramsay and Raeburn, and, of course, James Watt, inventor of the steam engine which was so critical to the industrial revolution. The same period saw world famous expeditions by the explorers Captain Cook, whose father was born in Scotland, and Alexander MacKenzie, while the world of literature embraced Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and also James Macpherson who is famous for his translation of third-century Gaelic poems (although some say he wrote these himself).

"There were the great figures of science and medicine such as the Hunter brothers and Joseph Black, and James Hutton, the Scottish founder of modern geology, who was the first to posit a theory of evolution. Then there were the philosophers David Hume, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson...the list goes on and on...

"It's incredible that all of this happened in such a small country over a relatively short time span. The Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707 must have been a catalyst for this extraordinary flowering of creativity. Prior to union, of course, Scotland didn't have a stage to play on. England, meanwhile, had the stage but needed more talented players. With the signing of the Act they got the Scots!"

"It was this realisation of the quite extraordinary contribution of the Scots to history that made me determined to write my first book, The Mark of the Scots. I realised that no one had ever told the story in one book of what the Scots had done around the world. I felt I owed it to my parents and grandparents who believed so strongly in the power of the Scots.

"I researched and wrote my first book part-time, turning every page of Encyclopaedia Britannica, browsing every obituary in the New York Times, perusing every entry in the Dictionary of National Biography and The American National Biography... searching for names and events relating to Scotland. Some twenty-five or thirty years went by before the book was finally published because, of course, I was not an established author. I remember receiving some fifty or so rejections. You have to get on the first rung of the ladder - that's how it works. But this extended period worked to my advantage because many more fascinating facts emerged. Obituaries were a rich source. The obituary of Ethel Merman, for example, revealed that her real name was Zimmermann - a name I would never have thought to check for Scottish connections - but her mother was a Scot...

"Ironically, to get my second book, The Scottish 100, published took a single phone call. The research for this took a year, one of the most difficult aspects being to make my final selection from a short list of 287 individuals.

"My other interests include music; I still play the piano and used to play the tuba when I was at school. Interestingly, there is not a single member of my family who is not musical, and my paternal grandfather was a piper. I mirrored this family talent in my heraldic arms, requesting the Lord Lyon* to include a Celtic harp on my crest.

"I received my personal arms from the Lyon Court in Edinburgh in 1983 and subsequently discovered that few Americans had done so. This intrigues me and I wonder if many Scottish Americans are unaware that they may be able to apply for arms by dint of having Scots ancestors. In my case, as a Bruce and a member of a famous Scottish family headed by Lord Elgin, my arms, like those of all the Bruces, are based on a red saltire on a gold background; it is then personalised or 'differenced' as it is called - in my case with the harp, a MacTavish lion (which is half gold and half silver), a blue lion associated with the Bruces and three intertwined fish to represent the occupation of my early ancestors. When I approached the Lyon Court, I made my application in the name of my grandfather as he was born a Scot. I was then able to inherit his right to arms through my father."

Duncan Bruce is rightly proud of his Scottish descent and right to arms. America has also recognised his contribution to the Scottish American community with the award to him of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, 1998. Apart from his books, and their value and interest to his community, the award reflects his long service on the board of several Scottish American organisations including the St. Andrew's Society of the State of New York, the American-Scottish Foundation, and Scottish Heritage USA.

"The St. Andrew's Society of the State of New York, like other St. Andrew's societies around the world," explains Mr Bruce, "combines a charitable and a social function. Such societies were formed from 1600 onwards when Scots who had moved to London formed a 'Scotsbox' as it was called to channel the support of wealthier people towards those less fortunate. Our own society also funds four annual scholarships - two for Scottish Americans studying at graduate level in Scotland and two for Scots students wishing to study at graduate level here in America. Competition for these awards, as you can imagine, is stiff.

"Members of the New York St. Andrew's Society must be either born in Scotland or descended from a Scot. They pay a modest annual levy to the society for membership and society members raise funds for our various charitable causes. Here in New York the society has been doing that for 245 years; it is the city's oldest charitable organisation. We are fortunate to have considerable funds at our disposal. Andrew Carnegie was a past president and he personally donated $200,000 dollars to the society in 1900 - an extremely generous amount which has grown enormously since then.

"The American-Scottish Foundation, meanwhile, was established as an umbrella body for all Scottish organisations in the USA, of which there are more than 200. The foundation sponsors the Wallace Award which is presented annually in New York or Washington to distinguished Americans of Scottish descent.

"Scottish Heritage USA is a similar body to the American-Scottish Foundation. It supports the National Trust for Scotland and has an interesting project targeting young Scottish and American gardening students which involves a mutual exchange between Threave in Scotland and Longwood Gardens near Wilmington, Delaware."

Since his first visit to Scotland in 1960 Mr Bruce has made numerous trips, visiting Edinburgh, some of the islands, and much of the country between. But by far his favourite destination is Argyll and the towns of Ardrishaig and Lochgilphead which were home to his grandparents and, as he says, "very much home to me. Argyll is a very beautiful area - in my eyes the most attractive in Scotland.

"It also has a wider historic significance in that the towns of Ardrishaig and Lochgilphead lie only a few miles away from Dunadd, an ancient fortified site close to the sea which marks the first settlement of the Scots who arrived from Scotia, the north-eastern part of Ireland. Some of them would have been my early ancestors."

From the extensive research he had devoted to the role of later Scots around the world, and the many celebrated people he has described in The Scottish 100, Duncan Bruce has some firm favourites: "These include King Robert I, without whom there would probably be no Scotland. It seems that all Scottish Bruces are descended from King Robert's brother Sir Edward Bruce who became King of Ireland. Then there is John Napier, the inventor of the logarithms and decimal fractions that formed the foundation of scientific calculation, and Prince Henry Sinclair, who appears to have discovered America in 1398, almost a century before Columbus. But possibly the one I prefer above all others is Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald. Born in 1775, Cochrane was one of the greatest sailors in history. He led an exceptionally colourful life, being the only person to have been an admiral in the navies of five different countries, commanding four of these and helping all four - Chile, Peru, Brazil and Greece - to gain their independence.

"Cochrane's naval career was marked by many adventures and some spectacular successes - but his outspokenness gained him enemies at the Admiralty. He was eventually elected to the British parliament but was accused - possibly unjustly - and jailed for a securities fraud. However, his constituents believed him innocent, re-elected him and paid a fine to free him... Today, in his own country he is all but forgotten - but in South America he remains a hero. Truly an extraordinary man!" ... and surely one who, while certainly far "larger than life", perhaps more than most illustrates some of that characteristic "Scottishness" which has led to the wholly disproportionate influence of the Scots around the world.

The Mark of the Scots: Their Astonishing Contributions to History, Science, Democracy, Literature and the Arts
Birch Lane Press, New York 1996, Second edition 1997, Third edition 1998, Fourth edition, Kensington Publishing Corp. New York, 2000.
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The Scottish 100, Portraits of History's Most Influential Scots
Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., New York 2000, Second edition 2002.
Buy this book at Amazon.com

*The Lord Lyon King of Arms, explains the role of the Lord Lyon and Lyon Court and outlines who can use arms and how the designs are determined.