There is more than a hint of magic in Scotland's land and seascape, its swirling mists and brooding mountains. A similar magic derives from its turbulent history, the compelling nationalism of many of its songs and much of its literature, which vividly portray the redoubtable character and aspirations of its people. Over the centuries, this Scottish alchemy has spread far beyond its borders... merchants, colonial administrators, refugees, exiles and other emigrants including, of course, many fortune-seeking younger sons of the Scottish gentry, exported to distant lands around the world a potent "Scottishness" – a singular pride, community spirit, self-reliance and ability to "make good". This defining Scottish approach to life, disseminated widely through literature, politics, philosophy, religion, education and legend, has influenced the ideas and evolution of both Old World and New.

In search of fortune, opportunity or simply a new life, by the end of the eighteenth century, tens of thousands of Scots had travelled three thousand and more miles across the ocean to settle in America. Estimates at the time of the American War of Independence showed that almost one-sixth of the population was Scottish or of Scottish descent. By the 1820s entire communities, victims of the notorious Highland clearances, had crossed the Atlantic. The California Gold Rush of 1849 lured others and, in 1860, following the potato famines which saw further mass emigration, a census of the US population showed 108,518 "foreign-born Scots" (a figure which ignores those born in the USA of Scottish descent), making them the sixth largest national grouping. In 1900 the foreign-born Scots figure was 233,524. Over the century prior to the First World War, a total of at least 836,000 Scots left for the USA, replenishing early settlements and spreading their influence throughout the country from Vermont in the north down through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia to the Carolinas and Florida in the south and California in the west...

Many of Scots blood were to rise to prominent positions – while others lived in relative obscurity. But together, through their singular characteristics of determination, kinship, inventiveness and courage, they helped fundamentally to define and shape America's values and history, leaving a permanent mark on the American way of life. America promised free rein to the Scots thirst for self-determination and land-ownership. Its vast territory and undreamed of potential offered them a tantalising freedom long denied them in their relatively small, oppressed and impoverished homeland. America was everything that Scotland, for a large number of its population, was not – truly a land of opportunity. And the history, skills and experience of the immigrant Scots equipped them ideally for this pioneering challenge.

"Thank God I – I also – am an American!" declared Daniel Webster, in a speech on the Completion of Bunker Hill Monument on 17th June, 1843... Webster, of course, was of Scottish extraction – as were, and are, many famous men and women in the USA, from presidents, philosophers, scientists, philanthropists and explorers, to writers, soldiers, artists, industrialists, physicians, inventors, and others.

Contemporary cartography speaks volumes, with hundreds of towns and cities of varying size and importance bearing Scottish names in memory of the Scots contribution to American history and early civic development. The legacy of Scotland lives on in the multiple Scotlands, Aberdeens, Berwicks, Glasgows, Sterlings, Stuarts and other distinctly Scottish place names that vividly recall early settlements of Americans of Scottish birth or descent.

It has been estimated that today up to fifteen million Americans can claim Scottish ancestry, i.e. as many as one in eighteen US citizens. Their Scots/American heritage is reflected everywhere: in Tartan Day, St. Andrew's and Burns' societies and Highland games, American Presbyterianism and Common Sense... In addition it stands out in renowned achievements in engineering, science, industry and the arts, while it is integral to such fundamental American "institutions" as Uncle Sam, the dollar sign, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Numerous writers and historians have drawn attention to the influence of the Scots in books ranging from Scotland and America: a study of cultural relations 1750-1835* to the more recent, absorbing The Mark of the Scots* which discusses the extent to which they have contributed to the very shaping of contemporary America. Burke's Peerage and Landed Gentry for its part traces a number of Scottish/American adventures, exploits and achievements through the entries of some of the many prominent families included. One such family is Carrick-Buchanan of Drumpellier & Corsewall, whose ancestors traded in Virginian tobacco from the seventeenth century, later also investing in American sugar and cotton plantations. Another branch of the family produced the fifteenth president of the United States, President James Buchanan.

The Findlays of Boturich, too, had ancestors who made their names as Virginia merchants; a town house in Glasgow owned by Robert Findlay in the late eighteenth century was recently restored to its original state as a typical tobacco merchant's house of the time. Meanwhile numerous members of the Scottish Urquhart of Urquhart family emigrated to make their fortune, including George Urquhart who set sail in the eighteenth century for what was then British West Florida. He made his name variously as a member of the Assembly of West Florida, a Justice of the Peace, Deputy Collector of Customs, a Magistrate and a successful indigo planter, merchant and businessman. At his death his family moved to New Orleans where his descendants live to this day.

Moving forward into the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, another Scottish participant in American history was William Moncreiffe of the Moncreiffe of that Ilk family, who was a rancher in Wyoming from 1888 to 1923. A friend of Col. "Buffalo Bill" Cody and President "Teddy" Roosevelt, he served in Roosevelt's Rough-Riders in the Spanish-American War. His Little Goose Creek ranch eventually became the Brinton Memorial Ranch museum.

"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, the renowned US Supreme Court Justice...

Wendell Holmes was also of Scottish descent and his words capture the essence of the way in which Scottish ideas, values and initiative and a historic yearning for independence have been able to take root so extraordinarily fruitfully in a fertile American soil. Scotland may be comparatively small in both size and population but the strength of Scottish influence on America, and indeed the world, has been astonishing.

* Andrew Hook, Scotland and America: a study of cultural relations, 1750-1835, Blackie, 1975, ISBN 0216900417 * Duncan A Bruce, The Mark of the Scots, Citadel Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8065-2060-4

Read chapter 2 - Striving for independence.