The Scottish Covenanter Genealogical Index 1630 1712

This work evolved out of a love for my ancestors, one being John Whitelaw, the Covenanter Monkland Martyr, who was executed for his religious beliefs in Edinburgh, 1683. While searching for his records I came across reference to thousands of other Scottish Covenanters. This Index lists those Covenanters found in some books written about the period between 1630 and 1712.There are many, many more Covenanters, whose names need to be added to this work, and, God willing, I will do it. The Covenanters were steadfast in their Presbyterian beliefs and refused to take an oath unto the King stating that he was the head of the church. They believed that Christ was the Head of the Church and their loyalty to this belief allowed them to lay their lives down for it. The Royalists and Dragoons, who were seeking to bring them into obedience to the King, relentlessly chased the Covenanters from glen to glen. This disregard for their civil rights was brutally carried out basically in the Lowlands of Scotland. Many of their records were destroyed along with their lives and their stories only live in family lore and books that were written about them. I have extracted some of their names and created The Scottish Covenanter Genealogical Index, which is by no means complete, but is a work in progress.

White Cargo is the forgotten story of the thousands of Britons who lived and died in bondage in Britain's American colonies. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London's streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide "breeders" for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock. Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history. This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.

Urie is in Fetteresso Parish.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.