SETTLERS IN THE NEW WORLD

Since the very first days of the colonists, Scots have been arriving in the New World. Of the one and a half million who have immigrated to America and Canada, surely it is not too much to suppose that many were members of the Porteous family?

And indeed, there are records of many Porteous and Porteus in the records of births, marriages and deaths in Ontario, Canada and New York State, US. When they began arriving is uncertain, but we do know of one Robert Porteous, a Scottish tobacconist, who was married in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1659. The earliest immigrant to settle in what is now Canada, for whom we have firm information, is Andrew Porteous from Lanarkshire who settled in Montréal, Québec around 1762.

A number of the Scots who arrived in America in the 1600s did not settle there by choice – some having been transported as criminals, or exiled as the result of the displeasure of Oliver Cromwell or Charles II. Many Scots were exiled to the new American colonies of Virginia, the Carolinas and the West Indies to serve as indentured labour.

Of the early colonists many were from Scotland, coming as religious refugees – several Scottish colonies were established in New England and along the Atlantic coast as far south as South Carolina (1684). These included Nova Scotia (1629) and East Jersey (1683) although not many of these colonies lasted more than a few years.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many Scots settled in the Southern states along the Atlantic seaboard. Some were deported as criminals from their homeland to the new states of Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas.

Emigration to the US peaked in the latter part of the eighteenth century, over 25,000 highlanders arriving between 1763 and 1775, as a result of the raising of rents and forcible eviction at home. The majority of these settled in New England, some also founding settlements in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, as well as along the Gulf of St Lawrence.

James Portues (1665–1737) of Pennsylvania was a prominent and wealthy carpenter and one of the founder members of the Carpenters' Company of Philadelphia. From the lowly rank of indentured servant who had arrived with William Penn in 1682, he went on to become one of the best known master carpenters of his time, and is known to have been a man of influence, believed to have been descended from the very early Porteus settlers from County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.

During the time of the American War of Independence (1775–83) Scottish immigrants headed for Canada rather than America, although after independence, a large number moved back from Canada to the northern states of the new Union, including New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, gradually spreading westwards to settle in Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky and Indiana.

Scots are often regarded as being the forerunners of the westward migration of the United States – by 1779 they had crossed the Ohio River. Scots from North Carolina were amongst those who established settlements in Tennessee and Missouri, some settling as far west as Texas in the 1820s. By 1849 they were amongst the first to arrive in California at the time of the first Gold Rush.

We have records of a John Porteous, partner in a trading company, who moved from Québec in 1868 to start up his own trading venture out of Boston, Massachusetts and later from Charleston, South Carolina and St Augustine, Florida.

Many Scots had stayed on in Canada, establishing colonies in Lower Canada (later to be known as Québec) and the townships of Upper Canada (later Ontario), eventually moving westwards to Rupert's Land in the areas which were later to become Manitoba and British Columbia. However, there are many records of Porteous families from Scotland in the census of 1871 in Ontario, and it seems that the majority had decided to settle in and around this area.