SCOTS AS COLONIAL AND PROVINCIAL GOVERNORS

Of the colonial Governors sent from Britain to the American Colonies before the Revolution and of Provincial Governors from that time to 1789, a large number were of Scottish birth or descent.  Among them may be mentioned the following: 

NEW YORK.  Robert Hunter, Governor (1710-19), previously Governor of Virginia, was a descendant of the Hunters of Hunterston, Ayrshire.  He died Governor of Jamaica (1734).  He was described as one of the ablest of the men sent over from Britain to fill public positions.  William Burnet (1688-1729), Governor in 1720, was also Governor of Massachusetts (1720-1729).  He was the eldest son of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Sarum.  Smith, the historian of New York, calls him “a man of sense and polite breeding, a well bred scholar.”  John Montgomerie, Governor of New York and New Jersey (1728-31), was born in Scotland.  John Hamilton, Governor (1736).  Cadwallader Golden (1688-1776), Lieutenant-Governor (1761-1776), born in Duns, Berwickshire, was distinguished as physician, botanist, mathematician, and did much to develop the resources of the state.  O’Callaghan in his “Documentary History of the State of New York,” says:  “Posterity will not fail to accord justice to the character and memory of a man to whom this country is most deeply indebted for much of its science and for many of its most important institutions, and of whom the State of New York may well be proud.”  John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore, Governor (1770-71), afterwards Governor of Virginia.  James Robertson (1710-1788), born in Fifeshire, was Governor in 1780.  Andrew Elliot, born in Scotland in 1728, was Lieutenant-Governor and administered the royalist government from 1781 to November, 1783.

NEW JERSEY.  Robert Barclay of the Quaker family of Barclay of Ury was appointed Governor of East New Jersey in 1682, but never visited his territory.  Lord Neil Campbell, son of the ninth Earl of Argyll, was appointed Governor in 1687, but meddled little in the affairs of the colony.  Andrew Hamilton (c. 1627-1703), his deputy, born in Edinburgh, on Lord Neil Campbell’s departure, became Acting Governor.  He was an active, energetic officer, who rendered good service to the state, and organized the first postal service in the colonies.  John Hamilton, son of Andrew, was Acting Governor for a time and died at Perth Amboy in 1746.  William Livingston (1723-90), the “Don Quixote of New Jersey,” grandson of Robert Livingston of Ancrum, Scotland, founder of the Livingston family in America, so famous in the history of New York State, was Governor from 1776 to 1790.  William Paterson (1745-1806), of Ulster Scot birth, studied at Princeton, admitted to the New Jersey bar in November, 1767, Attorney-General in 1776, first Senator from New Jersey to first Congress (1789), succeeded Livingston as Governor (1790-92), and in 1793 became Justice of the Supreme Court.  The city of Paterson is named after him.