As I've blogged before, I've been exploring the family tree for a
year or so now and there's been some eerie coincidences between
my presnt interests and my family's history. I found another a night
or two back.
I needed something to read at work one day and picked up a
magazine called "Scotland" that deals with Scottish history and there
was an article in it about "Scottish Slaves in New England". Seems that
after Cromwell defeated a Scottish army in support of the Stuart kings
there were a lot of Scottish prisoners to be taken care of. So many of
them were sent over to the Massachusetts Colony as indentured servants
to help with much of the heavy labor. Many of them helped to build and
run the Saugus Iron Mills, the first foundry in America. This was a chapter
of American history I hadn't known about before so I found the article
fascinating.
A few weeks passed and then the other night I was digging around in my
Dad's maternal Barker ancestors among whom are members of the Upton
family, in particular one John Upton. Who, I then discovered, worked at the
Saugus Iron Works and who some other genealogy researchers say was one
or may have been one of the Scottish prisoners.
Spooky, eh?
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