A Scottish Migration

Film coming soon!

I began this film project sometime around 2015, when I found this story is unknown to most people. I spent years writing and filming interviews and doing fund-raisers. I did illustrations, animations, found images and laid out the movie. But there was still so much to do and I felt overwhelmed. I decided instead to write the book that I had planned. During Covid I finished the book, and published it myself under Yellow Dot Publishing. The book sold out, and I published a second edition.

In late 2024, I rewatched the rough version of this movie, and realized that it is almost finished. I decided to finish it. The plan is to have it done by this Summer of 2025. I will have it on Patreon for viewing. You can sign up free on my Patreon page, which gets you an email alert once the film is up and ready for viewing.

The book, "A Scottish Migration to Alexandria" can be ordered at YellowDotShop.com.

 

Description:

The United States of America began as a colony of the Kingdom of Britain. The first immigrants to this "New World" were Britons. One of the largest groups to arrive came from Scotland. "A Scottish Migration to Alexandria" is the history of how so many Scots left Britain, told through the experience of William Gregory, and the two places at each end of his journey; the city of Kilmarnock in the Lowlands of Scotland, and Alexandria, Virginia in the newly formed United States of America.

 

 

Most people think of the romantic Highlands as the place our ancestors came from. And many did. But the purpose of this documentary is to explore where the majority of Scots migrated from - the Lowlands of Scotland. Most Americans of Scottish descent don't know where their ancestors came from, why they left, and on what ship and where they arrived. These details have been lost to the generations. This film tells why the Scottish Lowlands became so crowded, and what life was like there. The reasons that caused people to leave everything they knew, climb aboard a crowded ship, and sail in unspeakable squalor for many weeks to start a new life, penniless, in an unforgiving land.

 

One man, William Gregory, left his family's carpet factory in Kilmarnock in 1807. He boarded a wooden sailing ship and sailed to America. William found work and a home in Alexandria, Virginia. Letters written home to his family in Kilmarnock and letters to America tell the story of this migration.

 

Ellen Hamilton shows us the cities of Kilmarnock in Ayrshire and Greenock at the mouth of the River Clyde where so many people left from, never to return.

 

Hamilton interviews the Scottish author Derek Alexander in the 600 year old, beautifully preserved Newark Castle, by the River Clyde, to learn about how that area became a major seaport for Glasgow.

 

Lance Malamo, former head of the Office of Historic Alexandria talks about how William Gregory began his life in Alexandria. Author Michael Lee Pope talks about what life was like in early Alexandria. Americans of Scottish descent are interviewed, to find out how much they know of their family's past.