As we approach the fourth of July and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – when Americans proclaimed their right to be treated as an independent nation free from British colonial rule – Scots everywhere have cause to celebrate with them the huge (but largely unrecognised) contribution Scotland and the Scottish people have made to the founding and subsequent growth and development of the United States. In particular, we neglect the important role played by three Scots – two in the approval and signing of the final Declaration, and the third in its subsequent publication and dissemination.

As a native of Paisley – and as a modern historian with a special interest in eighteenth-century Scotland and America – I still find it remarkable that, of this trio, two of them (though knowing each other were not native to the town) spent their formative years in Paisley before emigrating to colonial America.

America is in fact all over Paisley – if, that is, you know where to look. Most obviously, just outside the main entrance to Paisley Abbey there are two life-size statues of two poets – Robert Tannahill and Alexander Wilson. One of them (Tannahill) was literally and metaphorically in the shadow of the other (Wilson) whose fame rests not so much on his verse but as the justly celebrated father of American ornithology and precursor of John James Audubon. Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) did not emigrate to America: he “fugitated” there to escape imprisonment for sedition. But that was in 1794, almost two decades after the Declaration of Independence.

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