One cannot, in any true sense, write a sketch of the Scottish born citizens who live, or have lived, in this county without a fairly clear understanding of some of the conditions which in a measure made the Scotchman what he is.

We must bear in mind that Scotland is a small country, in all, less than two-thirds the size of Illinois. A large portion is comparatively barren moorland. Farming, however, has always been fairly prosperous, and it is probably true that in no equal area of equally good soil is so much political and consequently in no similar area is so much taken out.

It is perhaps needless to say that nearly all the farmers were merely tenants, but to an Illinois tenant the statement is someone misleading because many farmers not only spend a lifetime on the same place, but there are families who have occupied the same farm for several generations with a reasonable prospect of continuing to do so.

But while farmers increased, farms did not; and though other industries gave remunerative employment to increase the numbers, yet there remained an unwanted fraction of the people for whom an outlet was needed, and found. Large numbers migrated to the southern end of their own island, while even greater numbers scattered themselves throughout the length and breadth of the British Empire, and in business, in science, in literature and even in halls of legislation in England, in India, in Canada; in short, in every British colony, they seem to wield an influence out of all proportion to their numerical strength.

In America, the " melting pot " of the nations, where the Scottish people come into keen competition with the skilled and unskilled labor of two continents, they seem to more than hold their own, and are not often engaged in the most menial task which the though honorable, are not alluring.

The following is a list of people of Scottish birth who are, or have been, residents of Knox County, and while not strictly accurate in names or dates, is approximately so:

FROM COUNTY OF AYR AND DATE OF ARRIVAL IN AMERICA