About the Scottish Jerk

Scottish Jerk dot com was established to help bring together the 5 million Scots living in Scotland and the estimated 25 million people of Scots descent spread throughout the world.

We know the strength of the connection people of Scottish decent feel for their “homeland” and the way they still describe themselves as Scots-American or Scots-Canadians or even simply as Scots even if the family history shows they have lived in their new country for two or three generations.

Scotland and its people however has also earned itself a place in the history of several other countries and we will be looking to add more pages to reflect these facts over the next few months.

In the mean time here are some little known facts about the role of Scots in establishing other countries.

In America, there are eight towns named Aberdeen, eight named Edinburgh, seven named Glasgow - and eight towns called Scotland.
Canada’s first Prime Minister, John MacDonald, was from Scotland.
The Canadian Pacific Railway was built by Alexander Smith, who hailed from Scotland.
Singapore was co-founded by a Scot - William Farquhar.
Nine of the first 13 Governors of the new American States were either Scots or of Scottish descent.
At least 23 of the US Presidents have had a Scottish connection in their family history.
Nearly half of the Secretaries of the US Treasury and one third of the Secretaries of State have been of Scots origin.
One of Canada’s most famous regiments “The Kings First American Regiment” founded 1776 fought in their traditional kilts to the sound of bagpipes.
The MacGill University — one of Canada’s largest — was founded with money from hte estate of James McGill and merchant who had emigrated from Glasgow.
Queens, the Presbyterian University of Canada in Kingston was founded largely through the dreams and work of Scot’s scholar George Munroe Grant.

Note we currently looking for guest bloggers able to write on Scotland its culture and/or history or about Scottish people throughout the world.

If you are willing and able to help us grow this site by contributing either one off articles or regular contributions on a particular theme please contact me on TheLaird at ScottishJerk.com and let me know. Obviously you will replace the word at with @ and remove the spaces.