Forgotten fragments (#11): A parable of the blindness of conviction
Tweed Roosevelt describes two failed attempts by Scottish settlers to establish a colony on the isthmus of Panama. Roosevelt examines the conditions in seventeenth-century Scotland, notably a prolonged drop in temperatures or “the Little Ice Age,” that prompted the exodus, and he highlights how the lack of proper planning, poor leadership, and the harsh conditions doomed both expeditions. Roosevelt highlights one of the survivors of the second attempt, Archibald Stobo, who settled in Charleston, South Carolina, rather than return to Scotland. Stobo’s daughter would marry into the Bulloch family and her lineage can be traced to Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s mother.
Two photographs and two illustrations appear in the article.
