James Nutt Family Database

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Two Nutt Databases: Visitors to this Web site will notice there are two Nutt family databases – one for the James Nutt branch and one for the William Nutt branch. Don Nutt, webmaster for this Web site, very much suspects that James and William are related and that their families should be combined into one database. Both families emanate from County Argyll, Scotland, and James and William were born about the same time. However, until a direct relational link is found, these two branches of the Nutt family will be published in separate databases.

In June 1739 James Nutt and his family departed from the Isle of Islay, County of Argyll, Scotland, bound for New York harbor aboard the ship "Happy Return," to settle the Kings Lands at the Wood Creek. This was the second of three such journeys under Captain Lachlan Campbell. The first emigrants departed Islay in July 1738 and the third departed Islay in November 1740. At the time of James’ emigration, his family consisted of Rebecca Creighton, his wife, Robert, John, and Elizabeth, his three children.

This second group of Scottish emigrants, of which James Nutt and his family were a part, consisted of forty-two families and twenty-four single passengers, numbering 193 persons. They were members of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, and had been renters of land under the Scottish vassal system. They emigrated to be free of vassalage and with the hope of purchasing their own land at a reasonable price.

Once in New York, this body of immigrants discovered that there wasn’t any land waiting for them. The Provincial Government of New York denied Captain Campbell’s petition for a land grant because he intended to perpetuate the Scottish system of land tenancy, and because his passengers refused to settle with him saying they had been vassals in Scotland and would not become vassals of Campbell in the new country. After realizing their promised settlement would be delayed, the immigrants dispersed. Some remained in New York City, while others went to the New York counties of Orange and Ulster. Still others scattered over Long Island, some removed into the colonies of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and some departed to such distant places as South Carolina, Cuba, and Jamaica.

It is thought that James Nutt’s family stayed about New York City because at least two of his children, John and Elizabeth, married there. Son Robert settled in Greenwich, Fairfield county, Connecticut.

In 1764, after many years of petition requests and denials, there were set aside 47,450 acres for the Scottish immigrants of 1738 to 1740. This land was the Argyle Patent, named for the place from which they had come, and was in present-day Washington county, New York. James Nutt and one married son (probably John) were allocated 300 acres of land, recorded as lot ninety-one.

If anyone has additional information on this branch of the Nutt family, especially on progenitor James Nutt, I would be delighted for you to contact me and help fill in any information gaps.