A light snow was falling on the seventeenth of February 1926 as Dr. Pentland-Smith with wee black bag in hand closed the door of his dispensary at St. Regulus in Elie and walked the half mile to the house known as The Cross in Earlsferry. I'm sure that day the good doctor had a gleam in his eye as his mission was to assist my mother in bringing me into the world. The Royal Burgh of Earlsferry and Elie are wonderful little  adjoining villages in the County of Fife on the east coast of Scotland where the  Firth of Forth meets the North Sea.

I now live in and am also a citizen of the USA, a country that's made up of native born Americans and immigrants from every country on the globe. The United Kingdom and the USA both recognize the need to grant each others citizens the rights of dual nationality. Becoming a citizen of a second country is like getting married and mothers and motherlands will forever be what they are. 

The United Kingdom is a conglomerate of nations that for political reasons is comprised of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Scottish law is different from English law and there is no such thing as a Scottish or an English passport although I hear that this may be about to change.  Like it or not all of the people who are part of this consortium are called British. Scottish passport or not I've never felt that I was born anything but Scottish and I believe this sentiment is shared by most Scots.

We all have seen the relatively authentic movie Braveheart about the Scottish fight for independence and freedom and of how for his effort William Wallace was executed, drawn and quartered. True that was hundreds of years ago and this is a different time but at an early age this story of Wallace's fight for freedom is burned into the mind and heart of every Scottish child. Many of the early immigrants to the colony that later became the United States were of Scottish birth and these men and women played a large part in the drafting of what became the constitution of the United States of America as so declared on July the 4th in the year 1776.

One who inadvertently speeded up the process of the United States becoming independent from Britain was our Lieutenant William Duddingston who was the commander of His Majesty's ship HMS Gaspee. In 1772 the Gaspee was assigned to patrol duty in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. By the lieutenant's overly zealous harassment of the merchants, the colonists captured the Gaspee, set it on fire and so destroyed the ship. This event is considered to be the colonists' first blow for freedom which culminated in the 1776 Declaration of Independence. For reasons known only to the Admiralty, Lieutenant Duddingston was later promoted to the rank of  Rear Admiral. He died on the 27th of October 1817 at his Chapel Green home in Earlsferry, my home village. Another Scot of his era was John Paul Jones who is recognized as being the father of the United States Navy.