Those Audacious Wilkinson Brothers

Tracing the ancestry of the Wilkinsons of Argyll and subsequently North Carolina, “Those Audacious Wilkinson Brothers” unearths the Knapdale/Kintyre roots of the family, including a full color pictorial of present-day Cuildrynoch, ancestral home of the brothers who Anglicized their name from the Gaellic McQuilkin to the English Wilkinson. Demonstrating an extraordinary amount of audacity, the Wilkinson brothers joined thousands of Scottish Highlanders who uprooted their families in the mid-1700s, shipping themselves across the turbulent North Atlantic in flimsy wooden ships designed to carry cargo, not passengers. Carrying little more than their dreams of a better life, the men, women and children who survived the voyage faced daunting challenges in the North Carolina wilderness. They hoped for a land of opportunity where they could carve out some semblance of prosperity that had been denied them in the Highlands. Leaving everything they knew behind them, they set out to conquer not just the land, but life itself. Many succeeded. This is the story of one extended family, seven brothers from Argyll – courageous and stubborn — who put down roots on the hostile American frontier, those audacious Wilkinson brothers.