You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

Today, episode 44, Lord Dunmore's War.

The last few weeks have all been about Boston and New England,

and so will the next few weeks as well.

Today, though, I want to step away from Boston

and spend some time on another incident further south that flared up around the same time.

While agents, mostly from Pennsylvania, were trying to set up the colony of Vandelia that I discussed back in episode 37, Virginians hope to make their own advances into the same region.

These attempts led to what became known as Lord Dunmore's War in 1774.

I mentioned Lord Dunmore back in episode 38

when he served briefly as Governor of New York

and tried to get rich selling land already owned by New Hampshire

farmers who became the Green Mountain Boys. I promised then that I'd give a

little more background on Lord Dunmore at some point, and today that point has arrived.

John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, came from a prominent Scottish family.

His father made the mistake of supporting the Jacobite uprising of 1745-46.

You may recall that the Duke of Cumberland, the uncle of the future King George III had built his military reputation

by crushing these rebels at the Battle of Kowladen in 1746.

John's father survived that battle only to be thrown into the Tower of London.

John's uncle, the second Earl of Dunmore, did some heavy lobbying to keep his brother alive and to protect the family title.

As part of that effort, John joined the British regular army in 1750 at age 19.

That same year the king pardoned his father and allowed him to return home.

A few years later the uncle died childless and John's father became the third Earl of Dunmore. When his father died in 1756, John became the fourth Earl of Dunmore and soon took a seat in the House of Lords.

...