ABSTRACT
Although the large majority of Scots immigrants to the US were from lower middle and working class backgrounds, there were also many men (predominantly) from the upper and upper middle classes who decided to leave Scotland for foreign parts. These included several of the accounting immigrants in this study. Because of their family backgrounds, it is difficult to argue economic necessity as a major reason for their migration. The phenomenon of upper and upper middle class men migrating from Scotland in the late nineteenth century is illustrated by a case study analysis of students at the Edinburgh Academy who were at school there with nine of the accounting migrants to the US. The Academy was founded in the New Town of Edinburgh in 1824 at a cost of £12,000 in order to provide a traditional education in the classical subjects of Latin and Greek. Its founders included leading Edinburgh professionals such as Henry Cockburn, an Advocate who was to become one of Scotland’s most famous judges, and Sir Walter Scott, the lawyer and novelist. The driving force behind the foundation of the Edinburgh Academy was a belief held by its founders that the only Edinburgh school then providing a classical education, the Royal High School of Edinburgh, was incapable of doing so to a high standard because of its management by the Edinburgh Town Council. In turn, this lack of quality was perceived by Cockburn and his associates as preventing Edinburgh men from obtaining positions as senior government officials in the Scottish civil service. Once founded, the Academy rapidly became and remains a leading private school in the Scottish educational system.
