Old Photograph Arbigland House Scotland

Old photograph of Arbigland House near Kirkbean by the Solway Firth in, Kirkcudbrightshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Arbigland House was built in 1755 by the improving laird and gentleman architect William Craik, born 1703, died 1798. His daughter, the poet and novelist Helen Craik, born 1751, died 1825, lived there until 1792. James Craik, the Physician General of the United States Army and personal physician of George Washington, was also born there in 1730. An officer in the Continental Navy, John Paul Jones, whose father was a gardener at Arbigland, was born in a cottage in the grounds on 6 July 1747. John Paul Jones was the United States' first well known naval commander in the American Revolutionary War. He made many friends, and enemies, who accused him of piracy among America's political elites, and his actions in British waters during the Revolution earned him an international reputation which persists to this day. As such, he is sometimes referred to as the " Father of the American Navy " an epithet that he shares with John Barry and John Adams. He later served in the Imperial Russian Navy, subsequently obtaining the rank of rear admiral. In June 1792, Jones was appointed U.S. Consul to treat with the Dey of Algiers for the release of American captives. Before Jones was able to fulfill his appointment, however, he was found dead, aged 45, lying face down on his bed in his third floor Paris apartment, No. 19 Rue de Tournon, on July 18, 1792. Jones's body was eventually ceremonially removed from interment in a Parisian charnel house and brought to the United States aboard the USS Brooklyn, escorted by three other cruisers. On approaching the American coastline, seven U.S. Navy battleships joined the procession escorting Jones's body back to America. On April 24, 1906, Jones's coffin was installed in Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, following a ceremony in Dahlgren Hall, presided over by President Theodore Roosevelt who gave a lengthy tributary speech. On January 26, 1913, the Captain's remains were finally re-interred in a magnificent bronze and marble sarcophagus at the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis.



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