Who is Flora Macdonald?

The famous Scottish heroine Flora Macdonald lived from 1722 till 1790.  She helped Charles Edward Stuart,  fondly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, to escape to France after the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden in 1746. Flora smuggled the young prince to the Isle of Skye by disguising him as a woman.  For this act she was imprisoned briefly in the Tower of London.

Close to thirty years later when Flora was in her fifties she emigrated to the Cape Fear area of North Carolina with her husband and two of their children. The Macdonalds sided with the King during the American Revolution and in 1777, their plantation was confiscated because Flora refused to take an oath of allegiance to North Carolina. She then traveled to New York City where her husband and son were able to join her via a prisoner exchange having been captured at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge.  Her husband accepted a post in Halifax Nova Scotia but the couple eventually returned to Flora's beloved Isle of skye.  

Her romantic aid to the prince is commemorated in Highland ballad and legend and her heroism continues to be a source of pride among Scots in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina and around the world.