Turnbull, Gavin

Gavin Turnbull (1765-1816), born in Berwickshire in the Scottish borders, began writing poetry as a teenage carpet-weaver in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. His first volume, Poetical Essays, appeared in 1788. In the early 1790s, he joined the theatre company in Dumfries, renewed his earlier friendship with Robert Burns, wrote a play, and published a second volume, Poems, in 1794. In 1795, he emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina, where he made a career as an actor and later schoolmaster, contributing poetry to Charleston newspapers and to other American periodicals. He became an American citizen in 1...