March 5th, 1790
Flora MacDonald 1722 to 5 March 1790, is best known for helping Charles Edward Stuart evade government troops after the Battle of Culloden in April 1746. Her family had generally backed the government during the 1745 Rising, and MacDonald later claimed to have assisted Charles out of sympathy for his situation.
Twenty-four years after her birth in 1722 on the Isle of Skye, Flora MacDonald became both a heroine (as far as the Jacobites, Stuart Kings and their supporters–were concerned) and a traitor (as far as the ruling Hanovers–George II)
Arrested and held in the Tower of London, she was released under a general amnesty in June 1747. She later married Allan MacDonald and the couple emigrated to North Carolina in 1773. Their support for the British government during the American War of Independence meant the loss of their American estates and they returned to Scotland, where she died in 1790.
