A bid to cash in on Angus’s connection to more than 25 million US citizens who claim Scottish ancestry has received special praise from the First Minister.
Alex Salmond has hailed an ambitious effort from Arbroath Abbey Action Group, which aims to use historic links to bring about a tourism windfall for the county.
With Tartan Day being celebrated across the world on Saturday and the 2014 Year of Homecoming sparking global interest, the non-political group wants to tap into the popularity of all things Scottish.
Members have written an open letter to the organisers of New York Tartan Day highlighting the strong links between the Declaration of Arbroath and the US Declaration of Independence.
In previous years, Tayside actors Brian Cox and Alan Cumming have led the annual parade through the Big Apple, which has attracted thousands of Scottish Americans every year since its inception in 1999.
With that bond in mind, Arbroath Abbey Action Group chairman Harry Ritchie also sent a copy of his letter to the New York Times and the New York Daily News, as well as The Courier, in an attempt to draw attention to Arbroath and Angus.
Impressed by the initiative shown by the team of volunteers, Mr Salmond took the unusual step of giving his personal best wishes to the locally-led project.
He said: “The Arbroath area has a very special place in our nation’s history.
“As such, it has a particular story to tell, and one that resonates internationally especially with the many millions of people in North America who have Scottish ancestry.
“The Arbroath Abbey Action Group are to be commended for reaching out to that huge diaspora community and I wish them well in attracting many international visitors to the area during the second Year of Homecoming in 2014.”
Mr Ritchie said he was happy to accept Mr Salmond’s wishes but was quick to highlight that the action group is in no way affiliated to any political party.
In his open letter, he describes the beauty and the history of Arbroath Abbey, where the Declaration of Arbroath was signed on April 6 1320. A section read: “The declaration has been described as ‘one of the masterpieces of political rhetoric’ and ‘a document whose words should have been written in gold’.”
New York’s Tartan Day started when two pipe bands and a small group of Scottish Americans walked from the British Consulate to the United Nations.
Mr Ritchie’s letter to the organisers of the Stateside event revealed that Arbroath has contributed more than just the declaration to the shaping of the US.
“It is widely known that this document, the first and many claim the finest written concept of nationhood, gave rise to some of the wording of your own American Declaration of Independence, drawn up and signed over 450 years later,” he wrote.
“What is not so widely known is that it was a man, Dr William Small from the Arbroath area, who took this concept with him to America, and was instrumental in tutoring the principal author of the American declaration in the niceties of nationhood.
“Dr Small was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia.
“One of his students was Thomas Jefferson who said of Small, ‘It was my great good fortune, and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr William Small of Scotland was then professor of mathematics’.
“What Jefferson almost certainly got from his Scottish professor was the concept of independence and freedom, and distilled down, that knowledge and understanding found its way into the American Declaration of Independence.