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Gradually, information about Dunbar has filtered into common knowledge of Arkansas people, but it is still fragmentary and nebulous in the minds of many, even those well grounded in history of the Mississippi Valley.
Transcribing from Rowland's "Life and Letters---", "William Dunbar was born in 1749, the youngest son of Sir Archibald Dunbar of Morayshire, Scotland. He was educated at Glasgow, and later studied mathematics and astronomy at London." He came to America in 1771, arriving at Philadelphia with a stock of goods intended for trade with the Indians. In 1773 he came down the Ohio and Mississippi and selected a home near New Richmond (Baton Rouge to be). Later he secured land near Pensacola. "After the treaty of 1783, desiring to be in American territory, he removed to a plantation he owned nine miles south of Natchez, and four miles east of the Mississippi River."
In 1798 he was appointed by Gayosa, then Governor of Louisiana, to act as astronomer on behalf of Spain in running the line of demarcation. Shortly after this "Daniel Clark, a man of much ability, wrote to Thomas Jefferson that Dunbar, 'for scientific probity and general information is the first character in this part of the world' and suggested him as a person worthy of being consulted for information." Through the correspondence which resulted between the President and the Mississippi planter, Dunbar found himself invited to become a member of the Philosophical Society, with the President of the United States as his sponsor.
