Alexander George Arbuthnot (1748-1818) was a Scottish merchant, translator, and diplomat who, alongside Robert Chrystie Ambrister, was executed by the United States in 1818 for supplying the Seminole tribe during the First Seminole War.
Biography[]
Alexander George Arbuthnot was born in Montrose, Scotland in 1748, and he became a trader working out of the Bahamas in the Caribbean. He was a merchant, translator, and go-between, and he began operating in Florida in 1803. He sold guns to the Native Americans so that they could hunt deer and sell their pelts, and he was captured by the US Army at St. Marks in 1818 during the First Seminole War and accused of arming the Natives against the United States on behalf of the United Kingdom. Arbuthnot and Robert Chrystie Ambrister were both sentenced to death for being agents of Britain, and Arbuthnot was hanged from the yardarm of his own ship.