The American Gilbert Imlay (c. 1754–c. 1828) was a man of many talents and trades. Described by one commentator as ‘unscrupulous, independent, courageous, a dodger of debts to the poor, a deserter, a protector of the helpless, a revolutionist, a man of enlightenment beyond his age, a greedy and treacherous land booster’, Gilbert Imlay was all of these and more. In many ways a prototype of the American conman, Imlay constantly had to reinvent himself as he tried to survive on the murky margins of a late eighteenth-century transatlantic world deeply divided by international political rivalry, ideological conflict and military tension. Although by no means a major historical figure in his own right, Imlay unwittingly acted as an interface between figures of much greater historical significance. Their diverse and often mutually exclusive ideas and ambitions, dreams and schemes he frequently borrowed and then disseminated across continents and across the Atlantic, whilst invariably serving his own, usually less honourable interests.

An officer in the American Revolutionary Army, Imlay set out to try his luck across the Allegheny Mountains in the Ohio Valley not long after hostilities between Britain and her American colonies had ended, most probably in the early spring of 1783. As a deputy surveyor for Jefferson County, Imlay was soon deeply invested in the Kentucky land bubble, rubbing shoulders with prominent historical figures – as well as wholesale land-jobbers – such as Daniel Boone, Richard Henderson, John Filson, General George Rogers Clark, Benjamin Sebastian, General James Wilkinson and Henry (‘Light-Horse Harry’) Lee.