Scots-Irish American

From Freepedia

Scots-Irish Americans are descendants of the Ulster-Scots immigrants who came to North America from Northern Ireland in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The Scots-Irish, who had suffered under the Penal Laws in Ireland, which discriminated against them because of their Presbyterian religion, brought with them a historical grievance against England. This grievance made the settlers and their descendants in North America more ready to join the patriotic cause. Moreover, it has been suggested that their experience in Ulster of being a colonial minority surrounded by a hostile native population, the native Ulster Catholics, prepared them for life on America's frontier. The "Scotch-Irish" celebrated their military victories over the Irish Catholics, which they believed had saved their community from annihilation. Of particular importance for them were the battle of the Boyne, the battle of Aughrim and the siege of Londonderry. James Webb's book, "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America", suggests that the character traits of the Scots Irish, loyalty to clan, mistrust of governmental authority, and military readiness, helped shape the "American Identity". Unlike later immigrant groups, the Scots Irish discarded their past identity and are most likely to put their ethnicity as "American" on census forms.

The migration of Scots to Ulster occurred largely during the 17th and 18th centuries (as detailed in the article History of Scotland and Plantations of Ireland). With the enforcement of Queen Anne's 1703 Test Act in Ulster however, considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots migrated to the North American colonies throughout the 18th century (250,000 settled in the USA between 1717 and 1770 alone). Disdaining the heavily English regions on the Atlantic coast, most groups of Ulster-Scot settlers crossed into the "western mountains", where their descendants populated the southern Appalachian regions and the Ohio Valley. Others settled in northern New England and north-central Nova Scotia.

In the 2000 US Census, 4.3 million Americans (more than 2% of the white population in the USA) claimed Scots-Irish ancestry, although there are estimated to be upwards of 20 million Americans from across the USA who can trace the roots of at least one ancestor to Ulster. 14 of the 42 Presidents of the United States (1 in 3) have had ancestral links to Ulster, including three whose parents were born in Ulster. Several hundred thousand descendants of settlers from Ulster also live in Canada today.


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More on the term Scotch-Irish

"Scotch-Irish" is a North American term that has been used since settlement to describe descendents of Scottish Presbyterians from the Scottish Lowlands who first migrated to Ulster and later settled in North America throughout the 18th century. Other names, including "Northern Irish" and "Irish Presbyterians", were also originally used to describe these people.

It is believed that these already century-settled immigrants, now well established in American society, increasingly referred to themselves as "Scotch-Irish" in order to distinguish themselves as having Scottish origins against the later indigenous Irish arrivals of mainly Catholic origin that arrived in substantial numbers in America after the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. However, there are references to "Scotch-Irish" as early as 1730, and the term was probably first used to distinguish the Ulster-Scots from either Irish Anglicans or immigrants who came directly from Scotland, or both. The word "Scotch" at those times in history was the favoured adjective as a designation—it literally means "...of Scotland".

As people from Scotland nowadays refer to themselves as "Scots" or "Scottish", the term "Scotch" has become dated. It may even be considered an ethnic slur as it nowadays refers only to whisky outside of an American context. Consequently, the term "Scots-Irish" has recently become more frequently used even in North America, as it is used in the name the popular American historical book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.

Confusingly perhaps for those outside of the US and Canada, the term "Scotch-Irish" or "Scots-Irish" does not refer to simply any Scottish, Irish or a combination of the two and is therefore considered by many to be less accurate a term than "Ulster-Scots/Scottish".

See also Scottish American.

Notable Americans of Scots-Irish Descent

In literature

  • A People Set Apart: The Scotch-Irish in Eastern Ohio (1999; ISBN 1887932755)
  • Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (2004; ISBN 0767916883)
  • Faith & Freedom: The Scots-Irish in America (1999; ISBN 1840300612)
  • Movers: A Saga of the Scotch-Irish (The Heartland Chronicles) (1986; ISBN 0961736712)
  • Scotch-Irish: A Social History (1999; ISBN 0807842591)
  • Scotch-Irish Pioneers in Ulster and America (1995; ISBN 1898787468)
  • Scots-Irish in Pennsylvania & Kentucky (1998; ISBN 1840300329)
  • Scots and Scotch-Irish in America (1985, ISBN 0822510227)
  • The People with No Name: Ireland's Ulster Scots, America's Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World: 1689-1764 (2001; ISBN 0691074623)
  • The Scotch-Irish: From the North of Ireland to the Making of America (ISBN 0786406143)
  • The Scotch-Irish in Northern Ireland and in the American Colonies (1998; ISBN 078840945X)
  • The Scots-Irish in the Carolinas (1997; ISBN 1840300116)
  • The Scots-Irish in the Shenandoah Valley (1996; ISBN 1898787794)
  • The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania (1997; ISBN 0806308508)
  • Ulster and North America: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Scotch-Irish (1997; ISBN 0817308237)
  • West From Shenandoah: A Scotch-Irish Family Fights for America, 1729-1781, A Journal of Discovery (2003; ISBN 0471315788)

External links

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