Here's short history of the Scots and Scots-Irish. I hope you find it interesting. It's not just history, it's almost certainly at least partly your history. If you are not sure exactly when your ancestors came to America or where they came from and they have been here awhile, and you have family from the South or anywhere 100 miles west of the East Coast you are likely to have Scottish ancestry, most likely Scots-Irish. If there are Presbyterians anywhere in your family tree, you certainly have Scottish ancestry. By my own calculations over 20% of Americans carry a surname from Scotland and it is likely over half of all Americans have at least some Scottish ancestry. Most people know to associate names beginning with Mc as Scottish and this is mostly true. But many more familiar American names are of Scottish origin. A few almost purely Scottish surnames include: Campbell, Hamilton, Hannah, Fulton, Vance, Patterson, Robertson, Blair, Houston, Jackson, Montgomery, Ross, Stewart, Stuart, Fraser, Ferguson, Grant, Duncan, Wallace, Bruce, Ross, and of course, Scott, just to name a few.
Who are these people, the Scots. Why did they come to America. Here goes.
Scotland is a small country that sits atop the Island of Britain. The Population today is only about 7 million, yet well over 100 million Americans have Scottish ancestry. The Scots have significant Celtic blood, along with the Irish, Welsh, and Brittans of Northern France. Celtic peoples once dominated most of Europe in the time 1000 years before Christ. When Roman armies conquered Britain about 50 AD, the Brittish people they conquered were Celts. The Romans moved north and made attempts to conquer the whole island including what is now Scotland. They ran into very fierce tribes who painted themselves blue and came screaming naked into battle. The Romans called these people Picts (from latin for painted). They decided to leave these crazy people alone and built a wall across the Island, still there, known as Hadrian's Wall and named the area north of the wall Caledonia. Roman Britain continued to evolve over the next 400 years and they left Scotland pretty much alone. When the Roman Empire collapsed around 450 AD, Germanic tribes, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, invaded and conquered Roman Britain. Hence, Angle-Land became England and we still today use the term Anglo-Saxon to refer to England or the English. I guess the Jutes just lost out. These Germanic tribes also tried to conquer what is now Scotland but only managed to colonize parts of the Scottish lowlands. Meanwhile a short distance across the Irish Sea in Ireland, a native Irish tribe known as the Scots invaded what is now SW Scotland. They established themselves and eventually succeeded in uniting varies tribes and gave their name to a new nation, Scotland. Here for the next thousand years they evolved into the Scottish people. When they were not fighting each other, they were fighting the English. Remember the movie Braveheart?
Now it's the late 1500's. The population of Scotland has grown. Lots of tough farmers and ranchers. They still fight the English and each other now and again, but not as often. Meanwhile, there was a lot of action over in Ireland. The English had also been trying to conquer the Irish since William the Conquerors time in the 11th century. And with even less success than with the Scots. Irish Lords nominally owed allegiance to the English crown, but were often in rebellion. One of the most troublesome areas for the English was the Northern part of Ireland, called Ulster. There the Earl of Tyrone, head of the power O'Neil Family broke into open rebellion against the English seeking the help of Catholic Spain. Spain didn't come through and by 1603 the English, after 9 years of war, finally crushed the Irish O'Neil and O'Connell armies of Ulster. Queen Elizabeth I had just died and her great nephew James, King of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, came to the throne as King James I of England. You know the King James Bible we are all used to? Well, this is the guy who caused it to be created. Northern Ireland was devastated and in many places depopulated by years of war. King James decided on a scheme to help ensure these areas of Ireland would not again rebel by populating them with loyal English and Scottish settlers. So he granted much of the land of Ulster to his loyal English and Scottish Lords on the condition that they settle English and Scottish families in Northern Ireland. It worked. Due to a combination of many of the Lord's being Scottish and the proximity of Scotland to Northern Ireland, most of the families that settled were Scottish. It is called in history The Plantation of Northern Ireland. Although the greatest numbers in the Plantation were settled in Ulter (Northern Ireland), Scottish Plantations also occurred in other parts of Ireland, mostly branching out and trying to extend the area of long time English settlement around Dublin, known as "The Pale". So, although not nearly as numerous and in terms of history, not long lasting, there were Scottish settlements in other areas of Ireland outside of Ulster, including a not insignificant Plantation in the County of Kilkenny, SW of Dublin and far from Ulster. The area of northern County Down and southern County Antrim were not officially a part of the Plantations sponsored by King James. However, Two enterprising Scottish Families, the Hamilton's and Montgomery's, were able to acquire most of northern Down about 1605 from a branch of the Irish O'Neil family in exchange for some financial payments and for helping intercede with the King on behalf of this O'Neil. The area acquired was known then as Upper Clannaboye. Meanwhile English Lords had acquired much of southern Antrim and the area west of Belfast was acquired by Lord Conway. The Conway's, Hamilton's, and Montgomery's began settling large numbers of Scots on their new lands by offering generous prices for leasing land.
There were still struggles. In 1641 an uprising of "native Irish" (Catholics or "Papists" as they were usually referred to) against the Prostestant English and Scottish populations was very bloody and many English and Scottish Prostestants were killed. The rebellion was ultimately brutally crushed, particularly by Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan Army headed by Henry Ireton. Lisburn, then known as Lisnagarvie, was burned in this rebellion and renamed Lis"burn". Then in 1688 the English booted out King James II, the Catholic grandson of James I, in what is called in English History "The Glorious Revolution". The "native Irish" again rebelled supporting Catholic James II. Again many English and Scottish Prostestants were killed and for awhile the armies of James held the upper hand. Shortly, the new King of England, William III, called William of Orange after his origins in Holland, arrived with his army and at the Battle of the Boyne in 1689 defeated the army of James and re-established peace and Prostestant control. The Prostestant Scots and English fully supported William and were grateful for his victory. Even today, the Ulster Scots in Ireland call themselves "Orangemen" in his honor. Dispite these difficulties, the Scots in Northern Ireland (the Ulster Scots) prospered and populated the land for over a hundred years. It is now 1718 and an exodus is about to take place. Enter Religion. Back in the early 1500's King Henry VIII of England split from the Pope and founded the English State Protestant Religion, commonly called now the Anglican Church. The native Irish mostly remained Roman Catholic. Meanwhile, up in Scotland, most of the people took to the teachings of a French/Swiss theologian named John Calvin, aided by French Protestants (Huguenots) arriving to seek asylum in Scotland. The Scottish flavor of Calvinism evolved into the Presbyterian Church. The Anglican Church tried very hard to force everyone in England, Scotland, and Ireland to follow their brand of Christianity. They had their hands full with the English Calvinists (the Puritans) and The Quakers founded by George Fox in England, so for the 1600's they pretty much left the Ulster Scottish Presbyterians alone. By the early 1700's, the Irish Anglican Church (known in Ireland as The Church of Ireland) were beginning to put heavy pressure on the Scottish Presbyterians. Things like, making any marriage performed by a Presbyterian Minister illegal; prohibiting anyone other than members of the Church of Ireland from holding any public office; restricting licenses for certain trades to only members of the Church of Ireland, and perhaps most offensive of all, requiring everyone to pay a tithe to support the Government Supported Church of Ireland. There developed among these Ulster Scot Presbyterians a deepening hatred for the English. Added to this were adverse economic conditions. Most people didn't own land then. Most of the land was held in huge estates granted by the Crown. Ordinary people leased land, they didn't own it. These leases were often long, some 21 years, some for multiple lifetimes. By 1718 many of these land leases, re-established after was peace was restored in 1697, plus 21 equals 1718, were expiring and with strong demand for land due to rising populations, the landlords greatly increased the rents for new leases.
Meanwhile, over in the British colonies of North American, land was cheap and being offered for sale by many, including William Penn in the large area of Pennsylvania. So starting in 1718 and continuing in waves for over a hundred years, huge numbers of Scottich Presbyterians in Ireland packed up their families and moved to America. No one knows for sure how many, but reasonable estimates are that over a quarter of a million Scots left Ireland came to America between 1718 and the start of the American Revolution in 1775. A great many came to Pennsylvania and spread west, many turning south into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and continuing to spread throughout the South. Others continued west into the Ohio Valley. Other groups settled in New England, heavily in Vermont, New Hampshire, and upstate New York. Still others came to South Carolina and also moved west.
When they first arrived in America they were known simply as Irish. It was only much later when equally large numbers of Catholic Irish came to America as a result of the potato famine in the 1840's, that these Protestant descendents of Ulster Scots began calling themselves Scots-Irish to differentiate themselves from the native Catholic Irish. The term Scots-Irish does not mean a mixture of Irish and Scot. It specifically means Scots who had lived for some generations in Ireland before coming to America.
The Scots-Irish were critical to the establishment of American Freedom in the Revolutionary War and the Constitutional Bill of Rights emphasis on religious freedom. The Scots-Irish hated the English and were eager to help win the fight. In fact, General Washington credited the Irish Line in his Pennsylvania Regiments for holding the army together during many tough times. Horace Walpole spoke the following to the British House of commons during the war. "There is no use crying about the matter, American has run off with a Presbyterian parson and that is the end of it." If we remember our American History, during the revolution those in America who stayed loyal to Britain were called Tories. Ireland and Scotland historically were often referred to as Erin and Scotia. With these in mind the following short verse from those times seems to capture the attitude of the Scots-Irish.
And when the days of trial came
Of which we know the story
No Erin son of Scotia's blood
Was ever found a Tory
Our Bill of Rights protections for religious freedom are also indebted to the Scots-Irish. In Massachusetts, the Constitutional Convention delegates balked for a time at putting into the Bill of Rights the prohibition against establishing a state Church. It seems some of them had no problem with an established State Church, as long as it was theirs. The delegates from PA, NJ, VA, and the Carolina's, states with large Scots-Irish populations remembering their experiences in Northern Ireland, would have none of that.
In searching old Presbyterian Parish registers in Northern Ireland, I ran across the following interesting baptism entry in the Banbridge Presbyterian Church Register, County Down, dated March 20, 1778: "George Washington son to John Beaty by Elenor Rodgers of Edenderry." Here you have a child, son of Scots-Irish parents, in a part of Great Britain, named after the leader and commander of rebel forces fitting the British in North America not only during the war but during the relatively early phases of the war when the Americans were not doing well. I think it is an indication of the sentiments of the many if not most of the Scots-Irish where ever they lived.
I believe the greatness of America is in the different strengths contributed by many different groups that have come here. Certainly, the Scots Irish contributions to what we are have been significant.