Talk:Scotch-Irish American

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[edit] Slavery issue

There is evidence of slavery in Appalachia, in particular Northern Virginia and what became West Virginia, where my Scots-Irish ancestors were. I don't know where the person providing a "Scots-Irish American personality" got this lovely bit social psychology. There are slave auction structures that still exist and are available for public viewing. I am going to remove that bit o blarney so we have something NPOV and factual. --Jeffmcneill talk contribs 20:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scottish?

I often refer to myself as Scottish. I find it quite odd that this article says that only 'Scots' is used - I use that sometimes, but mainly to refer to the Scots language. I'm pretty sure this is true generally, and 'Scottish' is a very common term where I'm from (Scotland). --Emma

"Scotch-Irish" and "Scotch whisky" are the two terms where "Scotch" rather than "Scots" or "Scottish" are customary and acceptable. 76.216.65.232 (talk) 13:24, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 1/3.. 1/3.. 1/3

The information in this article needs to be coordinated with Ulster-Scots. -- Fingers-of-Pyrex 23:21, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

Could someone kindly indicate which presidents exactly had Ulster-born parents?

I think Scots-Irish should be Scotch-Irish. That's what we identify ourselves as.

Research in Ireland is showing that about 1/3 of the so called Scots-Irish really had any connection with Scotland at all. One third were of English acendency and the other 1/3 were in fact Irish. There is a lot of myth building about this Scots-Irish thing and I plan to cause a major review of this article in the near future. Weighbloat

It goes back and forth from what I've read. The Irish saying they are virtually all Irish but the Northern Irish saying that's not correct. But yes - not all Scots-Irish are Scots or even Irish. It's things to do with the Plantation of Ulster, Ulster-Scots and that kind of thing.
There was much intermarriage between these groups way back then as there is today. Examples, Edmund Burke with an Irish Catholic mother and a English acendency protestant father, but then again Burke is a native Irish surname. A similiar situation pertained to the Duke of Wellington. So it was all fairly mixed. But at that time religion was the key to where one figured in the power scale, with 'Church of Ireland' (as in Church of England) being in the acendency.Weighbloat 18:47, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
A fair percentage of the so-called Scotch-Irish were neither Scottish nor Irish but in fact French Huguenots who emigrated to Northern Ireland. David Hoag 06:19, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Of the "1/3" as said above that indeed come from Scotland, they too were ethnic English. Southeast Scotland was part of English Northumbria until the Scottish conquest (after Bruce's execution).

I'd like to see a source for this. The Scots-Irish are not only those people who arrived in Ireland from Scotland during the Plantation - they are also people who migrated back and forth between the two locations over the period of at least a couple of millenia. There was also a shared kingdom called Dal Riata, which accounts for some people of this background.

Therefore, Scots-Irish Americans, and many Irish-Americans also, are likely to be of this ethnic grouping.

As David Hoag suggests, its a very mixed group and quite complex. --Mal 16:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bibliography

I fixed up the bibliography, and added a few political points. And I incorporated some of the Celtic Thesis of McDonald & McWhiney, which James Webb has popularizedRjensen 05:01, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ulster-Scots?

This doesn't make sense at all, while the majority of Scotch-Irish settlers in Ireland lived in the Ulster province, not all of them did. For example in my ancestry there many of them came from County Longford, which is not in the Ulster province. It's not accurate to not mention those who didn't live in Ulster and those who lived in parts of Ulster no longer part of Northern Ireland, such as County Monaghan.

It's also inaccurate to portray them merely as Scottish immigrants to Ireland and seperate from today's Catholic Irish, when infact there was a lot of mixing between the native Irish, English settlers, Scottish settlers and even Welsh settlers to Ireland.. so that even most Irish catholics have Scottish/English heritage originating in this era, and that many of the Protestant Immigrants to America in the 1700s and early 1800s were thoroughly mixed with the native Irish and considered themselves to be Irish. Genetically speaking there's little to differentiate between those of Scotch-Irish stock and those of Catholic Irish heritage, because they generally mixed together over the years.

it's not genetics it's culture and history that make them different. Rjensen 23:58, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


Tired of Bigotry

I am really sick and tired of all the bigoted comments made against people of Scotch Irish or Irish people in general. Wikipedia is not supposed to be biased. If you are going to make up information dont even bother contributing.

lets try to be unibiased when editing wikipedia, and simply provide the facts without writing from a particular view point. Anti-Protestant bigotry is just as bad as any other form of bigotry. User:Wikidude1 11 March 2006

Agree with last comment. Wiki is full of pigeon holing references, and that puts me off a bit. Sometimes there's a lot of NPOV stuff being pushed, and quite frankly it's difficult to avoid being sucked into the argument. I also know this is also true about Scots-Irish, I red a fascinating article about these immigrants in History Ireland monthly, and just one third of the said immigrants were from Ulster. They weren't all Scots-Irish, and actually far from it, with French Huguenots and German Palintines also figuring strongly. Bluegold 03:41, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other ethnic groups

RJensen: I'm happier with the compromise you made recently. I should perhaps try to explain more fully the reasoning behind my edits (and subsequent reverts). Similar to the comments above regarding "pigeon holing", I feel there is too much emphasis placed on religion in many of these (similar types of) articles. While religion was apparently important to many of the individuals (Scots-Irish people), and freedom of religion also.. and while the fact that the later Irish arrivals (who were mostly RC) from the famine era tended to keep themselves separate to some extent from the already established American settlers (in contrast, apparently, to the Scots-Irish for example).. I do think that references to other ethnic groups should be moved to a later part of the article, as is usually the case with other types of articles regarding a wide range of subjects. I'm not suggesting they necessarily be moved to a See also section, as the interaction or lack of interaction with subsequent settlers possibly plays an important part in the history of the group.

I don't believe these groups should be mentioned in the opening paragraphs - the introduction. Also, the dynamics of the inter-ethnic groups is more complex than alluded to in the initial paragraph. For example, it mentions in the intro that they have "a strong historical opposition to Roman Catholicism". But this lessened considerably with time, whereas a feeling of Irish nationalism lasted far longer with later Irish immigrants (usually, but not exceptionally, RCs). And the intro fails to note how most of the Scots-Irish had brought with them a certain amount of resentment of the British establishment (possibly due in large part to the Penal Laws affecting Presbyterians back home), and had fought against the British for independence.

Irish history is a lot more complex than is often explained, and full of dichotomy, irony, changes of allegiences and is not always black and white. And that's the crux of the matter, in my opinion, when it came to my decision to remove the references to the other ethnic groups mentioned in the intro.

Further to that, I do think there is a case that can be made for creating a template which lists all of the major ethnic groups of the USA.. similar to the two templates at the bottom of the Northern Ireland article for example. I don't mind doing the initial work on the template, unless somebody else wants to have a crack at it. --Mal 09:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we disagree mostly on matters of presentation. For a beginner new to the topic it's very confusing to have these very similar overlapping groups. The goal is to help guide the readers to the right article, not to give a master solution in the opening summary. I would add that in my obervation, the Catholic Irish in USA kept a much stronger sense of community much longer. The comparison with Canada is striking. Rjensen 06:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree that perhaps we disagree with the presentation of the article. However, I'd like to go ahead and make the edits as I see appropriate and you can see what it looks like and perhaps even agree with me. I will make the edits at a future date (it means creating a template and possibly some rewording/shuffling of the main body text). --Mal 20:35, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The need for specific references

The term is "Scotch-Irish," and it means people who moved from the Ulster plantantion to the American colonies in massive waves of emigration during the 18th century, with peaks in 1730 and 1770 and other years. The people were overwhelmingly Protestant, mainly Presbyterian, and their ancestors came to northern Ireland from the lowlands of Scotland as part of King James I's Plantation of Ulster. After spending several generations in northern Ireland, a combination of famines, rack-rents and religious persecution caused many of them to emigrate. They often just refered to themselves as "Irish," but in the 19th century, when large waves of Catholic Irish came to America, they adopted the term, "Scotch-Irish" in order to distinguish themselves. This is the history of the Scotch-Irish. Lots of people don't understand the term. My own father, who is more Scotch-Irish than I am, thought it meant a mixture of Scottish and Irish blood. But we can be clear about the term. (OBTW, Scots-Irish American, I believe, is something made up by a Wikipedian). Now I imagine this is going to launch some lively discussion, but let me propose that we rewrite this article, sticking to WP:Cite and WP:NPOV. Use of the <ref> to back up specific assertions will help us untangle this mess. Tomcool 22:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Trying to uphold Wikipedia policy goes without saying. Let's discuss specific assertions. I'm not sure which ones you have in mind as questionable.
Is it "Scotch-Irish" vs. "Scots-Irish"? They get about 1 million vs. 200 thousand Google hits respectively. Both are legitimate though I would support having the former be the actual article and the latter the redirect.
Is it whether immigration was almost entirely from Ulster vs. including large numbers of culturally similar people from the England-Scotland border region? Both views have their proponents who are already referenced in the article.--JWB 22:32, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Both Scots-Irish and Scotch Irish are in common use--the latter is more common in serious scholarship. JSTOR (full text of several hundred scholarly journals) has 1886 scholarly books and journal articles using "Scotch Irish" and only 439 using "Scots Irish". Few book titles in recent years use "Scots"Rjensen 02:59, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
The correct, unbiased, historical term is "Scotch-Irish," not "Scots-Irish." This is the term that the people themselves adopted, and so when we speak of these people, this is the term that we should use. Otherwise, it's revisionism. It's good to google the variants; it's better to read some of the histories, or even to know the names of some of the pertinent historical societies. Here's one quote: ". . . in this country [USA], where they have been called Scotch-Irish for over two hundred years, it would be absurd to give them a name by which they are not known here . . . Here their name is Scotch-Irish; let us call them by it." [1] This is one citation. We're talking about a people who identified themselves by this term in America; therefore, the American term should hold precendence, just as Lenape should hold precedence over Delaware. Tomcool (talk) 02:00, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] (DNA story not well sourced (wiki waits until scholars reach consensus))

In this case the article was already documenting two well-established opposing scholarly points of view. The Genographic Project link was supporting one of the two. --JWB 20:53, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] America vs North America, Scots-Irish American vs Sots-Irish

As the article points out, Ulster-Scots emigrated to both the USA and Canada. However, American in popular usage has become synonymous with 'citizen of the USA'. Title and article seem to reflect this ambiguity. Might it be more accurate to rename the article 'Scots-Irish' or 'Scotch-Irish', and review the use in it of the term 'American'? Countersubject 13:13, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't think 'Sots-Irish' would be a very good idea.
This article is on a par with other articles on US ethnic groups; see the categories at the bottom of the article.
Irish Canadian has only a little on Scots-Irish settlement in Nova Scotia. Scottish Canadian has nothing. There is a Category:Ulster-Scottish Canadians Category:Ulster-Scottish Canadians. --JWB 18:05, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I think you're suggesting that 'Scots-Irish' would be a bad idea because there are seperate Wikipedia categories for US and Canadian ethnic groups. I detect the beginnings of a circular argument. Countersubject 07:44, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what argument you are making for change. 'Scots-Irish' or 'Scotch-Irish' already redirect to this article. If American is already ambiguous, than the article isn't excluding Canadians, or going out of scope by mentioning Canadians. There is also already an article Ulster-Scots on the Ulster-Scots people globally.
Sounds like you're from the other side of the pond. Here in The Colony (Canada) we never use the term "American" to refer to outselves, unless it's prefaced by "North". I came here because while there is currently a Category:Ulster-Scottish Canadians there is no article on that group; surprisingly given their prominent role in all the colonies which became Canada; there is an English Canadian page, which because of the nature of the place isn't about English ethnicity in specific, and there's Irish Canadian and Scottish Canadian. Here in BC the histories refer to most of these guys as Anglo-Irish, but not necessarily from Ulster; anglicized Irish is more what the term meant, so it's not quite the same thing as the Scottish-Irish presbyterian thing in the north. But Anglo-Irish redirects to Scots-Irish despite that; I came to Scots-Irish American to query about two individuals who were Premiers of British Columbia who are in the Category:Ulster-Scottish Canadians (John Foster McCreight, Andrew Charles Elliott) as I was about to put Category:Irish Canadians as I had for others who hadn't been premier (John Andrew Mara, Forbes George Vernon) but were also Anglo-Irish. Whether they were Ulsterites (my impression of Vernon is that he was from Dublin) or Protestant (CoE in many cases, rather than Presbyterian) or anglicized Irish in some other way, I don't know but I'm also perplexed by the overlapping definitions and variables in given cases; (1) there should be a Ulster-Scottish Canadian (and/or Anglo-Irish Canadian article) and (2) can someone explain to me the particularities of the wordworks in the preceding pernambulations? There are other prominent bios in BC who number among the Anglo-Irish, and/or the Irish, including premiers (e.g. John Hart), so I'm holding off until I understand this better, and until someone who has the knowledge writes up an equivalent article for Canada; speaking of which (3) the Canadian content here should be in a separate article, not one involving "America".Skookum1 02:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, there is a category of articles for US ethnic groups. If you feel they should be merged with Canadian ethnic groups, you should consider it across the board. The subsequent histories of the US and Canadian Scots-Irish are fairly divergent, so there is a better case for individual coverage than there is for many ethnic groups. --JWB 18:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm suggesting that the title and the article are ambiguous, and that some thought should be given to clarification. The title qualifies Scots-Irish with American, rather of the USA, and in discussing geographical distribution, the article refers to Novia Scotia, a Canadian Province. However, there is then little discussion of the Canadian emigrants and their descendants, other than in contrast to the main theme of the article, the Scots-Irish of the USA. In addition, the article is tagged with US categories, but not Canadian.
I would suggest the options are (i) Rename the article to Scots-Irish of the USA. (ii) Broaden the article and its categorisation to include Canada. (iii) Some compromise between the two, e.g. a short summary article to cover the whole of North America, supplemented by detailed articles on the USA and Canada. Countersubject 15:44, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
For (i) you would have to do this across all of the articles in Category:Ethnic groups in the United States. The "X American" format was probably set by agreement in some Wikipedia style document, though I don't have a reference handy. If you want to propose this major project, you should do so where the whole category is discussed, maybe Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups.
I would suggest that if anyone has more substantial information about the Scots-Irish in Canada, in contrast to the very brief mention in this article, that they write an article Scots-Irish Canadian to fit the format of Category:Ethnic groups in Canada. The US and Canadian articles can make brief references to the other country and to any other relevant countries for comparison and cross-reference, as this article does now for Canada. Currently I do not have much information on Scots-Irish in Canada, or even that the term was widely used in Canada.
If you want a summary article covering both Canada and US, you could change Scots-Irish from a redirect to Scots-Irish American to a disambiguation page or worldwide summary article. However, it seems to me that a worldwide summary may be duplicating the function of Ulster Scots. Also, if Scots/Scotch Irish turns out to be a term that only ever had wide use in the US, it would make sense for the article to be US-centered as it is now. --JWB 21:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about Irish Citizens?

This article basically states that Scoutch-Irish are only people living in America. What about the Scotch of Irish decent still living in Ireland. In fact Merrian-Webster defines scotch-irish as:

of, relating to, or descended from Scottish settlers in northern Ireland
My understanding is it is a term that was defined in the US and is used in the US. Ulster Scots covers Ireland. --JWB 15:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
The implication of this is that the word 'American' in the title is redundant. Countersubject 07:43, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
The article is part of the series on American ethnic groups, and 'American' is part of all their names. In any case, Scots-Irish etc. redirect here. JWB 17:01, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
That doesn't directly address the observation. You may think that there's a good reason for the redundancy, and you may believe that precedence and redirection help justify it, but they are different issues, which can usefully be discussed once the redundancy is acknowledged. Countersubject 09:39, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pruning and References

This article could still do with some pruning and consolidation, e.g. the two paragraphs under Ulster-Scots. Also, Mal's suggestion (above) that the article should better reflect the complexity of the Scots-Irish and their history has yet to be effected. There are still unsupported assertions and generalisations that read more like tribal memory than an an encyclopaedic article, e.g. The Scotch-Irish celebrated their military victories over the Irish Catholics, which had saved their community from annihilation. Countersubject 14:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Celtic Thesis

From the article The recent "Celtic Thesis" of Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney denies the history of their descent from Northumbrians of the Scottish Border Country and northern England; instead these authors maintain that they were basically Celtic (as opposed to Anglo-Saxon), and that all Celtic groups (Scots Irish, Scottish, Welsh and others) were warlike herdsmen, in contrast to the peaceful farmers who predominated in England. Author James H. Webb puts forth a thesis in his book Born Fighting to suggest that the character traits of the Scots-Irish, such as loyalty to kin, mistrust of governmental authority, and military readiness, helped shape the American identity. So, if a person comes from Northumbria, they are Anglo-Saxon, yet if they came from over the border in Scotland, they are Celtic? Was this the finding of a thesis?? If so, it cannot have been written by a very intelligent person. This inclusion in the article seems jumbled and doesn't make much sense. It should be re-written and waffle about 'Anglo-Saxons' and 'Celts' needs to be removed. Enzedbrit 20:46, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

when the leading scholars --McDonald and McWhiney--report a conclusion then Wiki follows their lead. Rjensen 20:50, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scotch vs. Scots

There are few occaisions when the word "scotch" is used. It can be used to describe scotch whiskey. It should never be used to refer to people. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch as of Oct 07, 2006: "From the early 19th century Scots or Scottish increasingly became the preferred usages among educated Scottish people, Scotch being regarded as an anglicised affectation. In modern usage in Scotland, "Scotch" is never used, other than as described in the following paragraph for a short list of articles; it has patronising and faintly offensive connotations ...".

I don't understand why on earth the spelling "Scots-Irish" is being used in this article when the article itself states that "Scots-Irish in America have used the spelling Scotch-Irish almost exclusively since the 18th century...."? Why is an article about an American topic apparently written from a UK perspective? I am of Scotch-Irish descent and I have NEVER seen the spelling "Scots" used in this context before coming to Wikipedia, and have not seen any evidence that it has become widespread in the USA. In my opinion Wikipedia's sensitivity towards the supposed offensiveness of the word "Scotch" to the Scottish people has gone a bit too far, especially in trying to "correct" the historical usage of the term "Scotch" outside of Scotland itself. At what point do we give a group--in this case, Scotch Irish Americans--permission to determine what to call themselves? If it is to be truly NPOV, Wikipedia has no business telling them how to spell their own name. MrDarwin 14:58, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
The title of the article should be "Scotch-Irish", with a short note explaining that UK usage is "Scots-Irish". "Scotch-Irish" is how we, the people of this culture, refer to ourselves. My mother's family (born and bred in the mountains of North and South Carolina) is both well-educated and well-aware of their roots and history; they have always referred to themselves as "Scotch-Irish". I never thought anything of the term until I met my wife, whose mother's Canadian family is of Highland Scots origin. I was very surprised when she criticized me for using the term "Scotch-Irish" instead of "Scots-Irish".
I have a lot of respect for Scotland, Scots, and Scottish culture, but I resent people telling me that I shouldn't use the term "Scotch-Irish", a term which has been used by my family since the 18th century to describe themselves, simply because it doesn't abide by the rules recently established in a land they left hundreds of years ago.Esbullin 15:16, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
And this Canadian of ScotCH-Irish decent agrees as well. CanadianMist 15:44, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
I fully agree -- the correct term is "Scotch-", not Scots-", Irish. We've been Scotch-Irish for many years. Don't change it on us.--Eastcote (talk) 04:22, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like consensus - I'm going to move back to Scotch-Irish American now. --JWB (talk) 15:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fighting Indians?

"Here they lived on the frontiers of America, carving their own world out of the wilderness, fighting Indians as backwoodsmen." This certainly needs a source, and is worded in such a way that I must remove the latter part of the sentence. -- SwissCelt 07:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

"Fighting indians" is rather appropriate. My Ulster-Scot roots are old, and are from the southern end of what is now Lancaster and Chester counties in Pennsylvania where local townships are still named Little Britian, Nottingham, West Lampeter, and Drumore. Many Ulster-Scot family histories from that location both verbal and written describe Ulster Scots from Philadelphia being employed or indentured to fight native american tribes in the westward hills of what is now the Susquehanna river. (Susquehannocks at the time were part of the Irqouis nation, and were considered hostile by many German/Swiss Anabaptist, Quaker, and French Heugonaut settlers who were predominatly pacifist).

Writing about Ulster-Scots and finding references is difficult. Most did not keep accurate family records during or after thier indenture so emmigration patterns and census numbers can be rather difficult to trace since most were already in the mountains and rather reclusive during the 1900 U.S. census. The closest records to date have been through church records or civil society records of the day that MAY have names and dates of thier members that were of U.S. Ulster-Scots descent.

The saving grace for recording Ulster Scots activity in Lancaster/Chester PA has been through thier Pennsylvania German/Swiss Neighbors who were and still are very good scribes and recordkeepers. Many Ulster-Scots in the area intermarried with the anabaptist Pennsylvaina Dutch and as such thier family histories were documented at least until 1800-to the present day.

[edit] "related groups" info removed from infobox

For dedicated editors of this page: The "Related Groups" info was removed from all {{Infobox Ethnic group}} infoboxes. Comments may be left on the Ethnic groups talk page. Ling.Nut 17:17, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Bias

The bias in favor of Irish Catholics in this article sickens my Ulster Blood.

Please make no mistake, Ulster-Scots are not "Green" Irish. That is Irish Catholic immigrats who came from Ireland during the 1843 potato famine. Ulster-Scots are predominatly that SCOTS. They emigrated from the Lowland and southern Highland areas of Scotland and were put to work in the British Plantations in Irish Ulster. This is STILL a point of contention today especially amoung Catholic "Green" Irish. Most Ulster-Scots were loyal to William of Orange and were amoung the Protestant Orangman of the day hence "Orange" or Protestant Irish.

My Opinion there should be no more than one or two sentences in this article differentiating between "Green" Catholic Irish immigrants of today, and the predominatly Protestant U.S. Ulster-SCOTS of the early 1700's. Any other references to the Green Catholic Irish should have its own page and not be included in the Ulster-Scots or American Scots-Irish Page.

S' Rioghal Mo Dhream

MacGregor (American Ulster-Scot)

There is no such thing as "Ulster Blood", you clown.

Most of the so called Ulster Scots are English (due to English Northumbria beng part of Northeast Scotland), Irish or French Huguenots.

Please keep your uneducated bigoted crap to yourself —Preceding unsigned comment added by Misawaloveme (talk • contribs) 21:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merger proposal

It has been proposed that Scots-Irish be merged in here, and that Scots-Irish becomes a disambiguation page between Ulster-Scots and Scots-Irish American. Personally, I'm in favour of the proposal because it clears up what these three pages deal with. --sony-youthpléigh 20:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. Census

"In the United States Census, 2000, 4.3 million Americans (1.5% of the population of the USA) claimed Scots-Irish ancestry," this statement is misleading. I checked the source and no where did I see any Americans claiming Scots-Irish ancestry. I also looked for the statistics for the map and I could not find it. However, I did find Scotch-Irish, and if this is the case then the wording should represent exactly what the census claims. The U.S. census does not recognice the Scots-Irish, and stating that it does is misleading and should represent their view. Otherwise, this content is considered plagarism and should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.1.80.13 (talk) 04:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] (U) References

  1. ^ "The Scotch-Irish of Colonial America," Wayland F. Dunaway, 1944, University of North Carolina Press

[edit] Scotch-Irish: A vastly over-extended identity and a far too easy way of explaining the South and Appalachia

I grew up in Western Virginia, in "Scotch-Irish" country, and I never once heard the term until I grew up and went to college. I also find that this term really expanded after Braveheart back home. I am not denying that there were some people who might be called Scotch-Irish, but I am not sure how widespread this group is, and I'd argue that lots of non-Scotch Irish settlers into the Southern Appalachians got lumped into this identity because this identity appealed, and appeals, to certain forms of historical and social propoganda.

My theory is that back home in VA we learned that we were Scotch-Irish from books written by outsiders and from newspaper accounts and other forms of popular media based on poor scholarship, e.g. Jim Webb's "Born Fighting", and McWhiney and McDonald's "Cracker Culture," and more recently Michael Lind and Jane Smiley's innane ramblings about Bush in 2004. Some of this stuff borders on the idiotic, and is used by natives to defend our special values (including violence), and by outsiders who justify their own prejudices towards the South.

I think this Scotch-Irish thing is also used, and has been used, as a way of distinguishing "mountain" people from "lowland" whites in the South. The freedom-loving Scotch-Irish mountaineers were often contrasted with the more slavish and degraded lowland whites, who were considered as the descended from the dregs of London, and other large British cities. Yet some people saw the mountaineers as being partially descended from the previously mentioned undesirable urban element from the British isles (Caudill, "Night comes to the Cumberlands"). This discourse about the mountains is also partially based in Anglo-Saxonism in the 19th century US.

Basically, people are trying to explain a complex process of identity formation in the colonies using hackneyed phrases and generalizations. This is why Southern mountaineers can be "pure Anglo-Saxons" or "freedom loving Celts" at the same time. Of course the problem is terms like Anglo-Saxon or Celt are themselves problematic terms and anachronistic ways of understanding the late Medieval and Early Modern British isles.

My grandmother came from Nicholson Hollow in Madison County, VA in the Blue Ridge mountains, in what is now the Shenandoah National Park. This area was largely settled by people from the VA Tidewater. Because these settlers hailed from the area called the Northern Neck (Stafford, Westmoreland and King George counties, VA) there was a large number of Northern English or Lowland Scottish surnames (assuming there is a difference here) amongst them, confusing some outside observers who see Scotch-Irish or PA-based cultural elements amongst them, ignoring the actual settlement patterns in this part of the Blue Ridge. The problem is nobody bothered listening to the local mountain people, who usually called their ancestors (and this is based on my own experience) "Tuckahoes" or sometimes "English, German and Arsh." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thatguy2008 (talk • contribs) 19:21, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

If you can expand on the critique of Webb etc. it would make a good addition to the article. I haven't read Webb, but I think Albion's Seed has a more nuanced view as well as some historical documentation. --JWB (talk) 19:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I would like some expansion of this as well it would make for a good discussion. I did read Webb, and while geographicaly its very hard to trace any written evidence of otherwise Scottish, Irish, or should I just say Celtic presence in the Blue Ridge Mountians due to poor record keeping. There seems to be a hold over culturally. I am a musician by hobby, and we all know as musicians types of music can and will vary from culture to culture. These variations can include tempo, beat, embellishments, and the like. There are two places where I have seen a heavy influence of Scottish, Irish or otherwise Celtic influence in our national identitity. That would be in the music of the people in the Apalachian Mountains. Two such influences come to mind.

As a Bagpiper (Piob Mohr) the Great Highland. "The Reel" Its seems ia almost totaly engrained in Celtic type music. The only two places a Reel has been heared or played was either with a fiddle. Or on the Bagpipe, Great Highland, Uilliean, Small pipe etc. This type of influence is supported by Webb. However there are so many people sporting Scottish or Irish surnames in the southern part of Virginia to North Carolina. That places like Mount Airy NC or Grandfather Mountain NC are literaly repleat with undoubtebly heavily Celtic influences.

I am somewhat familiar also with the emmigration patterns of the Shenandoah Valley, and they are not dissimilar to where I am from (Lancaster, Chester Counties PA). Family intermarriage can sometimes obscure heritage. Remember being and Ulster-Scot or an Irishman you were not very popular with the prosperous Anglicans of Eastern Virginia, and considered a necessary evil by the pacifist Saxon Germanics who saw you as a cheap way to keep the indians out of thier wheatfields. Anyway I better stop before I ramble, just a little food for thought. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.66.16.116 (talk) 08:40, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reply to JWB

Hackett Fischer is more nuanced than anyone else on this subject. I respect his scholarship, but he does take liberties with documentation. For example, he uses William Byrd's History of the Dividing Line when discussing the so-called British borderers. Hackett Fischer says that Byrd encountered borders along the NC-VA border at the beginning of the 18th century. The problem is that Byrd would not have encountered said borderers. Settlers from PA and the Shenandoah Valley didn't settle in the Virginia Southside, where Byrd was travelling, until almost 30 years after Byrd's journey was over. In other words those "borderers" that Byrd encountered were products of Hackett Fischer's Cavalier culture. Furthermore, as I said my forebears were mostly from the Tidewater, but had "North Briton" surnames. Hackett Fischer downplays the Irish, Scottish and Welsh components in Tidewater VA, focusing instead on the West Country. I am not disagreeing with Hackett Fischer per se. I am just saying the situation is more complex. There are accounts of brawling and pastoralism (i.e. "border" behavior) amongst the lowland Chesapeake whites, once again problematizing Hackett Fischer's neat fourpart cultural division, which has been taken up by Kevin Phillips (The Cousins' Wars) and others. I think there was a cultural division between lowland whites and mountain whites. I just don't see it as Scotch-Irish vs. West Country English. I see it more as a PA-based cultural system (i.e. "Cohee") that included large numbers of individuals coming directly from the British isles and Germany (including "Scotch Irish") coming into contact with an already establish Anglophone creole culture (i.e. "Tuckahoe") that reflected cultural traditions from the Westcountry and Northern England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland combined with African and Native American cultural traditions. I apologize for the rambling. I can assemble some sources for you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thatguy2008 (talk • contribs) 21:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

But British-borderer descendants on the NC-VA line would not have been part of the PA-origin stream; this actually fits the focus on region of origin in Britain better than the focus on migration route through America.
Hackett-Fischer doesn't say people from each British region went exclusively and directly to a corresponding American region; he just says that the founders of each American region had a large enough contribution from a British region to set the tone of that American culture, and that once established, the American regional cultures tended to perpetuate themselves, with selective migration actually aiding this process. Some of those Borderers in the Virginia Southside no doubt eventually adapted to the local Cavalier rulers, while some no doubt eventually moved west to frontier areas, along with likeminded folks of various origins.
This is certainly still not to say that H-F's four cultures explain everything, and I applaud your effort to add a variety of perspectives to the article.
There actually is a Tuckahoe-Cohee article; thanks, I wasn't aware of those terms before! --JWB (talk) 23:17, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Good point on the multiple points of entry for the "North Britons." It doesn't discount Hackett-Fischer's theory; indeed, it reinforces it. Hackett Fischer made a good start on dealing with this topic, and giving substance to McWhiney and McGrady's theories but far more remains to be done on it! I think this relates to the ongoing problem of is Appalachia distinct from the South, or what is the South for that matter. Who knows, maybe my own regional origins are influencing the way I see the problem; I refer to my conflating Scotch-Irish or Appalachian history with Southern history. Certainly individuals from SW PA or WVA might see this issue differently.
Thanks for the Tuckahoe article reference! One of the books that the article cites (Perkins) is a must read for individuals interested in Scotch-Irish, Appalachian or Early Mid-western history. Thatguy2008 (talk) 01:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)