I’m not Scots-Irish (in the American sense) but I score a 6.
Owning firearms is white trash?
What kind of traitor to the Constitution are you?
There’s plenty of Communist & socialist countries where they do not have the Right to Keep & Bear. If you do not like or honor our Constitution you should pack up & git out.
I scored a 12
Catholic isn’t a race, it is a religion.
Kennedy’s are Americans of Irish descent.
Yes, I know. But my point is, they’re not “Scots-Irish”. (and, of course, religion can define “race”. Look at the Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks, who are considered different ethnic groups merely on the basis of their religious heritage).
Sorry for the slight hijack, but I have a couple of related questions to ask:
I see a lot of mention of scots/irish americans, how recently does one have to have lived in the old country to qualify?
I am a Brit and as such am a mongrel of many groups, including (but not limited to) original britons, romans, vikings, normans to name but a few. My surname is a scots/irish name (most common in the Glasgow area I believe) but I was born in England as were my parents and as far as I know my grandparents, so I think of myself as English. One former colleague of mine had a surname with french roots and swore blind he was a norman even though he and his family for several hundred years were born in the UK. This attitude has always puzzled me.
Is it because America is a relatively young country that there seems (to an outsider) to be a bit of an obsession with your roots? Why not just be proud to have been born wherever you were?
BTW this is not intended to cause offence it is genuine puzzlement and something I’ve always been curious about.
Hopefully someone will provide an answer or two.
Thanks.
Walker in Eternity, it has been my understanding since my childhood that at least my paternal grandfather’s line is Scots-Irish, in spite of some evidence that the line may have originated in Germany. There are English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, Dutch and French ancestors as well. The other three grandparents’ lines appear to have originated on the British Isles somewhere, with possible blends of other North European peoples not already mentioned. There are probably other ethnic components as well, but I have no idea how widespread the immigrations of my forbears may have been, nor to what extent the Native American people contributed to my blood.
I do wonder where all they came from, but as I tried to point out in an earlier post, unless we don’t subscribe to the Out Of Africa origins of the species or to the migration patterns that theory produces, we’re all Africans. Following those trails over the planet these millennia has enabled settlings to produce variations in culture, language, skin color, facial shapes, hair qualities and all that.
For the most part, in the USA at least, it doesn’t take many generations back before the hodgepodge is so nearly complete that anybody claiming “pure this” or “pure that” ancestry is most likely a product of in-breeding. Granted, the more isolated regions, not just in the rural USA but in all parts of the globe, may have the mixture of stock much more limited than the general population’s, but I’d see that as more the exception than the rule.
Ancestry and genealogy are big topics for older people (young ones, too) to cope with their shortening life expectancy and their quest for meaning in their own lives. The inadequacy of records for most families leads to all sorts of speculation and searching through court records and cemeteries for proof of lineage. It’s satisfying to some people to have a sense of where they came from.
But, bottom line, everybody alive today is living proof that their ancestors go “all the way back” to wherever it was.
At least, that’s how I look at it.
There’s definitely some of that (and it is an oddity about us Yanks), but there’s also some element of genuine ethnic identity. There are certain communities in the States that have retained elements of “the old country,” like Poletown in Michigan, Little Italy in NYC, or the German and Czech communities of central Texas. In my grandmother’s small town outside Austin, Texas German was more common than English until about the 1950’s or 1960’s. This wasn’t “German German” (for lack of a better term), this was a dialect spoken by descendants of 19th century German immigrants that is uniquely American. Similarly, “Scots-Irish” or “Scotch-Irish” when referring to Americans doesn’t mean anyone of either Scottish or Irish descent wherever they may be found, it refers specifically to descendants of Ulster Scots who emigrated to North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly to the American South.
I see thanks. Although the bit I’ve quoted is the bit I don’t really get, if it’s 100+ years since your ancestors left Ulster, you have Irish descent, but you’re not really Irish yourself.
It’s a shorthand. Among Americans, saying “I am Welsh” is generally understood to always refer to your culture of descent. If you emmigrated to the US, you would say “I’m from Wales”.
American culture does have a degree of diversity and to some extent that diversity is present as a result of individual heritage. In a place like England, individuals are more likely to have an identity based on locality – Geordie, Liverpudlian, Cornish, Londoner, etc. – but in America, not only are localities very large and diverse of themselves, but locality-based diversity is also “stretched.” Americans thus use a variety of factors to triangulate their own identities – Brooklyn Italian-American, Appalachian Scotch-Irish, Boston Irish Catholic, Manhattan Polish Jew, etc. Each of these factors by themselves aren’t enough. Culturally and socially speaking, “I’m from Boston” doesn’t perhaps tell you as much as “I’m from Sheffield” does.
Here’s a previous thread where we also discussed this.
I can’t recall where I read it but IIRC the term Scotch-Irish was a neologism in the mid-19th century used to distance the previous predominantly Protestant settlers and their descendents from the primarily Catholic rabble that descended upon America due to the Potato Famine. Prior to the 1850s or thereabouts the former group had simply used the term Irish. I think Andrew Jackson had campaign posters proclaiming his Irishness. Again, I’m sorry I don’t recall where I read this. I have a notion it was in *Wherever Green Is Worn *by Tim Pat Coogan but I don’t have my copy on hand to verify that.
Scots are good, Irish are bad. That is all you need to know.
Oh phooey. Any culture that doesn’t have room for both Andy Jackson and Jackie Gleason, Maureen O’Hara and Emmylou Harris is no culture of mine.
Was Scarlett O’Hara supposed to be Scotch-Irish? Somehow the name “O’Hara” strikes me as more of an Irish-Irish name.
It was all the drinking she did. 
Her father Gerald came to this country to escape a bounty on his head, or as the book puts it:
Irish-Irish.
Reading some posters, I don’t think everyone realizes who the Scots Irish were/are. Those who do, please pardon a quick history lesson.
Scots Irish, or (as mentioned) the Ulster Scots, are NOT just people of Scottish and or Irish descent but a very specific group. In the early 17th century when James VI of Scotland became James I of England there had just been an incredibly bloody and expensive war between England and Ireland (not to be confused with the other bloody and expensive wars with England and Ireland) that had pretty much dominated the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign. It’s interesting in and of itself, but for simplicity sake just remember this: James VI was a Scot who was king of England and had to deal with the aftermath (and possible reignition) of a war with his newly inherited Irish subjects.
Ulster (map) is the name given to the 9 northwestern counties of Ireland (now Northern Ireland). When hostilities resumed in Ulster under James VI & I (clearly the fault of English nobles) he seized huge amounts of land from the mostly Catholic Irish nobles there (many of whom had actually been kings until very recently) and many Irish nobles fled. LOOOONNNNG story, but the short version is that James gave permission, for a sizeable fee, for two English entrepreneurs (who had swindled Ulster’s richest noble out of huge tracts of land in exchange for helping him avoid the block) to begin a for profit Plantation there, expelling the native Irish (what few were left after war, disease, flight, etc.) and giving the land to settlers from Scotland (mainly the Lowlands). Scotland had become overpopulated (not in term of numbers but in terms- in terms of land per person it’s one of the least populous places in Europe- but in terms of how many people could be supported there) so Scots came by the thousands to settle in northern Ireland. Again- there’s a much longer story- but James was so impressed by this that he essentially opened all of Ulster to settlement by his fellow Scots, and the Irish were basically shoved south. (A very few remained, many of whom intermarried with the new Scots and a few of whom raised hell.)
Most Scots were Presbyterian or otherwise Protestant (a few Catholics here and there but that’s too complicated to go into), so the resettlement of Ulster by Scots greatly assisted James (himself a Presbyterian newly converted to Anglicanism [a requirement to gain the crown of England] in breaking the power of the Catholic nobles in Ireland as well. Also, most of the farmers in Scotland raised sheep, spun wool, or raised flax and made linen, things which were also major cottage industries in Ulster, so it was a natural fit. (Meanwhile James is also thinking that some of that New World gold might be good and gives permission for another group of venturers to plant a similar colony in Virginia; it doesn’t work as well.)
I won’t say everything went swimmingly for the Scots who settled in Ireland, but they did stay, and their children and grandchildren stayed. The Scots Irish therefore were people whose ancestry happened to be almost 100% Scot (or northern English- there’s some overlap) who happened to live in northern Ireland.
In 1696, England (now ruled by James I/VI’s great grandchildren William [III] and Mary [II]) passed a new series of regulations and taxes on the manufacture and sale of linen and wool. (The worst part was that Ulster farmers could no longer [legally] sell linen and wool could no longer be sold outside of the British empire.) This bankrupted many farmers and shepherds and they began emigrating to America. Since the main trade partner of Ulster was Pennsylvania (where they imported raw material- mainly flax- from and sold finished products too) that’s where the vast majority of the ships leaving Ulster were headed, and since the ships went over a lot lighter than they came back (finished goods take less space than raw materials) the shipping companies were only too glad to sell them space, and that’s why most of the Scots-Irish went to Philadelphia, which became the Ellis Island of its day.
In short time as migration became more and more frequent (first hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands) Pennsylvania became overcrowded with Scots Irish. Add to this that land in PA was already getting very expensive, and that the Scots Irish didn’t play well with others, particularly not Germans, so consequently they began moving southward: Delaware, then Virginia (particularly the Lunenberg area, then the Carolinas, and finally west of the Appalachians and of course many settled in the Appalachians (the hillbillies), but they were a minority. Among the Scots Irish who were born in Pennsylvania and migrated southward and then over the mountains- Daniel Boone.
The Carolinas began being filled with Scots Irish. Andrew Jackson’s parents were emigrants and lived in a community that was exclusively Scots Irish.
So, that’s how they mainly settled the south, but lots of other pockets of 'em exist as well.
An interesting thing about them (I’ve researched them a lot while doing genealogy) is that they were exceedingly blunt in their speech. If an Ulster Scot (or a Scot in general probably) needed to take a shit he would politely excuse himself by telling his host or hostess “Pardon me, I need to take a shit”. This wasn’t considered bad manners, it was just an explanation. Consequently some of their place names were absolutely hysterical.
These are all actual place names in Virginia and North Carolina (all of which were later changed):
Shitty Britches Creek, which ran into Shitty Britches Swamp
Fucking Falls
Pissing Squaw Creek
Damnation Gulch
Tickle Cunt Creek (I have an ancestor who was born there- it was later changed to- I love it- Modesty Creek)
As would happen with Irish Catholics in the 19th century, by the late 18th century there were more Ulster Scots in North America than in Ulster as hundreds of thousands had migrated and their descendants still had some identity as Scots. (Many Irish Catholics left Ireland before the 19th century, but they mostly went to other Catholic lands, particularly Spain and what’s now Italy and Germany.)
The Scots Irish generally loathed the English due to the feeling they had been betrayed by the English crown and Parliament (quite justified really). It’s not surprising that most (certainly not all) sided with the revolutionaries against the English troops, and in fact some historians consider the Battle of Alamance in 1771, a battle between Scots Irish farmers and the Royal Governor of North Carolina, the first blood of the American Revolution.
Nice little precis, Sampiro. Thank you.