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Dispelling much of what he terms the 'mythology' of the Scotch-Irish, James Leyburn provides an absorbing account of their heritage. He discusses their life in Scotland, when the essentials of their character and culture were shaped; their removal to Northern Ireland and the action of their residence in that region upon their outlook on life; and their successive migrations to America, where they settled especially in the back-country of Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and then after the Revolutionary War were in the van of pioneers to the west.
More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England's Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. When hundreds of thousands of Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, they brought with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition; and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working-class America and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself. Born Fighting is the first book to chronicle the epic journey of this remarkable ethnic group and the profound but unrecognised role it has played in shaping the social, political and cultural landscape of America from its beginnings through to the present day.
This is a study of the emigration from Northern Ireland of persons of Scottish and English descent. Chapters are devoted to the Scotch-Irish settlements in Pennsylvania, Maryland, South Carolina, and Massachusetts and include valuable lists of early pioneers. In addition, considerable space is devoted to the redoubtable settlers of Londonderry, New Hampshire. The book's extensive appendices contain lists of great genealogical importance, including (1) petitioners for transport from Northern Ireland (1718); (2) hometowns of Ulster families, with names of the Scotch-Irish in New England from presbytery and synod records (1691-1718); (3) members of the Charitable Irish Society in Boston (1737-1743); (4) names of fathers in the Presbyterian baptismal records in Boston (1730-1736); and (5) names of ships carrying passengers from Ireland to New England (1714-1720). Biographical information, which is to be met with throughout the volume, is rendered instantly accessible by reference to the formidable index.
This collection of thought-provoking essays addresses the complex issues of Ulster Scots history and ethnic identity by viewing them from a transatlantic and comparative perspective. The 11 essays in this volume, originally presented at meetings of the Ulster-American Heritage Symposium by scholars from Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the United States, explore the nature of Scotch-Irish culture by examining values, traditions, demographics, and language. The essays also investigate the process of migration, which transmitted that culture to the New World, and the subsequent assimilation of Celtic ways into American culture. The themes presented are wide-ranging and complex. First is the dyna...