The Scots-Irish
David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed
The tall, raw-boned, people known as Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots began arriving in America from Northern Britain in the 1730's. Some have called their arrival an invasion because they came in great numbers and their culture began to be the dominant one among the Anglo-American population. They immediately began exhibiting their standoffishness. Instead of taking up residence and plentiful jobs along the Atlantic seaboard among the settled populations already there, they headed out into the open country to carve out their small farms (on rented lands). They went looking for land, not jobs. Their land would be their job. They seemed to have been addicted to acquiring land - taking it, using it, wearing it out, and moving over the horizon for more land, repeating this process over and over, always in the vanguard of the American civilization as it moved off the Atlantic slope into the heartland and beyond. Some say had it not been for the Scots Irish, the United States today would still be composed of 13 states, crowded together along the east coast. A term has developed that more accurately describes them than "Scotch Irish." They were Ulster-Americans, the first hyphenated group of immigrants to crowd upon the shore of the New World.
The McAfee, Chisholm, McMahon, McFarland, the Whiteside, and the Kirby families were part of the Scots Irish migration from Northern Ireland to, first Pennsylvania and then south to North Carolina-Tennessee and on southwesterly to Texas. The Deguire family discussed in this essay was French and came to Texas via Quebec after an important sojourn in Missouri. But the Deguire family did not contribute much that was truly gallic -- it was subsumed mostly in the cultural influence of the McFarland, McMahon and Chisholm families.
As pointed out elsewhere in this web essay, my Ulster-American ancestors seemed to migrate westward every generation, never dying in the homeland of their fathers. The original McMahon was William McMachen. He migrated from Scotland to Northern Ireland to America. So the westward movement began long ago. And after he migrated to America, succeeding generations of his sons and grandsons continued the restless movement toward the setting sun, some of then eventually winding up in California, after subjugating Texas.
Once in America the Ulster Scots took up the Pennsylvania Quakers' offer of land even though they knew the Quakers would place them on the dangerous ground between the existing Quaker communities and the outlying areas subject to incursions by marauding Indians. At that time the Indians were winning all the battles. One scholar concluded from his research that for every native American killed by the European intruders 40 settlers were murdered by the Amerinds. By the time the Scots Irish came into contact with native Americans the persona of the Indian had taken on an evil connotation in the Scots Irish consciousness. As difficult and distasteful as it is today, the native American in the eyes of the Scots Irish was something like vermin and had to be stamped out.
Some early Scots Irish immigrants to Pennsylvania were described as follows:
"In October of [1717], a Philadelphia Quaker named Jonathan Dickinson complained that the streets of his city were teeming with "a swarm of people...strangers to our Laws and Customs, and even to our language." These new immigrants dressed in outlandish ways. The men were tall and lean, with hard, weather-beaten faces. They wore felt hats, loose sackcloth shirts close-belted at the waist, baggy trousers, thick yarn stockings and wooden shoes "shod like a horse's feet with iron." The young women startled Quaker Philadelphia by the sensuous appearance of their full bodices, tight waists, bare legs and skirts as scandalously short as an English undershirt. The older women came ashore in long dresses of a curious cut. Some buried their faces in full-sided bonnets; others folded handkerchiefs over their heads in quaint and foreign patterns. The speech of these people was English, but they spoke with a lilting cadence that rang strangely in the ear. Many were desperately poor. But even in their poverty they carried themselves with a fierce and stubborn pride that warned others to treat them with respect." (Quoted from Albion's Seed, by David Hackett Fischer, Oxford University Press, 1989)
The promise of free land offset the indignity of being used as buffers against Indian attacks. They had been used before in a similar fashion when Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, moved them from Scotland to Northern Ireland to act as buffers between the English settlers and the rebellious Irish Catholics. The Scots in Northern Ireland proved superior to the local Irish in ambition and ability. They bested the Irish in every category and were soon running everything in the collection of Irish counties known as Ulster.
When they first came to Ulster the province was a wasteland but the Scots soon turned it into a rich land of bountiful crops and efficient industries. They pioneered the development of the woolen industries and made these products famous world wide. Their hard work and thrift was paying off and Ulster became rich and influential. But their success embittered jealous native Irish and dismayed the less successful English. At the root of their success was their Calvinism, now expressed in the Presbyterian Church, but after several generations in America the Methodists and the Baptists would become the favored religions because both seemed to suit the frontier better than the more-urban oriented Presbyterians.
The Scots' Ulster economy began to suffer when the English government imposed unbearable tariff's on the goods they produced. The government wanted to protect English mercantile interests that could not compete with the resourceful Scots. The English government was raising taxes and creating a new rebelliousness in the Scots. Soon, the Scots began packing up, more than eager to take up the challenge of free land in America. Whole families and sometimes whole church congregations moved.
The Scots had plenty of reasons to distrust the English government (and by extension all governments). They despised the native Irish and their Catholicism. The Catholic religion of Ireland closely resembled the Anglicanism of the English. It seemed to take a theologian to tell the difference between an Anglican and a Catholic. The Scots saw no difference between a prelate and a pope. Either of these roman religions had taxes the scots had to pay to support the government-approved religion. Much of the anti-catholic feelings of the U.S. in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries probably had its roots in these ancient antagonisms. My own mother was somewhat anti Catholic, though not rapidly, but she probably could not have given a reason for her attitude if pressed. Old attitudes have a way of hanging on, even when the reasons were forgotten long ago.
The Scots, after all, were under the spell of Calvin and Knox and they rejected the idea that man needed other men to intercede with God on their behalf. The line of communication between man and God was direct and needed no intermediaries, such as priests and bishops. The Ulster Scots likewise rejected all the medieval pomp and ritual of the Catholic and Anglican faiths as paganism. The Scots wanted to be left alone to practice their religion without interference. McAfee ancestors named Greenwood were always getting into trouble because of their in-your-face Protestantism the English did not like. One Greenwood, one story has it, was slapped into the Tower of London and died for it while, much later, in the English colonies in America, another Greenwood was jailed for preaching an unauthorized religion (meaning Calvinism).
In America, the Ulster Scots learned from the Indians how to grow corn, melons, squash and beans. They also learned, out of necessity, Indian style warfare and quickly became as good or better at it then the Indians themselves. They had already, back in Ulster, made self-reliance into an art form. Except for guns and metal implements they made everything they used themselves.
They lacked money but saw the lack of worldly possessions as a virtue rather than a drawback.They were thoroughly self-disciplined, both by their Puritan ethic and the warlike borderer's life some of them had once led. They had three public virtues
--Thrift, because they had always been poor and Knox taught poverty was a disgrace;
-- Self-reliance, because in the new reformed world every man felt himself something of an island;
-- Industry, agreeing with St. Paul that people who did not work should not eat.
They interpreted the New Testament mainly as a moral destruction of aristocracy and beggardom. Calvin, through Knox, extolled material success and despised human weakness, according to T.R. Fehrenbach in his masterful book, Lone Star. They did not simply move onto land, they attacked it and subdued it, and often ruined it, believing there was enough virgin forest to last forever.
Fehrenbach points out that the Scots Irish would not have understood this characterization of them. They had no intention of destroying the wilderness or the people who lived in it. It was, well, "God helps those who help themselves," and "the devil takes the hindmost."
One of the most powerful characteristics of the Scots Irish was their faith in education - people needed to know how to read and write in order to interpret the Bible for themselves since they felt no need to have priests interceding with God for them. This basic tenet of Calvinism was why in the 18th and 19th centuries in the U.S. the literacy rate was much higher than it probably is today. For examples of the remarkable writing talent that existed in our forefathers (and foremothers), see the various letters included in this website.
The Scots Irish were made for freedom and freedom was made for them. They needed America and America needed them.
The history and the development of the Ulster Scot race is complex and this version of it might be controversial among some scholars.