Scotch-Irish Americans

==Terminology==
The term is first known to have been used for Scottish Catholics in Ireland. In a letter of April 14, 1573, in reference to descendants of "[[gallowglass]]" mercenaries from Scotland who had settled in Ireland, [[Elizabeth I]] of England wrote:

<blockquote>We are given to understand that a nobleman named [[Sorley Boy MacDonnell]] and others, who be of the Scotch-Irish race&nbsp;...<ref>''Calendar of Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery,'' as cited in Leyburn, op. cit., 329.</ref></blockquote>

This term continued in usage for over a century<ref>H. Dalrymple, ''Decisions of the Court of Sessions from 1698 to 1718,'' ed. by Bell and Bradfute (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1792), 1:73/29. See ''Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue,'' s.v. toung.</ref> before the earliest known American reference appeared in a Maryland affidavit in 1689–90.<ref>"William Pattent was at worke at James Minders and one night as I was at worke Mr Matt: Scarbrough came into the house of sd Minders and sett down by me as I was at work, the sd Minder askt him if he came afoot, he made answer again and sd he did, saying that man, meaning me, calling me Rogue makes me goe afoot, also makes it his business to goe from house to house to ruinate me, my Wife and Children for ever. I made answer is it I Mr. Scarbrough(?) and he replyed and said ay you, you Rogue, for which doing ile whip you and make my Wife whipp to whipp you, and I answered if ever I have abused (you) at any time, or to any bodies hearing, I will give you full satisfaction to your own Content. (At which Scarbrough said) You Scotch Irish dogg it was you, with that he gave me a blow on the face saying it was no more sin to kill me then to kill a dogg, or any Scotch Irish dogg, giving me another blow in the face. now saying goe to yr god that Rogue and have a warrant for me and I will answer it." Wm. Patent</ref>{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

''Scotch-Irish,'' according to James Leyburn, "is an Americanism, generally unknown in Scotland and Ireland, and rarely used by British historians".<ref>Leyburn p xi.</ref> It became common in the United States after 1850.<ref>Leyburn p. 331.</ref> The term is somewhat ambiguous because some of the Scotch-Irish have little or no Scottish ancestry at all: numerous dissenter families had also been transplanted to Ulster from northern England, in particular the border counties of [[Northumberland]] and [[Cumberland]].<ref>{{cite book|first=A. L.|last=Rowse|author-link=A. L. Rowse|title=The Expansion of Elizabethan England|url=https://archive.org/details/expansionofeliza00rows|url-access=registration|publisher=[[Charles Scribner's Sons]]|place=New York|year=1972|orig-year=1955|page=[https://archive.org/details/expansionofeliza00rows/page/28 28]|isbn=9780684130637|quote=This the Grahams did not grasp, and the government swept down on them with a measure for transplanting them to Ireland, where James's epoch-making Plantation of Ulster was transforming the landscape. A tax was levied on [[Cumberland]] to pay for their removal, "to the intent their lands may be inhabited by others of good and honest conversation". Three boat-loads of them left from [[Workington]] in 1606 and 1607&nbsp;...}}</ref> Smaller numbers of migrants also came from [[Wales]], the [[Isle of Man]], and the southeast of England,<ref>{{cite book|last=Robinson|first=Philip S.|title=The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600–1670|edition=2nd|publisher=Ulster Historical Foundation|orig-year=1984|year=2000|isbn=978-1903688007|page=113|quote=Areas of English settlement in County Londonderry, north Armagh, south-west Antrim and Fermanagh support the assumption that most non-Presbyterian British were of English stock. In places these "English" settlers included Welsh and Manx men.}}</ref> and others were Protestant religious refugees from [[Flanders]], the [[German Palatines|German Palatinate]], and France (such as the French [[Huguenot]] ancestors of [[Davy Crockett]]).<ref>Robinson, Philip, ''The Plantation of Ulster'', [[St. Martin's Press]], 1984, pp. 109–128</ref> What united these different national groups was a base of [[Calvinist]] religious beliefs,<ref>Hanna, Charles A., ''The Scotch-Irish: or the Scot in North Britain, North Ireland, and North America,'' G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1902, p. 163</ref> and their separation from the [[State church|established church]] (the [[Church of England]] and [[Church of Ireland]] in this case). That said, the large ethnic Scottish element in the Plantation of Ulster gave the settlements a Scottish character.

Upon arrival in North America, these migrants at first usually identified simply as Irish, without the qualifier ''Scotch''. It was not until a century later, following the surge in Irish immigration after the [[Great Irish Famine]] of the 1840s, that the descendants of the earlier arrivals began to commonly call themselves "Scotch-Irish" to distinguish themselves from the newer, poor, predominantly Catholic immigrants.<ref>Patrick Fitzgerald, "The Scotch-Irish & the Eighteenth-Century Irish Diaspora". ''History Ireland'' 7.3 (1999): 37–41.</ref><ref name=Dolan>{{cite book|last1=Dolan|first1=Jay P|title=The Irish Americans: A History|date=2008|publisher=Bloomsbury|page=x|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q8BMg6wu7BUC&q=scotch+irish+known+simply+as+irish&pg=PP10|access-date=13 August 2015|chapter=Preface|isbn=9781608190102}}</ref> At first, the two groups had little interaction in America, as the Scots-Irish had become settled many decades earlier, primarily in the backcountry of the [[Appalachian Mountains|Appalachian]] region. The new wave of Catholic Irish settled primarily in port cities such as Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, Memphis and New Orleans, where large immigrant communities formed and there were an increasing number of jobs. Many of the new Irish migrants also went to the interior in the 19th century, attracted to jobs on large-scale infrastructure projects such as [[Erie Canal#Impact|canals]] and [[First transcontinental railroad#Laborers|railroads]].<ref name=Leyburn327334>Leyburn 1962, pp. 327–334.</ref>

The usage ''Scots-Irish'' developed in the late 19th century as a relatively recent version of the term. Two early citations include: 1) "a grave, elderly man of the race known in America as 'Scots-Irish{{'"}} (1870);<ref>{{cite book|first=Robert|last=Somers|author-link=Robert Somers|title=The Southern States since the War, 1870–71|year=1965|orig-year=1870|page=239|publisher=[[University of Alabama Press]]}}</ref> and 2) "Dr. Cochran was of stately presence, of fair and florid complexion, features which testified his Scots-Irish descent" (1884).<ref>See [https://books.google.com/books?id=1bMTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA258 ''Magazine of American History'' 1884 p 258]</ref> In [[Ulster Scots dialects|Ulster-Scots]] (or "Ullans"), Scotch-Irish Americans are referred to as the ''Scotch Airish o' Amerikey''.<ref>[http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/ULLANS/2004-11/1101751288 American Presidents], The [[Ulster-Scots Agency]]. Retrieved 27 October 2011.</ref>

Twentieth-century English author [[Kingsley Amis]] endorsed the traditional ''Scotch-Irish'' usage implicitly in noting that "nobody talks about ''butterscottish'' or ''hopscots'',&nbsp;... or ''Scottish pine''", and that while ''Scots'' or ''Scottish'' is how people of Scots origin refer to themselves in Scotland, the traditional English usage ''Scotch'' continues to be appropriate in "compounds and set phrases".<ref>Kingsley Amis, ''The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage'', St. Martin's Griffin, 1999, pp. 198–199.</ref>

===History of the term ''Scotch-Irish''===
[[File:Scotch vs. Scottish.jpg|thumb|An example, showing the usage of Scotch as an adjective, in the 4th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, Edinburgh, Scotland (1800), and modernized to Scottish in the 7th edition (1829).]]

The word "[[Scotch (adjective)|Scotch]]" was the favored adjective for things "''of Scotland''", including people, until the early 19th century, when it was replaced by the word "Scottish". People in [[Scotland]] refer to themselves as Scots, as a noun, or adjectivally/collectively as Scots or [[Scottish people|Scottish]]. The use of "Scotch" as an adjective has been dropped in the UK and Ireland where it is now more commonly regarded as offensive,<ref>{{cite news|title=6 times it's OK to use the word Scotch and why you don't want to get it wrong|work=[[Irish News]]|publisher=[[The Irish News Ltd.]]|date=17 November 2017|url=https://www.irishnews.com/magazine/daily/2017/11/16/news/6-times-it-s-ok-to-use-the-word-scotch-and-why-you-don-t-want-to-get-it-wrong-1189740/}}</ref> but remains in use in the U.S. in place names, names of plants, breeds of dog, a type of tape, a type of [[whiskey]], etc., and in the term Scotch-Irish.

Although referenced by [[Merriam-Webster]] dictionaries as having first appeared in 1744, the American term ''Scotch-Irish'' is undoubtedly older. An affidavit of William Patent, dated March 15, 1689, in a case against a Mr. Matthew Scarbrough in [[Somerset County, Maryland]], quotes Mr. Patent as saying he was told by Scarbrough that "it was no more sin to kill me then to kill a dogg, or any Scotch Irish dogg".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~merle/Articles/OldestUseSI.htm |title=Ancestry.com |publisher=Homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com |access-date=2012-06-04}}</ref>

Leyburn cites the following as early American uses of the term before 1744.<ref name=Leyburn330>Leyburn 1962, p. 330.</ref>
*The earliest is a report in June 1695, by Sir Thomas Laurence, Secretary of Maryland, that "In the two counties of [[Dorchester County, Maryland|Dorchester]] and Somerset, where the Scotch-Irish are numerous, they clothe themselves by their linen and woolen manufactures."
*In September 1723, Rev. George Ross, Rector of Immanuel Church in [[New Castle, Delaware]], wrote in reference to their anti-[[Church of England]] stance that, "They call themselves Scotch-Irish&nbsp;... and the bitterest railers against the church that ever trod upon American ground."
*Another Church of England clergyman from [[Lewes, Delaware]], commented in 1723 that "great numbers of Irish (who usually call themselves Scotch-Irish) have transplanted themselves and their families from the north of Ireland".

The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' says the first use of the term ''Scotch-Irish'' came in Pennsylvania in 1744: 
*1744 [[Witham Marshe|W. MARSHE]] Jrnl. 21 June in ''Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society''. (1801) 1st Ser. VII. 177: "The inhabitants [of [[Lancaster, Pennsylvania]]] are chiefly [[Pennsylvania Dutch|High-Dutch]], Scotch-Irish, some few English families, and unbelieving Israelites." Its citations include examples after that into the late 19th century.

In ''[[Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America]]'', historian [[David Hackett Fischer]] asserts:
<blockquote>
Some historians describe these immigrants as "Ulster Irish" or "Northern Irish". It is true that many sailed from the province of Ulster&nbsp;... part of much larger flow which drew from the lowlands of Scotland, the north of England, and every side of the Irish Sea. Many scholars call these people ''Scotch-Irish''. That expression is an Americanism, rarely used in Britain and much resented by the people to whom it was attached. "We're no Eerish bot Scoatch," one of them was heard to say in Pennsylvania.<ref>Fischer, p. 618.</ref>
</blockquote>

Fischer prefers to speak of "borderers" (referring to the historically war-torn England-Scotland border) as the population ancestral to the "backcountry" "cultural stream" (one of the four major and persistent cultural streams from Ireland and Britain which he identifies in American history). He notes the borderers had substantial [[English people|English]] and [[Scandinavia]]n roots. He describes them as being quite different from Gaelic-speaking groups such as the Scottish Highlanders or Irish (that is, Gaelic-speaking and predominantly Roman Catholic).

An example of the use of the term is found in ''A History of Ulster'': "Ulster Presbyterians – known as the "Scotch Irish" – were already accustomed to being on the move, and clearing and defending their land."<ref>{{cite book|first=Jonathan|last=Bardon|title=A History of Ulster|publisher=Blackstaff Press|place=[[Belfast]]|year=1992|page=210}}</ref>

Many have claimed that such a distinction should not be used, and that those called Scotch-Irish are simply Irish.<ref name=Leyburn327/> Other Irish limit the term ''Irish'' to those of native Gaelic stock, and prefer to describe the [[Ulster Protestants]] as ''British'' (a description many Ulster Protestants have preferred themselves to ''Irish'', at least since the [[Irish Free State]] broke free from the United Kingdom, although ''Ulstermen'' has been adopted in order to maintain a distinction from the native Irish Gaels while retaining a claim to the North of Ireland).<ref>James G. Leyburn (1962). [http://www.irishgenealogy.com/surnames/migration-scotch-irish.htm "The Scotch-Irish"]. In ''The Scotch-Irish: A Social History''. University of North Carolina Press.</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Walker|first=Brian M.|title=We all can be Irish, British or both|work=[[Belfast Telegraph]]|publisher=[[Independent News & Media]]|url=http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/we-all-can-be-irish-british-or-both-31290843.html|date=June 10, 2015}}</ref> However, as one scholar observed in 1944, "in this country [the US], 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.&nbsp;... Here their name is Scotch-Irish; let us call them by it."<ref>Wayland F. Dunaway, ''The Scotch-Irish of Colonial America'', 1944, University of North Carolina Press</ref>
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