Scotch-Irish Americans

American descendants of Ulster Scots

Scotch-Irish (or Scots-Irish) Americans are American descendants of Ulster Protestants who immigrated from northern Ireland to America during the 18th and 19th centuries, whose ancestors had originally migrated mainly from the Scottish Lowlands and northern England (and sometimes from the Anglo-Scottish border).[5][6]

Scotch-Irish Americans
Total population
Self-identified "Scotch-Irish"
3,007,722 (2017)[1]
0.9% of the US population
Estimate of Scots-Irish total
27,000,000 (2004)[2][3]
Up to 9.2 % of the U.S. population (2004)[4]
Regions with significant populations
California, Texas, North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania
Languages
English (American English dialects), Ulster Scots, Scots
Religion
Predominantly
Calvinist (Presbyterian, Baptist, Quaker, Congregationalist) with a minority Methodist, Anglican, or Episcopalian
Related ethnic groups
Ulster Protestants, Ulster Scots, Anglo-Irish, English, Huguenots, Welsh, Manx, Irish Americans, Scottish Americans, English Americans, American ancestry

References change

  1. "Selected Social Characteristics in the United States (DP02): 2017 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates". U.S. Census Bureau. Archived from the original on February 13, 2020. Retrieved October 14, 2018.
  2. Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), front flap: '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.' ISBN 0-7679-1688-3
  3. Webb, James (October 23, 2004). "Secret GOP Weapon: The Scots Irish Vote". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 7, 2008.
  4. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2004–2005 (PDF) (Report). United States Census Bureau. August 26, 2004. p. 8. Retrieved June 6, 2019.
  5. Dolan, Jay P. (2008). The Irish Americans: A History. Bloomsbury Press. p. x. ISBN 978-1596914193. The term [Scotch-Irish] had been in use during the eighteenth century to designate Ulster Presbyterians who had emigrated to the United States. From the mid-1700s through the early 1800s, however, the term Irish was more widely used to identify both Catholic and Protestant Irish. As long as the Protestants comprised the majority of the emigrants, as they did until the 1830s, they were happy to be known simply as Irish. But as political and religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants both in Ireland and the United States became more frequent, and as Catholic emigrants began to outnumber Protestants, the term Irish became synonymous with Irish Catholics. As a result, Scotch-Irish became the customary term to describe Protestants of Irish descent. By adopting this new identity, Irish Protestants in America dissociated themselves from Irish Catholics... The famine migration of the 1840s and '50s that sent waves of poor Irish Catholics to the United States together with the rise in anti-Catholicism intensified this attitude. In no way did Irish Protestants want to be identified with these ragged newcomers.
  6. Scholarly estimates vary, but here are a few: "more than a quarter-million", Fischer, David Hackett, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America Oxford University Press, USA (March 14, 1989), pg. 606; "200,000", Rouse, Parke Jr., The Great Wagon Road, Dietz Press, 2004, pg. 32; "...250,000 people left for America between 1717 and 1800...20,000 were Anglo-Irish, 20,000 were Gaelic Irish, and the remainder Ulster-Scots or Scotch-Irish...", Blethen, H.T. & Wood, C.W., From Ulster to Carolina, North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 2005, pg. 22; "more than 100,000", Griffin, Patrick, The People with No Name, Princeton University Press, 2001, pg 1; "200,000", Leyburn, James G., The Scotch-Irish: A Social History, University of North Carolina Press, 1962, pg. 180; "225,000", Hansen, Marcus L., The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860, Cambridge, Mass, 1940, pg. 41; "250,000", Dunaway, Wayland F. The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, Genealogical Publishing Co (1944), pg. 41; "300,000", Barck, O.T. & Lefler, H.T., Colonial America, New York (1958), pg. 285.