Scots Irish Americans are descendants of expert frontiersmen and women. For centuries they defended Scotland’s border with England as elite light cavalry, then when peace arrived they moved to protecting Scottish and English protestants in the north of Ireland from native catholic Irish attacks. They moved to America with a deep sense of betrayal after rents increased despite guarantees given by the new British State. If you are protestant and one of over 30 million Americans who have Irish ancestry, you likely descend from them.
An estimated 200,000 people of Scots-Irish background arrived in colonial America in the fifty years leading up to 1776. They would become the main military force of the Revolution, bringing skills forged by their ancestors over thousands of years living just north of the frontier built by the Roman invaders of Britain.
The term Scots-Irish pops up for the first time in recorded history in 1573. But it was used for an entirely opposite group to those who became known the ‘Scotch Irish’ in America or Ulster-Scots in Ireland. Elizabeth I of England used it in reference to Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlanders who remained Catholic far longer than the rest of their Scottish brethren. Their personal and cultural links to Ireland stretched way back into the mists of time when the Irish colonized the Highlands. Scoti or Scotti is a latin name for the Gaels, which in turn means strangers or foreigners. The Gaels of Ireland and highland Scotland would later merge into one culture in the United States as Irish Catholic Americans.
Before the mid-1800s few in this group moved to America. Instead it was Scottish protestants who lived in Ireland for a few generations at most who arrived in large numbers in the decades leading up to the American Revolution . Many of them called themselves Irish on account of their place of birth or those of their parents and grandparents, but that began to change a century later as Irish Catholics swelled into the ports of the east coast – looking for a better life free of discrimination, poverty and starvation.
History and religion often meant that no love was lost between these two groups and marriages between them were relatively rare, even to this day. The Ulster Scots were descendants of Scottish Lowland families primarily from the south of Scotland and they tended to marry presbyterians, methodists, quakers and other protestant groups particularly the Dutch, Germans, Swedes and English and Welsh. They did however share with the Highlanders and the Irish, their famed love of blood ties and tight-knit clans. This made them very different from other Scottish Lowlanders who tended to be more pragmatic and trade focused. As is often the case, geography and proximity to border regions explains national differences.
In Scotland and England families on both sides of the border were known as Border Reivers. They were expert light cavalrymen who manned the frontier between Scotland and England for countless centuries. When they weren’t fighting each other, they were fighting neighboring clans or even rival kin. After meeting one reiver, Queen Elizabeth I of England is quoted as having said that “with ten thousand such men, James VI could shake any throne in Europe.” When peace finally arrived in the borders after close to eight hundred years of near constant war, the reivers were sent to Ireland to protect protestant colonists against native Irish attacks. There they rapidly proved their worth and they and their families became known as the Ulster Scots or later on, Loyalists. Their descendants are the reason Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom. But many left for America from the late 1600s to the mid 1700s with a deep sense of betrayal and abandonment. The British government failed to protect them from a massive increase in tenant farmer rents or provide adequate military support against an increasingly violent native rebellion that targeted their families. Their traditional role followed them to the American colonies where they were the primary military strength of the patriot army. In future years they were the main reason the ‘West was Won‘- manning the U.S. cavalry when in uniform and strong enough to withstand native attacks when not. Some of their descendants still live in the Appalachians, but the greatest number started out in Pennsylvania and spread out to wherever there was a new frontier.
The origin of American nicknames
In Ireland the Scots-Irish were supporters of the Dutch protestant William of Orange- King Billy as he was known by his supporters. William and his largely protestant Scottish and Ulster-Scots army defeated the Catholic dominated army of the deposed King James made up largely of native Irish and Highland Scots. In America, their rural dwelling descendants are dubbed ‘hillbillies’ because of this connection.
In Scotland the Presbyterian Covenanters who moved en masse to America after their defeat in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, often wore red kerchiefs around their necks, hence the term redneck. As for American ‘Jocks’ that come out of the diminutive form of the Scottish nickname for John.
Read up further on Scottish Americans to discover the fascinating differences between the Scots Irish and the Lowland and Highland Scots who emigrated directly to America from Scotland rather than via a generation or more in the north of Ireland. You’ll also discover more about the crucial role these groups played on both sides of the American Revolution.
