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 dynamic nature of Ulster society in the 17th and 18th centuries and the rapid changes occurring there, especially those affecting Presbyterianism and community cohesiveness. Also examined is the experience of migration, asking such questions as who migrated and when, what their expectations were, and how closely colonial reality matched those expectations. A third theme is the development of economic strategies and community-building both in Ulster and North America, making important contributions to the "new rural history" and explaining the success of the Scotch-Irish on the American frontier. Finally, the volume addresses ethnic identity and cultural diffusion, advancing the ongoing debate initiated by Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney and elaborated on by David Hackett Fischer. Ulster and North America illustrates the value of transatlantic dialog and of comparative studies for the understanding of ethnicity and migration history.

In Ulster to America: The Scots-Irish Migration Experience, 1680–1830, editor Warren R. Hofstra has gathered contributions from pioneering scholars who are rewriting the history of the Scots-Irish. In addition to presenting fresh information based on thorough and detailed research, they offer cutting-edge interpretations that help explain the Scots-Irish experience in the United States. In place of implacable Scots-Irish individualism, the writers stress the urge to build communities among Ulster immigrants. In place of rootlessness and isolation, the authors point to the trans-Atlantic continuity of Scots-Irish settlement and the presence of Germans and Anglo-Americans in so-called Scots-Irish areas. In a variety of ways, the book asserts, the Scots-Irish actually modified or abandoned some of their own cultural traits as a result of interacting with people of other backgrounds and in response to many of the main themes defining American history. While the Scots-Irish myth has proved useful over time to various groups with their own agendas—including modern-day conservatives and fundamentalist Christians—this book, by clearing away long-standing but erroneous ideas about the Scots-Irish, represents a major advance in our understanding of these immigrants. It also places Scots-Irish migration within the broader context of the historiographical construct of the Atlantic world. Organized in chronological and migratory order, this volume includes contributions on specific U.S. centers for Ulster immigrants: New Castle, Delaware; Donegal Springs, Pennsylvania; Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Opequon, Virginia; the Virginia frontier; the Carolina backcountry; southwestern Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. Ulster to America is essential reading for scholars and students of American history, immigration history, local history, and the colonial era, as well as all those who seek a fuller understanding of the Scots-Irish immigrant story.

During the course of the eighteenth century, migration from Europe and Africa shaped the emerging consciousness and culture of the American Colonies. Whether free, bond servant, or slave, migrants brought skills and folkways from their motherlands, contributing to the agricultural and commercial development as well as to the peopling of North America. Emigrants from Ulster, the northern province of Ireland, did all of this and more. Ulster exported an economy. This book tells the story of the transatlantic links between Ulster and America in the eighteenth century. The author draws upon a remarkable range of sources gleaned from numerous repositories in America and Ireland as he explores the realities of life and work for the merchants. The trading networks and connections established and the economic background to the period are examined in some detail. This volume provides fascinating insights into the connections between Ulster and Colonial America through the experiences of the Scotch-Irish merchants.

Publisher Description

Wayland's sketches of Rockingham County natives and other persons who had become identified with the county or the City of Harrisonburg reflect a wide variety of occupations, achievements and interests inasmuch as they include farmers, businessmen, educators, preachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, jurists, statesmen, soldiers, writers, and so on. Part I, the larger of the two components of the volume, consists of extended biographical sketches, with accompanying portraits, of Wayland's contemporaries. The subjects' careers and civic interests are covered in some detail, as is each individual's date and place of birth--and sometimes death-- and the names and dates associated with the subject's marriages and children. Part II features shorter, un-illustrated essays of a few hundred Rockingham County luminaries of bygone years, any number of whose lines are extended back to the 1700s.

"The acknowledged work of scholarship on the migration in the eighteenth century of a quarter of a million people from Ulster to the New World. It combines detailed investigation of the economic, social and political background to the exodus with information on the emigrant trade and an analysis of the motivations and origins of the emigrants themselves"--Back cover.

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.

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.

Scholars from Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the US examine the dynamic nature of Ulster in the 17th and 18th centuries, the experience of migration, the development of economic strategies and community building in both Ulster and North America, and ethnic identity and cultural diffusion. The 11 essays were selected from biennial meetings of the Ulster-American Heritage Symposium since 1976. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Originally published in 1973, the emphasis of this study is on the Scottish settlers during the first quarter of the 17th Century. It shows that the ‘Plantation’, although a milestone in Ireland’s past is also of considerable importance in Scotland’s history. The society that produced Scottish settlers is examined and the reasons why they left their homeland analysed. The book explains what effect the Scottish migration had upon both Ireland and Scotland and assesses the extent to which James I was personally involved in the promotion of the ‘Plantation’ scheme.