The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania: A Varied People

Abstract

The history of the Scots Irish (sometimes called the Ulster Scots or Scotch Irish) is important for an understanding of both Irish and early American history. Lowland Scots, who were Presbyterians, were encouraged to settle in northern Ireland as part of a plan to colonize Ulster with Protestants after the wars of the seventeenth century. By the early eighteenth century, the province may have included as many as two hundred thousand Scots Irish. Changing circumstances in Ireland reduced their economic opportunities and placed these dissenting Protestants on a social and political status not much different from that of dissenting Catholics. These conditions prompted several waves of migration in the eighteenth century to the North American colonies. Pennsylvania, as Judith Ridner shows, attracted the Scots Irish because Philadelphia was a major port, and, more importantly, because it had no established church and welcomed Presbyterians. These people settled both in Philadelphia and the Delaware River valley as merchants and professionals, and also in the frontier regions of western Pennsylvania as farmers. This has given rise to two traditions associated with the Scots Irish that Ridner points out: one of rapid assimilation, upward mobility, and economic and political success, on the one hand, and one of hardscrabble, Indian-fighting frontiersmen on the other. The incredible story of Andrew Jackson, she asserts, embodied both of these images.