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The story is not so generally known as it should be, even in Ulster. Much publicity has been given to the fact that a large number of United States Presidents have had the Ulster blood, and Press references to great Americans of Ulster stock have not been uncommon. Due credit must also be given to historians who have recorded the emigration of Ulster people to America in the 18th century, and have examined the general situation which produced it. But the average man is not a student of history, and such knowledge of it as he may be expected to acquire must come to him in handy and popular form. Hitherto no brief yet comprehensive outline of Ulster's mark on the United States has been available.
And this need is the more urgent, now that the American flag so often decorates our Ulster countryside, and we have ceased to stare at American soldiers walking in our streets.* (1943) Few of these welcome friends have heard our story. For in America too, the average man is not a student, and the work done by his own historians does not come readily to his hand and eye.
Moreover, in America itself, and far outside it, our story has been overshadowed by the story of the Puritan achievement in New England, and the story of the Cavalier achievement in Virginia. These people had the start of our people in America, and their stories got the start of any other.
But, after all, the story of 'Ulster and America' has been often confused with that of 'Ireland in America.' It has been frequently acclaimed as the Irish contribution to the making of the United States. To so acclaim it is not unfair, so long as we make clear the part of the island the contribution came from. What is most unfair and dishonest is to claim this contribution as Irish, and then use it as the basis of propaganda against the Ulster that made it.
Now to estimate the Ulster achievement it is necessary, first of all, to prove that an achievement was possible. It is necessary to prove that Ulster people were in America in sufficient numbers to make possible a great Ulster contribution to the United States. My first task, therefore, is to make it clear that from the year 1718, and all though that century a continuous stream of emigration poured from the north of the island, a stream that, at frequent intervals, became a roaring flood. This great outflow was almost entirely Protestant, and mainly Presbyterian.
Why?
Some words need to be said here about the causes of this emigration. There was a variety of causes, all of which influenced, more or less, the people concerned.
There was religion. After the siege of Londonderry, a certain amount of toleration was granted to Presbyterians, out of gratitude for services rendered by them during the war. But there were still grievances that were un-redressed. The validity of Presbyterian marriages was denied.1 Dissenters were barred from teaching in schools. They were compelled to serve as church-wardens. They were often not allowed to bury their dead without the funeral service of the Established Church. Moreover, in the reign of Queen Anne, the Sacramental Test for all office-holders was restored, and there was considerable interferences with Presbyterian ministers and Presbyterian worship.2 This curtailment of toleration roused much resentment, and many Presbyterians regarded it as black ingratitude. They recalled that without their services Londonderry could not have been held, and King William would have been left without a bridge-head in Ireland.
After the siege of Londonderry rents were low. Leases were granted on easy terms, for landlords were eager to get tenants;17 but when these leases ran out, the rents were raised to an exorbitant figure.18 Finally about fifty years after the emigration began, the leases on Lord Donegall's estate expired, and the rents were then so greatly advanced that thousands of tenants were unable to pay them. The tenants were evicted in great numbers and these Antrim evictions resulted in a wholesale emigration to North America.19 They arrived in time to swell Washington's army, and as Froude puts it : ''the foremost, the most irreconcilable, the most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last extremity, were those whom the Bishops and Lord Donegall and company had been pleased to drive out of Ulster.''20 We can truly say, then, of these Ulster emigrants in the 18th century, that it was not of their own free will they left their native soil. For various reasons, religious, social and economic, they were compelled to go. As Froude says, they were driven out.21
Aye indeed. They were in the vanguard of the push west. The pics are from God's Frontiersmen which I reckon as the best of all the books about the Ulster-Scots. Ulster Sails West and James Webb's Born Fighting are the other two. Read Born Fighting and about half of it is about the Southern States but still the other half is about the Ulster connection.
That's why I don't like the term Scots-Irish, people think they are either Scottish or Irish, while in fact they have no Irish ancestry. Ulster Americans would be a much better term. The author Jim Webb say they are about 27 million and I think that's a fair estimation. I'm really into the topic right now and I try to know which states have more Scots-Irish ancestry .
The fading of the green: Fewer Americans identify as Irish
In 2015, 32.7 million Americans, or one-in-ten, identified themselves as being of Irish ancestry, making it the second-largest ancestry group in the U.S. after Germans. In addition, nearly 3 million Americans claimed Scotch-Irish ancestry, or just under 1% of the entire population. (The Scotch-Irish were mainly Ulster Protestants who migrated to the British colonies in the decades before independence, while Irish Catholics didn’t begin arriving in large numbers until the 1840s.) By comparison, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have a combined population of about 6.6 million
The Scotch-Irish, who arrived earlier than the Irish in the early 1700s, moved to the more mountainous interior of what were then Britain’s American colonies. To this day, the states with the highest share of residents claiming Scotch-Irish ancestry are North Carolina (2.6%), South Carolina (2.4%), Tennessee (2.2%) and West Virginia (2.0%).
The Census Bureau has asked Americans to identify their ethnic ancestry since 1980, and annually since 2005. Because they can pick one or two, we counted everyone who chose Irish or Scotch-Irish as their primary or secondary ancestry. We used one-year estimates for nationwide Irish and Scotch-Irish populations, and 2011-2015 five-year estimates for state-level populations.
One of my many-times great-grandfathers, Samuel Ferguson, came to America from Ulster and settled in Virginia, fought in the Revolutionary War, and moved further west in Virginia and died in Wayne County, WV, in 1825. He was married to Mary Jameson who died in 1827. Here's his will
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