Quote:
Originally Posted by ABQConvict
Scots-Irish is a confusing term for many Americans.
Many people have been told that their family is descended from Scots-Irish and assume that means an Irish Celtic cultural background rather than the Anglo-Saxon culture of the Scottish lowlands.
They were also supporters of King William of Orange which, according to some scholars, is the etymological origin of the term hillbilly.
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Your spot on re the different backgrounds. Yes, I have read that too about the term hillbilly. James Webb in his Born Fighting mentions how his grandparents had the stories handed down from them of King Billy and the Siege. Some lines from Ulster Sails West.
Morever, it is interesting to note that they did not regard themselves as Irish. In fact, nothing infuriated them more than to be classed as Irish.
''It made my blood boil,'' said William Smith, ''to hear ourselves called a parcel of Irish.''
They protested violently when American people and American officials described them in this way. They were, they said with great indignation, people of the Scottish nation in Ulster who had given their strength and substance and lives to uphold the British connection there, and it was hard, in this new land, to be identified with the very people to whom they had always been opposed.
It need hardly be said that these emigrants of 1718 were a tough people. They were settled on the Indian border, and were an efficient protection to the province,which was what they were intended to be, and was , indeed, the reason why they were at first welcomed by the earlier colonists. They were a terror to the Indians, and they soon gained a reputation for fighting and pugnacity that often left them in bad odour with the Quakers and the State Authorities.
It is recorded of the New Londonderry men that their arrival and settlement on the frontier were resented by some colonists nearby, who organised an expedition to drive out the newcomers by force. When these people arrived at the edge of the clearing, they found the Ulster emigrants assembled for worship, their minister in the midst. One good look was sufficient. There was no attack. Very quietly they made for home and I have no doubt it was the best of their play.
For it was not for nothing that the new township was called Londonderry. Many of the settlers were veterans of the famous siege, and that siege was one of their proudest memories. It is recorded that the song most frequently sung round their firesides was the ballad of the Boyne Water. Oldish men who had starved and fought on 'Derry's walls, and youngish men reared in that tradition were not men to be trifled with.
Their minister was the Rev. James McGregore, a Londonderry veteran himself. It was his boast that he had fired the great gun which announced the coming of the relief ships. On his death, he was succeeded by the Rev. Matthew Clark, of Boveedy, another Londonderry soldier, who bore the scar of a siege wound on his temple all his life after.
It was recently said of James McGregore that there was no minister of that name in Londonderry during the siege. But, like his successor in New Londonderry, he was a soldier before he became minister. They can still show you in New Londonderry the musket that he took with him into his pulpit, while the worshipers took theirs into the pews.
They can still tell you that when Matthew Clark lay dying in New Hampshire he directed that none should touch his coffin or carry it to the grave except the men who had fought beside him on 'Derry's walls.
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so you are away ahead of me. 
