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I have been told this but I can't find anything to back it up, I think West Virginia is completely in Appalachia so this would be a good place to start
A good many of them are descendant from Ulster Scots, or 'Scots-Irish' as they were known here. I believe they started settling the old 'western frontier' past the Quaker colonies and lands in PA, then spread southward.
WV is the only state entirely in Appalachia. I do recall seeing a documentary (Nat. Geo, or Discovery I think) that said a majority of the early settlers to WV were Scottish. I think they took to the rugged terrain and climate, as it wasn't too far from what they were used to in the Scottish Highlands.
While in Ulster the Scots multiplied, but after roughly 100 years they became dissatisfied with the trade and religious restrictions imposed by England, and numbers of them began emigrating to the English colonies in America.
Many of these Scots who now called themselves the "Scotch-Irish" came into Pennsylvania where, finding the better lands already settled by the English, they began to move south and west. "Their enterprise and pioneering spirit made them the most important element in the vigorous frontiersmen who opened up this part of the South and later other territories farther west into which they pushed."2
Besides the Scots who arrived from Ireland, more came directly from Scotland to America, particularly after "the '45", the final Jacobite uprising in support of "Bonnie Prince Charlie," the Young Pretender, which ended disastrously for the Scottish clans that supported him. By the time of the American Revolution there were about 50,000 Scots in this country.
Of all the migrations to America previous to the days of steamships, this was by far the largest in volume. One week of 1727 landed six ship-loads at Philadelphia. In the two years 1773 and 1774 more than 30,000 came. In 1770 one third of the population of Pennsylvania was Scotch-Irish. Altogether, between 1730 and 1770, I think it probable that at least half a million souls were transferred from Ulster to the American colonies, making not less than one sixth part of our population at the time of the Revolution. Of these, very few came to New England; among their descendants were the soldiers John Stark and Henry Knox, and more lately the great naturalist Asa Gray. Those who went to Pennsylvania received grants of land in the western mountain region. The policy of the government was to interpose them as a buffer between the expanding colony and the Indian frontier. Once planted in the Alleghany region, they spread rapidly and in large numbers toward the southwest along the mountain country through the Shenandoah Valley and into the Carolinas. At a later time they formed almost the entire population of West Virginia, and they were the men who chiefly built up the commonwealths of Kentucky and Tennessee. Among these Scotch-Irish were the Breckinridges, Alexanders, Lewises, Prestons, Campbells, Pickenses, Stuarts, McDowells, Johnstons, and Rutledges; Richard Montgomery, Anthony Wayne, Daniel Boone, James Robertson, George Rogers Clark, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Benton, Samuel Houston, John Caldwell Calhoun, Stonewall Jackson. It was chiefly Scotch-Irish troops that won the pivotal battle at King's Mountain, that crushed the Indians of Alabama, and overthrew Wellington's veterans of the Spanish peninsula in that brief but acute agony at New Orleans. When our Civil War came these men were a great power on both sides, but the influence of the chief mass of them was exerted on the side of the Union; it held Kentucky and a large part of Tennessee, and broke Virginia in twain.
It was about 1730 that the Scotch-Irish began to pour into the Shenandoah Valley. "Governor Gooch was then dispensing the Valley lands so freely and indiscriminately that one Jacob Stover, it is said, secured many acres by giving his cattle human names as settlers; and a young woman, by dressing in various disguises of masculine attire, obtained several large farms." [2] Small farms, however, came to be the rule. The first Scotch-Irish settled along the Opequon River; and their very oldest churches, the Tuscarora Meeting-house near Martinsburg and the Opequon Church near Winchester, are still standing. The Germans were not long in following them, and we see their mark on the map in such names as Strasburg and Hamburg.
I was under the impression that many of the originals in WV were of Italian or German heritage...? I'm aware that Scotch-Irish were probably the majority, but weren't the the Irish and Germans here in large amounts as well?
Scots-Irish were among the first to settle in the Western VA/Western PA region.
The Germans settled the Maryland / Eastern WV valleys, PA and OH first (They call it Pennsylvania-Dutch country when it actually meant PA 'Duetsch' (German). ) The Scots-Irish then came in and moved to the hills and scrabble farmed.
The Italians came in the 1900's, primarily to satisfy labor shortages in the coal mines.
At least that's my recollection of settlement activity around here. The Eastern Panahandle had a pretty large German settlement, as well as did Frederick MD and Hagerstown MD. Go west of there, into the hills and they started to thin out a bit.
Many of the Germans were mercenaries left here after the war... Revolutionary War...and religion of the region had a lot to do with everybodies settling west of the Alleghenies...
The Irish, Scots and refuge from the English prisons usually came to Philadelphia or Baltimore, married a woman on the dock and headed toward what became the Pennsylvannia Turnpike at what became Harrisburg... then Pittsburgh..
Southern route (1783)was more difficult...Winchester, Cumberland, Uniontown then Morgantown or Pittsburgh.
The other route into Wv was Winchester, Moorefield, Mouth of Seneca, Beverly/Elkins/Buckhannon.
The (only) two mountain passes made it almost impossible to come into Wv.
Most coming from England expected navigatable rivers for transportation...
George Washington asked Fredrick Ice at Ice's Ferry (Cheat Lake) about the possiblility of cutting a canal through the mountains...laughed himself off his stool. But George did build it to Cumberland...major transporter of goods (rye whiskey)to the eastern seaboard.
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