The Ulster-Scots and the Making of America

The story of the Ulster-Scots in America begins with movement: across water, across kingdoms, across frontiers, across identities.It begins in the lowlands and borderlands of Scotland, takes root in the northern province of Ireland, and then crosses the Atlantic to become one of the most formative, if often half-forgotten, strands in the making of the United States.This was not a migration of courtiers, grandees, or imperial planners. It was, in the main, the migration of farmers, weavers, ministers, craftsmen, labourers, traders, widows, sons without inheritance, and families who had grown tired of having their future measured out by landlords and bishops.They were people accustomed to hard ground, hard weather, hard preaching, and hard necessity.They did not leave Ulster because they were bored. They left because, for many of them, the old world had become too narrow. Read more