Musings
and History
Quote
of the day:
“I
has been found that the average American is overweight. This means
that a couple of years ago I was fat but now I am average.”
Jo
Brand
Rather
than local and non-local news Items, I am going to add an essay I
wrote about my Scots-Irish ancestry. I think a great many of us have
Scot-Irish blood along with a dab or two of Creek, Choctaw and/or
Cherokee especially those of us that have roots associated with the
Appalachians. Here it is:
A
Brief History of Rednecks
I
have been reading the history of the impact of the Scots-Irish in
America and naturally the author went back into the far past to trace
them out to present day. By the way it is Scots, not Scotch. Scots
are a people and Scotch is a whiskey. Anyway, the big movement came
right after James I became the King of Great Britain. Previously, he
was James VI of Scotland making him the first of the dual crowned
kings of Great Britain and started the Stuart dynasty. It got
started when James financed the expedition to the new world led by
Captain John Smith. But James' real passion was religion. He could
not abide Catholics and he began a project to oust the Catholic
landowners in Ireland and seize their lands. The Irish Catholics had
been in rebellion against England for centuries and James saw this as
a way of diluting them. This resulted in many Catholic Irish Earls
fleeing the Emerald Isle trying to escape the wrath of the
Protestants and Anglicans. To fill this void, it was decided that a
“plantation” in Ireland in an area called Ulster would be formed.
It consisted of six shires or counties. To fill the void James and
company decided to kill two birds with one stone and offered land in
Ulster to Protestant Scottish lords with the stipulation that they
would bring their Scottish tenants with them. The waspish Scots
would fight at the drop of a hat over anything that interfered with
their independence or messed with the clans, or their tight-fisted
Presbyterian religion. They were a hard-ass bunch, especially the
Borderers or those that lived close to the border with England. As
you might expect, the disenfranchised Catholic Irish fought like hell
to take their lands back to no avail. The Scottish Lords indeed took
the offer and brought their Scottish tenants with them. There was a
stipulation that the Lords could not employ Irish tenants, they had
to import the tenants from England and Scotland and they had to be
English speaking Protestants, moreover the landowners were banned
from selling land to the Irish. Whatever land that was left over was
given to the Protestant Churches of Ireland including any lands
previously owned by the Roman Catholic Church. James meant to
castrate the Catholics in Ireland, y'all. This influx put the
Protestant Irish in Ulster in a hard way because they spoke Gaelic
while everyone else spoke English. As a result of this turmoil there
were civil wars in England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1630 many
Ulster Scots went home because Charles I, the king of England
declared that the Church of Ireland had to use the prayer book of the
Church of England essentially making it an Anglican church. That
would change the way the fiery Scottish Presbyterians practiced their
religion. As I have said before, you don’t pull on Superman’s
cape or spit into the wind and you don’t fool around with the Scots
religion. In 1638 an oath was imposed by King Charles I on the
Ulster Scots binding them to never take up arms against England not
matter what. I don’t need to tell you what kind of hell was raised
after this outrage. By the way, it was King Charles I
presumptuousness that cost him his head as will be discussed in a
future lesson. In 1641 the Irish Catholics rose up in an armed
rebellion and the prime target was the Plantation land owners. Many,
many atrocities were committed by the Irish on the Scottish land
owners in retribution for them taking Irish lands. In the 1690s a
huge immigration of Protestant Scots came over to Ulster during a
famine and as a result the Protestant Scots became the majority. The
planters are known as the Ulster Scots. The present partition of
Ireland with Ireland and Northern Ireland gets it roots from this
era. Northern Ireland is occupied by the progeny of British
Protestants and wanted to keep a link with England whereas the rest
of Ireland are Catholic and want independence. Later on, the Scots
being fed up with restrictions on their religion began heading west
to America. They primarily landed in Philadelphia. They were not
welcomed by the high bred plantation owners on the Virginia, North
Carolina and South Carolina tidewater and not by the snooty Puritans
in the northeast so they headed further west and settled in small
clans in the Appalachian mountain chain starting in western
Pennsylvania and then south and west down the chain into Virginia,
the Carolinas and Georgia. They were encouraged in this endeavor
because of their warlike nature they would be a good match for the
savage Shawnee, Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee, and a good match they
were. There is a legend in my family on my father’s side that one
of my great-great uncles owned a huge chunk of land in Maggie Valley,
NC which is the very heart of Cherokee country, but he could not hold
on to it because of the repeated attacks by the Cherokees. There are
many reports of atrocities committed by both the natives and the
Scots. It is the roots of almost constants turmoil, the love of
fighting and an independent nature, especially their religion, which
the so-called Scots-Irish have in their hearts and souls. Actually,
the Scots-Irish are not a mix of Scots and the Irish; it is Scots
that immigrated to Ulster, Ireland before coming to America and it is
these Ulster Scots that are my ancestors on my father’s side. It
is known that nearly all the troops fighting for the Patriots in the
Revolutionary War in the south were Scots that came down out of the
mountains and using guerrilla type tactics like they use against the
Indians and against the staid and upright British to great effect.
They demonstrated their ferocity at the Battle of Cowpens where
Patriot General Daniel Morgan outmaneuvered the infamous British
Colonel Banastre Tarleton and would have annihilated the entire army
of British/Loyalists but some of them escaped the wrath of Morgan’s
wild-eyed mountain men. But there were no escapees at the Battle of
Kings Mountain. This group of Patriots was led by General John
Sevier and was able to trap British General John Ferguson and his
army of Loyalists on the peak of a mountain by surrounding the base.
General Ferguson fought for a while but then realized that there was
no escape and surrendered. The surrender was not accepted and the
Patriots waded in and either shot or hanged them all to a man. This
massacre was brought about because of Tarleton killing 220 Patriots
that had surrendered but were bayoneted by Tarleton’s troops
angering the Patriots and especially the mountain men. They sought
their revenge and they found it. My ancestry comes from the Holston
Valley of Tennessee and the mountains of Habersham County Georgia.
That’s right folks; I am a Redneck and/or a Cracker albeit a well
read and well spoken one. I am proud of my ancestors.
The
Scots proved their heritage again during the Civil War, some fought
in gray and some fought in blue but they fought with great zeal just
for the sheer joy of it.
This
epistle in no way covers everything that happened to the Ulster Scots
during this time period but it gives you an idea of the mold that
formed them.
Thanks
for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
