AMERICA'S OTHER IRISH

Long before the Great Famine, immigrants from the north of Ireland - mostly Presbyterians of Scots heritage - profoundly influenced American history and culture.

The mass migration of the Irish to America resulting from the Great Potato Famine of the mid-19th century is a familiar story. That subject was brilliantly treated in the 1995 public television documentary Out of Ireland and the 1998 series The Long Journey Home: The Irish in America.  But much less is generally known about another, earlier wave of immigration from Ireland that also had a profound influence on what it means to be American.  Redwine Productions of Atlanta is planning  to tell this compelling story in a long-overdue public television documentary. 

For a 100-year period beginning in 1717, a roughly estimated 250,000 people left  Ireland's northern province of Ulster in quest of a better life in  America. They were largely the Protestant descendents of Scottish settlers who had colonized the north of Ireland for the British Crown in the 1600's.  The people commonly referred to in America as the "Scotch-Irish" or "Scots-Irish" became one of the dominant European groups populating the American colonies, and they are among the ancestors of probably most white and many non-whites in the South and West today. 

This documentary, presently in pre-production, will explore provocative questions about these immigrants from Ulster and their progeny.  How vital was their role in the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the pioneering of the frontiers?  How did the Presbyterian Church they spread in America develop into modern Presbyterianism?  Were they primarily responsible for the American ideal of universal education?  If so, how did they come to be identified with the stereotype of isolated, under-educated Appalachian folk?   What does the story of their settlement in Appalachia leave out of their history?  How significantly did their culture affect Southern speech, country music, and other enduring cultural characteristics that define the South?  Were they the dominant influence on present-day American's most widely held political, religious, and social values?  Did they, as some contend, infuse the American socio-political landscape with militarism, conservative individualism, and Christian fundamentalism?

In short, did the Scotch-Irish simply melt into mainstream America?  Or did they

                                                create it?

                          The Over Mountain Men and the Battle of King's Mountain. www.weatherfordmortuary.com