This is an extract taken from a book 'The End of an Era' by John Sergeant Wise. Published by Houghton,Mifflin and Company Boston and New York 1899.
Shortly prior to 1732, an immense number of Scotch-Irish[Ulster-Scots] and Germans poured into Pennsylvania and the Jerseys. Within thirty years, the population of Pennsylvania increased from about thirty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand. The Scotsmen, who, for religious liberty, had originally sought the north of Ireland, were the people who saved Ireland to William and Mary from Catholic James. Their loyalty was rewarded by new persecutions for non- conformity, until they resolved to seek asylum in America. So, also, about the same time came to America a great migration of German Lutherans, who were induced to settle in Pennsylvania. The Scotsmen occupied the regions about Princeton, New Jersey, Easton, Carlisle, and Washington. The Germans settled about York, Lancaster, Columbia, and Harrisburg. Governor Logan, himself a Scotch-Irishman,[Ulster-Scot] enforced some laws about 1730 which were so offensive to the Presbyterians and Lutherans that great numbers of them left the Pennsylvania colony, crossed the Potomac west of the Blue Ridge, in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry, entered Virginia, and settled the Blue Ridge valley.
As if by agreement, the two bands separated. The lethargic Germans, as soon as they escaped the Pennsylvania jurisdiction, occupied the lower valley from Harper's Ferry to Harrisonburg. The aggressive Scotch Irish pressed on to the upper valley, then called West Augusta, now divided into the counties of Augusta Rockbridge, Botetourt, Roanoke, and Montgomery. From then until now, the two races have retained possession of and dominated their respective settlements.
And a very striking race of men are these Scotch-Irish so called yet with nothing Irish about them save them for a little while they tarried in Ireland. Hated by Irish because they were Protestants, persecuted by the English because they were Presbyterians, they in turn cordially detested both, and, in our Revolutionary struggles were among the earliest and most intense rebels against the king. For liberty, as they conceived it, whether it was liberty of conscience or liberty of the person, the Scotch-Irishmen and their descendants have never hesitated to sacrifice comfort, fortune, or life. Their mountain origin has always manifested itself by the places they have chosen in their migrations. The few who went to the Puritan settlements of New England soon moved from among them and sought the inhospitable highlands of New Hampshire, where they bestowed on their new settlement the name of Londonderry. The little band who found asylum among the Dutch of New York pressed onward from uncongenial associates to the mountainous frontier, and named the county where they settled Ulster, in memory of their Irish home. Those who wearied of Pennsylvania and went to Virginia avoided the light society of the Cavaliers in Tidewater and Piedmont, preferring the mountain wilds of West Augusta.
Wherever they appeared, they seemed to be seeking for some secluded spot, where, undisturbed by any other sect, they might enjoy liberty unrestrained, and worship God after their own fashion.
And great have they been as pioneers. They populated western New England, northern New York, western Pennsylvania, and the Virginia valley. Then they pressed onward through western North Carolina, even to northern South Carolina. Then they spread westward through Cumberland Gap to the settlement of Kentucky. In later days, their Lewis and their Clarke were the explorers of the Northwest; another Lewis was the first to view Pike's Peak, and even the territory of Texas was in part reclaimed by Sam Houston, son of a Rockbridge County Presbyterian. The pioneer work of the Scotch- Irish has been greater than that of all other races in America combined.
Great also have they been as fighters. John Lewis, their first leader in the Virginia valley, was the terror of the frontier Indians from the day of his arrival. Never after his coming did the Indians come east of the Blue Ridge. Another Scotch- Irishman, Patrick Henry, uttered the immortal sentence, "Give me liberty or give me death."
General Henry Knox, of Revolutionary fame, the only New England representative in Washington's cabinet, was a Scotch-Irishman.
It was the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg, North Carolina, who framed the first resolutions embodying the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It was of the Scotch-Irish and their valley home that Washington was speaking when, in the darkest hours of the Revolution, he declared that, if the worst came to the worst, he would retire to the mountain fastnesses of West Augusta, and there, with a few of his brave followers about him, defy forever the power of Great Britain. It was from the same spot that Stonewall Jackson, another of the stock, went forth in our great civil war, followed by his brave men of Scotch-Irish ancestry recruited here, to revive, by his grim prowess and their unshaken valor, the mentors of Old Ironsides and his Presbyterians.
And great have they been as disseminators of learning. They founded the ancient college of New Jersey now known as Princeton University. To their efforts are we indebted for the colleges of La Fayette at Easton and Washington Jefferson College at Washington in Pennsylvania and Liberty Hall Academy, now called Washington and Lee University, at Lexington, Virginia; and Chapel Hill in North Carolina.
And successful politicians and statesmen have they been; for Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses S. Grant, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley were all rich in this Scotch-Irish blood.
In his great work upon the Puritans, Douglass Campbell has admirably sketched the Scotch-Irish. Much has been written of them of late years by writers less distinguished and just now Professor John Fiske, under the title of "Old Virginia and her Neighbors," has published a most interesting account of the great Scotch-Irish migration and its influences on our American civilization.
At Lexington, Virginia, these folk were and are, as their ancestors have been for centuries, men of earnest, thoughtful, and religious natures; simple in their lives to the point of severity, sometimes severe to the point of simplicity; intense in their religious fervor, yet strangely lacking, as it seems to us, in that quality of mercy which is the greatest attribute of religion; loving and possessing education, yet often narrow-minded, in spite of thorough training; almost ascetics in their wants, not bountifully hospitable, but reasonably courteous and considerate towards strangers, and methodically charitable; regarding revelry and dissipation of body or mind as worthy of supreme contempt; of dogged obstinacy, pertinacity, and courage; dominant forces in all things wherein they take a part.
I had heard of their race, and heard them described, long before I went there; and now I was among them, - those old McDowells, and McLaughlins, and McClungs and Jacksons, and Paxtons, and Rosses, and Grahams and Andersons, and Campbells, and Prestons, and Moores and Houstons, and Barclays, and Comptons, and all the tribe of Presbyterians of the valley. All they possessed, and what they were, I curiously scrutinized as a type of humanity wholly new to me.
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