As children growing up in the Pittsburgh area, we were unaware of our Scotch-Irish ancestors, who they were, where they had originated, how they suffered, why they had sought a new land. Our parents may have mentioned that our heritage was Scotch-Irish, but there was never any particular significance attached. And there was little light shed by the public school system which then, and likely today, largely ignored American colonization before 1760. If the teachings of history noticed colonial immigration at all, it was dismissed with a few words, or stories about Pocahontas, John Smith, Miles Standish, the Dutch who settled New York, the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, and William Penn and his Indians. These, and the myths attached to them, were familiar to us school students.

Hollywood films had convinced us children that the "frontier" most certainly must have been somewhere in Arizona, Colorado, or perhaps the Dakotas. There was little to remind us Americans that for at least 150 years of our history, the edge of the "frontier" was the ridge of the Allegheny Mountains, a little more than one hundred miles west of the Atlantic shore.

The early Scotch-Irish settlers comprise a chapter in our country's history that has had no recognition. They played a major role in overcoming the Blue Ridge, the white man's great barrier to westward progress. They opened a crevasse in that great natural dike through which flowed a huge tide of pioneer immigration that launched a great epoch in the history of the country.

The Ulster Scot emigrant to colonial America has failed to attract the attention deserved. At the end of this section, I have included as references a few good accounts. When searching other written material available, one may from time to time recognize the religious and political bias of some authors, or genealogical accounts that restate family myths in ways that cleanse or conveniently overlook unpleasantness.

Question: Where is Ulster anyhow?

Ulster is the historically correct name of the former Irish province, the northern part of which is today's Northern Ireland, a part of Great Britain. The heart of the Ulster Scot's country was County Tyrone, with the counties of Donegal, Londonderry and Antrim along its northern borders to meet the sea. South of County Tyrone are Fermanagh, Monaghan and Armagh, counties not so closely associated with the early Protestant migration. South of Monaghan, bordering the Roman Catholic province of Leinster, is Cavan, and to the east touching Armagh, lies County Down whose shores are less than a dozen miles from Ayrshire in Scotland.

The coastline of Northern Ireland lies on the North Channel connecting the Irish Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. The majority of emigrants to colonial America left the north of Ireland through five ports: Newry in county Down, Belfast, Larne and Portrush in county Antrim, and Londonderry. As the eighteenth century progressed, the size of transatlantic vessels increased and smaller ports like Portrush handled less and less trade with the American colonies .

Question: Wasn't John Fife born in Scotland, not Ulster?

According to Fife family tradition, John Fife and his two brothers, William and Matthew, were born in Scotland. We cannot pinpoint the place of birth. I have researched the LDS Family Center and located John Fife with no information other than his birth in Scotland in the year 1721. While I have no proof to verify any relationship, there is one William Fife who was christened on 4 June 1718 at the Aberdour Parish, Scotland. The father and mother of this William Fife were listed as Andrew Fife and Ann Livingston. Fife family tradition has always estimated that William, brother of John Fife, was born in about 1720, probably in Scotland.

Family tradition states that the Fife brothers migrated to Ulster where the family farmed in the area of Archill, County Tyrone, twenty-two miles from Londonderry. The date of their Ulster immigration is unknown. Refer to my link John Fife, The Pioneer.

Question: Is there a Scottish area named "Fife"?

There is a region in Scotland called "Fife". It lies north of Edinburgh and south of Dundee. The county system is no longer employed by the Scottish government, having been replaced in 1975 by a new system of regions. Today, there are nine regions in Scotland, ranging in area from the largest, Highland, to the smallest, Fife.

In Scotland, there are Highlanders and there are Lowlanders. Some say, with tongue in cheek, that there is no such thing as a Scot. There are various Scots. The Highlander is very Gaelic. He is a member of the Celtic language group which includes the Welsh, the Irish, the Bretons, and the old Scots. Lowland Scots is a form of the English language, a member of the Germanic family. The residents of the Fife region are Lowlanders.

The population of Fife is about 500,000 inhabitants. Today's new system is somewhat arbitrary, and the Scots will alternate between calling the region "Fife" in one breath, and in the next by the older names of either "Fifeshire" or the "Kingdom of Fife". Modern day Scots will often refer to those from Fifeshire as "Fifers".

And all Scots will shudder at the American persistency of referring to the Scots as "Scotch" - the name for whiskey, not people.

I have walked along Fife Ness and visited the little fishing villages which face eastward across the harsh North Sea. Depending on the season, the coastline can be swept by northeast winds originating in Scandinavia. It is an area perhaps best known to American sportsmen as the home of the Royal and Ancient, the home of the game of golf - St. Andrews.

Question: So why did the Scots go to Ulster?

Scotland, in the year 1700, was a serious competitor of the English for the riches to be earned in foreign trade. Because few spots in Scotland are more than twenty-five miles to the sea, the sea has always been Scotland's main street. While the English were concentrating on trade in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Massachusetts, the Scots were developing a position in Ulster.

In the seventeenth century, vast Ulster landholdings were deeded to Scottish settlers. The crown divided up six Ulster counties, including Tyrone and Coleraine (later Derry), and awarded practically all to the Scots and English. Only a very few of the local populace received any consideration, generally leaving only the mountainous regions to the native Irish.

General poverty in their homeland made Scots ready to try their luck as tenants on the Ulster plantations. Presbyterianism in Ireland can be directly traced to a century of Scottish immigration. That part of Ulster served by the chief north Irish ports was overwhelmingly Presbyterian.

Scots quickly captured most all of the export trade of Derry (later Londonderry), and came to outnumber the English inhabitants there. The men of Derry, the majority of whom were Scottish colonists, are today prime heroes of Protestant mythology. In 1689, the defenders of Derry held out for fifteen weeks against the forces of James II, balking his plans to cross Scotland. It's said to have cost the lives of 15,000. James's adversary was King William (of Orange). The passionate Presbyterians expected William to establish their faith everywhere, persecute the Catholics and the Episcopalians and drive their evil practices from the earth. William, at the Battle of the Boyne, routed James's forces in Northern Ireland.

People who need a myth will find one. Today, King William is a cult figure and his birthday is a holy day in Ulster. Ulster in turn created, and gave to Scotland, the tradition of the Orangemen, whose battlecry "No Surrender" means no surrender to the power of Rome. In Ulster today, the folk memory has twisted the country tragically - and a peaceful solution remains elusive.

Question: What happened to cause the 18th century emigration to America?

The completeness of their victory at Boyne led not to religious equality for Irish Presbyterians. The English government failed in attempts to secure more toleration for them. Tradition said that the Ulster Scots were noted for keeping the Sabbath and everything else they can get their hands on. Many were convinced that the granting of toleration to such a body would be a prelude to a Presbyterian bid for supremacy.

Religion was not the only cause of the rise in resentment among the closely-knit and numerically dominant Presbyterians in north-eastern Ireland. The English passed a series of harsh trade acts that resulted in worsening economic conditions among the Ulster Scots. In addition, the long leases which had been offered years earlier to induce the Scots to colonize Ulster, were expiring and rents were forced to unreasonable heights while wages were intolerably low. Poverty dominated the Ulster Scot's community when, in 1718, the year in which large scale north Irish emigration to the American colonies began, the Irish Presbyterians were excluded from all posts in the government they had helped to preserve.

Question: What is known about the voyage to the American colonies?

The answer to the question receives little attention in the histories of the Scotch-Irish that often begin with their arrival in the colonies, followed by accounts of westward migration. But what factors induced a person to emigrate, leaving family and friends behind? How would transportation be financed? And what were the conditions of a voyage lasting eight to ten weeks aboard eighteenth century sailing ships?

To the Ulster Scot, the tie of their adopted Ulster was weak and the tradition of emigration strong. Their resentments did not themselves produce emigration, it helped the waverers to make their decision. Resentful as the Presbyterians were, it was scarcity of food and increases in rents that drove people from Ulster to a land where poverty was said to be unknown and where every man could become his own landlord. Life in America sounded better.

The heaviest Ulster migrations between 1729 and 1771 took place in years of scarcity and famine. There were significant profits in the Irish emigrant trade, one that was intensely stimulated by ship owners or their agents who broadly proclaimed the virtues and attractions of a land of plenty beyond a sea that had terrors in store for all ships except his own. Sailings were keenly advertised. It was marketing targeted to attract great numbers of Ulster Scots. An infatuation for emigration swept like an infectious disease.

. . . and then there were the land promoters who were interested in securing settlers for American land rather than in profits from the emigration trade. They worked at enhancing the innate desire for land by targeting emigrants who were financially receptive to defined lands at a definite rent before they left Ireland.

Eighteenth century emigrants from the north of Ireland to America fell into three major groupings: (1) Paid passengers, (2) Convict passengers, and (3) Contracted passengers. There are estimates that more than half of all persons who came to the colonies south of New England were contracted. Convicts comprised the smallest group and, among the Scotch-Irish, as a percent of emigrants, their numbers were indeed small when compared to England and southern Ireland.

1. Paid Passage: those who went voluntarily with sufficient means to pay for passage and enter an American port as a free man and master of his own destiny.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, a year's wages for an Ulster laborer was about 10 pounds (sterling). The average cost of ocean passage decreased from about 5-6 pounds in the early eighteenth century to 3-4 pounds by the end of the century. He who paid his passage needed sufficient funds to transport him to the place of his intended settlement, to pay fees to secure his land grant, to purchase necessary seeds and implements, and to ensure funds to subsist till at least the first harvest. These additional funds were greater than just the ocean passage. Many who paid their passage entered into service in America, thus gaining experience and the needed additional funds to settle their own land.

These were heavy expenses for the Ulster Scot of the day, and account for the great majority electing a contracted service option.

2. Contracted: those whose emigration was assisted by the exchange of a free passage in return for contracting for a period of service in America. This group was comprised of two types: (a) Indentured servants, and (b) redemptioners.

"Indentured Servants" were those who contracted through an emigrant agent before they left. They carried with them a copy of the contract signed before a magistrate, knowing in advance of the voyage how much time they owed. These contracts were usually assigned to the ship's captain who would sell the contracts to the highest bidder upon arrival. One Philadelphia newspaper aroused horror when it was reported that a contracted male emigrant was typically valued at about 15 pounds (local currency), and a saddle horse was worth 25 to 40 pounds.

Nevertheless, there were few, if any, emigrant vessels that did not carry passengers who were convinced that their happiness was worth two to four years of servitude. On the expiration of the service, it was common for the servant to receive "freedom dues", as they were termed in Virginia. There are reports of servants receiving about fifty acres of land (or the money equivalent), corn, clothing, a rifle and "implements of husbandry". Other masters were not always as generous.

"Redemptioners" were those who did not negotiate contracts before they left and agreed to pay the cost of their passage and provisions within an agreed time after arrival in America. They hoped to raise the necessary money either from friends or by indenting on the best terms they could secure. If the redemptioner failed to secure the necessary funds within the agreed time, usually 31 days, the ship's master could sell his service as in the case of the indentured servant.

Within a generation or two, there would be great numbers of successful Americans who owed their American opportunities to ancestors who had arrived in the colonies with indentured contracts. There seemed never to be a stigma attached to the commonly accepted practice of indentured service.

3. Convicts: those sentenced for crimes that were often innocuous by today's standards, but who satisfied much needed white labor in the colonies. The number of convicts who went to the colonies through the north Irish ports was comparatively small, estimated at only ten percent of a total that was weighed heavily by Roman Catholic convicts who departed from the south Irish ports, many of whom were sentenced merely as "loose and idle vagrants". Upon arrival, the ship's master sold them as servants.

Some of these people were merely "sentenced to transportation" interpreted as similar to contracted passengers but whose term of service was four to seven years. More serious offenders were sold as indentured labor for periods ranging from seven to fourteen years, most receiving the lesser period. Rarely was the sentence for life, but escaped convicts risked adding years to their tenure if captured or, in some cases, would face death by hanging.

Virginia and Pennsylvania led the way by opposing the landing of convicts at their ports. Through the years, their assemblies introduced laws placing restrictive duties on the importation of convicts. It was difficult enough for ships' masters to recover the cost of transporting convicts, and such ships would attempt to avoid landing in ports where stiff additional duties levied on convict trade made it difficult to offer a competitive price compared to a typical indentured servant contract. In any case, the demand for indentured convict labor decreased significantly with the ever-increasing supply of contracted immigrants. By 1770, all colonies except Maryland, had passed legislation prohibiting convict trade.

The Ulster Scots were mostly aware of the dangers entailed in a transatlantic voyage in an emigrant vessel. Servants from Ireland had been going to the colonies for decades. Many in Ireland had learned the realities of the voyage and bonded servitude from letters of those who had emigrated. There were newspaper reports and the tales of seaman returning from American voyages. Storms at sea. Calms that lasted weeks and months. The brutalities of ship masters, the appearance of privateers and pirates, and shortages of food and water that turned ships into islands of despair. Overcrowding nurtured disease and pestilence. Children under seven rarely survived. Adult deaths at sea were often ten to fifteen percent of the passengers. Shipowners felt under no obligation to provide for the safety of their passengers who were regarded merely as a class of freight.

Because some accounts of voyages are so unbelievably horrible, one has to be awed by the unrelenting infatuation of the Ulster Scots for emigration.

Question: What is the origin of the term "Scotch-Irish"?

The term "Scotch-Irish" was first used in the American colonies. It was originally applied to Lowland Scots who settled in Ulster and who, after a stay of some generations, moved on to the American colonies.

Some may argue (uselessly) that the description "Scotch-Irish" was not an accurate one. These American immigrants were Scottish, and their only connection with Ireland was during the period of the intense Scottish colonization of Ulster. To be sure, some of the Scotch-Irish were born in Ulster, but they maintained their lineage unalloyed. Some were Scots who for several generations had not been in Scotland. They were bound to Scotland by a common religion and a common tradition. They were proud that not a drop of Celtic blood flowed through their veins.

The Scotch-Irish had lived in Ireland as the Hebrews lived in Egypt. The Scotch-Irish had lost all sense of nationality - and they were not loved in a broad national sense by either the thoroughbred Scot or the pure Irishman.

Question: What about the Scotch-Irish in the American colonies?

Philadelphia became the main port of entry for the Scotch-Irish. James Logan, the Provincial Secretary of Pennsylvania, himself an Ulsterman, shared the concern of many when he said they were coming in such numbers that they were going to take over. Benjamin Franklin suggested that the colonists should export rattlesnakes to Britain in return.

From the 1740s, the Pennsylvania government was trying to push the Scotch-Irish into the Cumberland Valley, an avenue leading from Pennsylvania to the backcountry of Virginia. During the middle part of the eighteenth century, encouraged by land speculators and by the Virginia authorities, they streamed into the valley of Virginia that was often termed the "Irish Tract". Here the Presbyterians had full religious toleration and it became almost the exclusive preserve of the Scotch-Irish. Some writers refer to the Cumberland Valley as the "Scotch-Irish nursery" and, for many of them, it was a convenient first stop on the route to westward migration.

A formal treaty had ended the French War on February 10, 1763. The newly won distant lands of the wilderness were until then names only. The English were anxious to win the allegiance of the Indians to their cause, and the merchants hoped to increase trade with the Indians. The King of England, on October 7, 1763, signed a proclamation which defined a line exactly located along the crest of the mountains. Title to land west of the line, whether by Indian grant or by sanction of any colonial authority, could not henceforth be obtained by any person. The wilderness west of the mountains was forever to be reserved for the undisturbed occupancy of the Indians. The Proclamation of 1763 forbade settlement west of the mountains. While officially reinforced by the governors of the Pennsylvania and Virginia colonies, this English act was basically ignored by Virginia and those Scotch-Irish who had settled in the valley of Virginia to the east of the line. The Proclamation was essentially overruled when, in 1768, the Land Purchase agreement was legislated to authorize the sale of frontier lands to private interests.

What the Scotch-Irish wanted was land. Their memories of tenant farming in Ulster were fresh in their minds - and vast numbers of them had concluded contracted indent service periods. By the mid-1760s, the promise of easy land beyond the Blue Ridge toward the forks of the Ohio tempted the early Scotch-Irish pioneers. Despite conflicting claims of Virginia and Pennsylvania to the land in southwestern Pennsylvania, and the potential for uncertain land titles, there was an irresistible movement of the Scotch-Irish westward across the mountain and into the fertile valleys of the Monongahela, the Youghiogheny, and their tributaries. The majority of the settlers there were Virginians holding their lands under Virginia titles. Land purchased under Virginia warrants was far less costly than that charged by Pennsylvania.

Tradition says that John Fife and his family moved into the frontier country in 1766, traveled the wooded shores of the Monongahela River and up the tributary called Chartiers Creek where they were the earliest settlers in the area known today as Upper St. Clair Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Refer link: John Fife, The Pioneer.

Between about 1717 and 1775, as many as a quarter of a million Scotch-Irish entered North America. They brought with them a stock that would eventually father a disproportionate number of US presidents, and the militant traditions of the Battle of the Boyne and of Londonderry in the war of 1689. Their part in the opening of the continent was enormous. They formed the largest single ethnic group emigrating to North America during the colonial period.

The Ulster Scot emigrants deserve far more that this brief summary. Serious students of the subject will find a number of references which include:

The Scotch-Irish In America, Henry Jones Ford, published by Archon Books, Hamden, Connecticut 1966

Emigration Ireland to North America, 1660-1775, Audrey Lockhart, reprint of author's thesis, Trinity College, Dublin, 1971

The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, Wayland R. Dunaway

Government and Labor in Early America, Richard B. Morris, Harper & Rowe, 1965

Ulster Emigration to Colonial America 1718-1775, R. J. Dickson, published by Ulster-Scot Historical Society (Belfast) 1966