The Scotch-Irish in America

Preface

Acknowledgment of the importance of Ulster emigration to America frequently occurs in the works of English and American historians dealing with the events of the eighteenth century, and a mass of literature has accumulated in both countries with regard to particular phases of the subject. A systematic treatise devoted to that special theme seemed to be desirable, and hence the book now before the reader.

This book tells the story of the Ulster Plantation and of the influences that formed the character of the people. The causes are traced that led to the great migration from Ulster and the Scotch-Irish settlements in America are described. The recital of their experiences involves an account of frontier manners and customs, and of collisions with the Indian tribes. The influence of the Scotch-Irish settlements upon American institutions is traced, particularly in organizing and propagating the Presbyterian Church, in spreading popular education, and in promoting the movement for American national independence. In conclusion, there is an appreciation of the Ulster contribution to American nationality.

The work is based upon original research. The State Papers of the period of the Ulster

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PREFACE

Plantation were examined, with the effect of throwing new light upon an undertaking over whose character and incidents there has been much controversy. Historical material on both sides of the Atlantic has been sifted, and pains have been taken to produce an authentic account of the formation and diffusion of a race stock that has played a great part in establishing and developing the American nation.

The author desires to express his thanks to the Rev. Professor James Heron, of the Assembly’s College, Belfast, for permitting the reproduction of his analysis of the ethnic origins of the Scottish settlers of Ulster; to Mr. Albert Levin Richardson of Baltimore, for collections of historical material; to Professor Varnum Lansing Collins, of Princeton University, for help in the chapter on educational institutions; to Professor Harry Franklin Covington of Princeton University for data respecting Scotch-Irish settlements in Maryland; to the Hon. W. U. Hensel of Lancaster and to Judge Harman Yerkes of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for information; and to Charles L. McKeehan, Esq., Secretary of the Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish Society, for much kind assistance in reaching sources of information and in collecting material.

Princeton, February, 1915.

Note: ‘The device stamped upon the front of the cover is the heraldic badge of Ulster.

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II) THe Lanp anp THE PEOPLE...........+.... 42 III. Scotch Miaration to ULSTER............ 80 TV ORMATIVE INFLUENCES 7... 2 coc ee 129 V: EMIGRATION TO AMERICA... 02 0600500000 165 VI. Scorcu-IrisH SETTLEMENTS............... 209 VII. ON toe New ENGLAND FRONTIER.......... 225 VIII. In New York aNp THE JERSEYS........... 249 IX. PENNsyLVANIA—THE Scotcu-IrisH CENTRE. 260 eee ALE N DTA NORM ARS Ch Ai, och yke-oed ania eo mh Woe mist 291

Table Of Contents

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TABLE OF CONTENTS XIV. ExpaNsioN SouTH AND Wrat aru cee ars 378 XV. Some Pioneer PREACHERS...-..--+++++++: 401

XVI. Scorcu-Irish EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.. 413

Chapter I

In 1609, six years after the accession of James VI. of Scotland to the throne of England as James I. in its line of kings, a scheme was matured for planting Ulster with Scotch and English, and the following year the settlement began. The actual settlers were mostly Scotch, and the Ulster plantation took the character of a Scotch — occupation of the North of Ireland. In that plantation was formed the breed known as Scotch-Irish, which was prominent in the struggle for American independence and which supplied to American population an ingredient that has deeply affected the development of the na- , tion. It is the purpose of this work to give an | account of this Scotch-Irish strain in the composition of the American people, tracing its history and influence.

The circumstances in which the Ulster plantation was formed had much to do with fixing the characteristics of the breed. ) The plantation was attended by an ouster of native Irish that is a staple subject of censure by historians who, 1 y et THE SCOTCH-IRISH IN_ AMERICA from the point of view supplied by the ideas of our own times, hold that wiser arrangements might have been made in the interest of all parties. But that was not easy to see then. Francis Bacon is reckoned a wise man but he did not see it. In a letter written in 1601 to Cecil, Elizabeth’s famous Secretary of State, Bacon referred to three roots of trouble in Ireland:

“The first, the ambition and absoluteness of the chiefs of the families and septs. ‘The second, the licentious idleness of their kernes and soldiers, that lie upon the country by

- cesses and such like oppressions. And the third, the barbarous laws, customs, their brehon laws, habits of apparel, their poets or heralds that enchant them in savage manners, and sundry other dregs of barbarism and rebellion.”

y The policy of making English settlements in Ireland was no new thing. It had been pursued ‘fitfully from Norman times. Bacon did not question it, but he argued that further undertakings of the kind should not be left “as heretofore, to the pleasure of Undertakers and adventurers, where and how to build and plant; but that they do it according to a prescript or formulary.” In this way the Government would be assured that the places would be selected “which are fittest for colonies or garrisons, as well for doubt of the foreigner, as for keeping the country in bridle.” Bacon had the matter so much on his mind that in 1606 he presented to King James Considerations Touching the Plantation in Ireland written in the highest style of his stately eloquence. He said that among the works of kings two “have the supreme preeminence: the union, and the plantation of kingdoms.” By a singular favor of Divine Providence “both these kinds of foundations or regenerations’ had been put into the hands of King _ James: “the one, in the union of the island of Britain; the other in the plantation of great and noble parts of the island of Ireland.” Adorning his periods with elaborate metaphors in which figured the harp of Ireland, the harp of Orpheus and the harp of David, Bacon expatiated upon the greatness of the achievement “when people of barbarous manners are brought to give over and discontinue their customs of revenge and blood, of dissolute life, and of theft, and of rapine; and to give ear to the wisdom of laws and governments.”

At the time this discourse was written the property of the Crown in Ulster consisted chiefly of the abbey lands, and plans were under consideration for settling English and Scotch colonists upon these lands while the Irish lords retained their lands with English title and under English law. But so important did the plantation appear to Bacon, even although thus limited, that he suggested that the King, the better to express his “affection to the enterprise, and for a pledge thereof,” should add the Earldom of Ulster to the titles of the Prince of Wales. Bacon went on to discuss in detail the principles that should govern the enterprise. He thought that “the generality of Undertakers” should be “men of estate and plenty,” not that they would go there themselves but that they would have means to engage in the business for the “advancement of their younger children or kinsfolks; or for the sweetness of the expectation of a great bargain in the end.” As incentives the lands should be let to them on easy rates and large liberties. Upon the latter point Bacon promptly explains that he does not mean liberties of jurisdiction which “hath been the error of the ancient donations and plantations in that country.” He means only “liberties tending to commodity; as liberty to transport any of the commodities growing upon the countries new planted; liberty to import from hence all things appertaining to their necessary use, custom-free.” If this wise advice had been acted upon consistently the course of Irish and American history would have been different.

At this time the colonization of Virginia was appealing for support, but in comparison with the Ulster project the Virginia plantation seemed so visionary that Bacon referred to it as “an enterprise in my opinion differing as much from this, as Amadis de Gaul differs from Caesar’s Commentaries.” He struck the same note in 1617 when as Lord Chancellor of England he addressed the person called to be Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Bacon remarked that “Treland is the last ew filiis Huropae which hath been reclaimed from desolation and a desert (in many parts) to population and plantation; and from savage and barbarous customs to humanity and civility.” He commended the plantations to the special care of the new justice, with the admonition: ‘You are to be a master builder, and a master planter, and reducer of Ireland.” Bacon’s views have been considered at some length because they illumine the ideas with which the statesmanship of the age approached such tasks, and also reveal the origin of some characteristic features of the Ulster plantation. To Bacon’s view the tribal system of Ireland with its state of chronic disorder was a remnant of the _ same barbarism against which Caesar fought in Gaul and Charlemagne in continental Europe. The planting of trusty colonies among uncivilized peoples as garrisons to check their insubordination and as centers from which culture would be diffused was a practice that went back to the times of the ancient Roman commonwealth, had been adopted by many Kuropean rulers, and was - generally regarded as a well-settled expedient of prudent statesmanship. Nothing in Bacon’s remarks indicates any doubt in his mind as to the rightfulness of such a policy in Ireland, although it necessarily involved dispossession of natives. His only concern was to adopt such measures as would make the policy efficacious. Moreover it should be borne in mind that in that time the feudal principle that the tenure of land is contingent upon personal service to the State had not been overborne by the notions of individual ownership and exclusive right that have since become dominant, although in our own times there are signs of reaction. It seemed altogether fitting that rebels and traitors should be ejected and that the land should be placed in charge of those upon whom the King could rely when he called for service. At the bottom of land tenure was a personal relation between the King and his liege. The State in its modern aspect as a sovereign authority deriving its revenues from systematic taxation and regulating rights and duties by positive law was in process of formation but it was not fully developed until long after the period of the Ulster plantation.

The effect of Bacon’s advice in the Ulster arrangements is distinctly marked. To it seems to be due one of the existing orders of English nobility. Bacon deemed it so important “to allure by all means fit Undertakers” that in the memorial of 1606 he suggested that grants of knighthood, “with some new difference and precedence,” might “work with many” in drawing them to the support of the cause. Action taken by the King early in 1611 accords with Bacon’s advice. ‘The order of baronets, officially described as “a new dignitie between Barons and Knights,” was instituted, to consist of gentlemen who should bind themselves to pay a sum sufficient to maintain thirty foot-soldiers in Ireland for three years, the money thus obtained to be kept as a special fund so that it might be “wholly converted to that use for which it was given and intended.” The first of these baronets was Bacon’s own half-brother, and it appears that Bacon advised the King on points raised touching the dignity and precedence of the new order of nobility. ‘There have been many flings at James I. in this matter of the institution of the order of baronet—it seems to have a special attraction for the sarcasm of writers of popular history— but the record shows that it was inspired by Bacon and was performed by the King as a utilitarian transaction quite in the modern spirit. A similar creation of baronets was planned by King James in 1624 in aid of the colonization of Nova Scotia, the fundamental condition being that each baronet of this class should maintain six colonists for two years. The two classes are still distinguished in their heraldry, all baronets having the right to bear the Red Hand of Ulster on their coat of arms, except those of the Nova Scotian creation who display the arms of Scotland. The order of baronet, although ranking below other orders of nobility in dignity and precedence, may justly claim to possess a distinctly imperial character.

Not long after Bacon’s memorial to the King the possibilities in Ulster were enlarged by a series of events which at the same time emphasized the need of vigorous measures. ‘These events serve also to illustrate the clash of cultures that was the underlying cause of Irish anarchy. The accession of James took place just as an uprising aided by Spanish troops had been subdued after more than four years of hard fighting. The submission of the Earl of Tyrone, the chief native magnate of Ulster, whose surrender ended resistance in that province, took place only a few days before James set out from Edinburgh to take possession of the throne of England to which he had just been called. The Irish situation presented an urgent problem to James and his counsellors. That problem, m addition to its chronic perplexities arising from — internal conditions, was complicated by foreign influences. The Counter-Reformation was prosecuted with great vigor and success by Jesuit missionaries in Ireland and their plans of making the country an independent kingdom gained the sympathy of Pope Gregory XIIL., who accepted the Crown of Ireland in behalf of a nephew. The movement acquired serious importance when Philip II. of Spain gave support to it. He was not inclined at first to have anything to do with the Irish as he was embittered by the way in which crews of wrecked galleons of the Armada had been robbed and murdered on the western coast of Ireland. But English _ attacks on the coasts of Spain and Portugal, and the support which Elizabeth extended to the provinces of the Netherlands in revolt against his rule, reconciled him to alliances with Irish insurgents, and twice during Elizabeth’s reign Spanish forces were landed in Ireland. Hugh O’ Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, took a leading part in the dealings with Spain, and he received from the Pope a crown of peacock’s feathers. In making his submission he had stipulated for the retention of his Earldom, with its territorial jurisdiction in Ulster, although renouncing his Celtic chiefry. ‘This was done before he had heard of Elizabeth’s death, and on hearing the news he “ is said to have cried with vexation at not having held out for better terms. With such an attitude on his part there was an instability in the Ulster situation, soon to be displayed.

A difficulty with which the Government had constantly to contend arose from the conflicts among the Irish themselves. The chiefs argued that the land belonged to them; the occupants protested that the land was theirs although the chiefs had a customary right to various services and dues in kind. The chiefs quarreled among themselves as to their rights. Tyrone was incensed against his principal vassal, O’Cahan, who had made his submission before Tyrone gave him leave. O’Cahan’s feudal rent, formerly fixed at 21 cows a year, was summarily raised to 200 cows. In support of this demand Tyrone took possession of a large district belonging to O’Cahan. When O’Cahan made his peace with the Government he had been assured that he should in future hold his lands not from Tyrone but directly from the Crown. O’Cahan appealed to the authorities at Dublin, but it was difficult to get Tyrone to appear to answer the charges. When he did so he insulted the Lord Deputy and Council by snatching the papers from O’Cahan’s hand and tearing them to pieces. Eventually the King decided to hear the case in England, but instead of obeying the summons Tyrone fled the country, never to return. This action was quite unexpected by the Government as Tyrone had been demanding that he be allowed to plead his cause before the King in person. The affair has never been fully cleared up but it is known that the Government had received information that arrangements were making for another rising with Spanish aid and that Rory O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnel, was in the movement. This information did not mention Tyrone; but his cousin, Cuconnaught Maguire, who was in the plot and who had just gone to Brussels on its business, heard there that it had been discovered. Maguire procured a ship with which he sailed to the North of Ireland and on September 4, 1607, took off both Tyrconnel and Tyrone. This was the famous Flight of the Earls by which a great part of Ulster was escheated to the English Crown. ‘Those were times when the more strong and active spirits among the masses of the people preferred to live as fighting men and raiders rather than as industrial drudges, and bands began operations in various districts. O’Cahan himself became disaffected, owing to some claims of the Bishop of Derry to lands in O’Cahan’s territory. He drove the bishop’s tax gatherers off the disputed lands, defied writs of law and did not submit until a body of troops was about to march on his castle.

While these events were taking place a clash occurred between the English commander at Derry and a neighboring Irish lord that culminated in another insurrection. Sir George Paulet, commander at Derry, was a dull, incapable and arrogant person who had obtained the command by purchase. In one of the Lord Deputy’s reports to the home Government it is said of him that “he was hated by those over whom he had command, and neither beloved nor feared by the Irish, his neighbors.” O’Dogherty, lord of Innishowen, eollected a number of his followers to fell timber. A rumor reached Paulet that O’Dogherty was out to await the return of Tyrone, and Paulet marched on O’Dogherty’s castle. Although O’Dogherty was away, his wife refused to open the gates and showed such an undaunted spirit that Paulet had to choose between attempting a siege with an inadequate force or marching home again, and chose the latter. O’Dogherty wrote a sharp letter of complaint to Paulet, but it was in respectful language and was subscribed “your loving friend.” Paulet sent a railing letter in reply, closing with the declaration: “So wishing confusion to your actions, I leave you to a provost marshal and his halter.” Although O’Dogherty was greatly incensed he did not refuse to present himself at Dublin to answer for his conduct; and soon afterward he acted as foreman of the Donegal grand jury that found bills for high treason against the fugitive Earls. O’Dogherty, who was young and hot-headed, was worked upon by others so that at last he did engage in a plot that enabled him to take vengeance on Paulet.

The details of this affair are particularly instructive from the revelation they make of the sort of experiences that colored Ulster traditions and stamped the character of the Ulster breed. O’Dogherty’s first task was to procure a supply of arms and ammunition to use against Paulet. He approached Captain Henry Hart, commander of the fort of Culmore guarding the entrance to the Foyle, with complaints that the attitude of the ladies of Derry deprived his wife of society suitable to her rank. He asked Captain Hart to set a good example of social intercourse by coming to dine with him bringing also Mrs. Hart and the children. The request accorded with the conciliatory policy of the Government and the invitation was unsuspectingly accepted. As soon as dinner was over O’Dogherty threatened Hart with instant death unless he would agree to surrender the fort. Hart, a man of the bull-dog breed, flatly refused. His wife and children were brought before him and threatened with death; his wife fell at his feet on her knees, crying and beseeching him to yield. It was urged that by so doing he would save the garrison too, as all would be killed if force had to be used whereas all would be spared if the post were quietly surrendered. O’Dogherty offered to take a solemn oath that he would carry out his promise. Hart reminded him that he was even then breaking the oath of allegiance he had taken not long before; and bluntly declared that he “should never trust oath that ever he made again.” But while O’Dogherty failed to budge Captain Hart, he gained his end by the aid of the Captain’s wife. In her terror for her husband and her children Mrs. Hart entered into a scheme for betraying the garrison. Accompanied by O’Dogherty and his men, she went to the fort at nightfall, erying out that the Captain had fallen from his horse and had broken his arm. The little garrison ran out to help their commander and O’Dogherty rushed in and took possession.

These events took place on April 18, 1608. Having obtained the arms he needed, O’Dogherty set out at once to attack Paulet at Derry. Although that commander had been warned of _ danger, he had not taken any precautions and habitually neglected even such routine duty as the posting of sentries. O’Dogherty’s men were inside the fortifications before the noise roused Paulet. He ran out of his own house and hid in one of the other houses where he was finally discovered and killed. ‘The surprise was so complete that the garrison was not able to make much resistance, but Lieutenant Baker with about 140 persons, men, women, and children, took possession of two large houses and held out until noon on the following day. By that time provisions had run short and O’Dogherty had brought up a cannon from Culmore, so Baker surrendered upon the promise that the lives of all with him should be spared. ‘This promise was fulfilled. O’Dogherty slew no prisoners and in the course of his short rebellion no blood was shed by his orders except in actual conflict.

As soon as the Government was able to throw troops into the country O’Dogherty’s lieutenants abandoned Derry and Culmore, after setting them on fire. ‘The rebellion was never really formidable although O’Dogherty’s energetic - movements carried it into several counties. His forces were finally routed and he himself was killed on July 5, 1608. In a report to the home Government Sir John Davies, Attorney-General of Ireland, noted that O’Dogherty’s death “happened not only on the fifth day of the month, but on a Tuesday, but the Tuesday 11 weeks, that is 77 days after the burning of Derry, which is an ominous number being seven elevens and eleven sevens.” ‘The special mention of Tuesday in this collection of portents is an allusion to an old proverb that Tuesday is the day of acres luck in Ireland.

In consequence of these events vast areas were escheated to the Crown, including most of the territory now forming the counties of Donegal, Londonderry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Armagh and Cavan. It was the good fortune of the Ulster plantation that the man then at the head of the Irish Government as Lord Deputy was an administrator of rare ability. Sir Arthur Chichester, the Lord Deputy, is a typical specimen of the class of proconsuls whose solid characteristics have been the building material of the British Empire. He was born in 1568, the second son of Sir John Chichester of Ramleigh, near Barnstaple, Devonshire. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford; was an officer in one of the Queen’s best ships in the fight with the Spanish Armada in 1588; in 1595 he was employed in a military command in Drake’s unfortunate last expedition to the West Indies, and the next year he commanded a company in the expedition of Essex that captured Cadiz; in 1597 he was third in command of a force sent to the assistance of Henry IV. of France, was wounded at the siege of Amiens and was subsequently knighted. He afterward served in the Netherlands and was in garrison at Ostend when he was summoned to duty in Ireland, in command of a force of 1,200 men. The record shows that although only thirty-six when he began his distinguished career in Ireland, he was a veteran thoroughly seasoned by land and by sea. A characteristic instance of his determination in all matters of discipline took place soon after Essex arrived in Ireland as head of its Administration by Elizabeth’s personal favor. Having heard of the good order in which . Chichester kept his force, Essex went to Drogheda to review it. Carried away by excitement the scatterbrain Earl led a cavalry charge against the pikemen. Chichester repulsed the horsemen as if they had been actual enemies, and the Earl himself was scratched by a slash from a pike that made him wheel about and retreat. Essex took — the affair in good part and on April 28, 1599, appointed Chichester to be governor of Carrickfergus and the adjacent country. Chichester took an active but subordinate part in the war waged against Tyrone and his adherents. On April 19, 1603, shortly after the accession of James, Chichester was made a member of the Irish Privy Council; and on October 15, 1604, he was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland, although not inducted into office until February 3, 1605. The appointment may be ascribed to the influence of a predecessor in that office, Mountjoy, who was now Earl of Devonshire and the King’s chief adviser on Lrish affairs, and who well knew the need there was for a strong hand and a cool head at the helm in Ireland. Chichester himself did not seek the office. About five months after assuming it he wrote to the home Government that it would be advisable to put a more eminent man at the head of affairs, “a man of his [Chichester’s] estate and fortune being better fit to serve His Majesty in meaner places.”

The perusal of Chichester’s State Papers impresses one with his virtue in the Roman sense of hard manliness. His concern was always for the discharge of his professional duty; and that formed his moral horizon. He chose means with regard to their efficacy in attaming practical results, offering rewards for the heads of rebel chiefs, slaying their active partisans and wasting the land on occasion, but never indulging purposeless cruelty. He had a low opinion of the character of the native Irish, but he had no animosity and was more disposed to adopt conciliatory measures than the home Government. Indeed, his disapproval of measures to force the Roman Catholics into the Established Church eventually led to his retirement. While bent on repressing disorder and bringing the Ivish chiefs under the rule of law, he was also vigilant against abuses in the administration and spared no one. He advised Montgomery, the Bishop of Derry,

“sometimes to leave the care of the world, to which he thought him too much affected, and to attend to his pastoral calling and the reformation of his clergy.” He showed great powers of sustained application to the literary tasks in which his position involved him, and his numerous State Papers are full, clear, and precise. In view of his previous career this side of his activity is remarkable, for he handles the pen with a readiness unusual in the captains of that age. In filing dispatches from the home Government he not only endorsed them with the date on which they were received but also added a summary of their contents, in a handwriting remarkably bold, clear and regular. The information gathered by his spies included stories of plots to make away with him by assassination or poisoning, but to alarms of that sort he appears to have been incredulous and callous. In the camp or in the office he was ever ready, clear-headed and sensible. In the plantation of Ulster he received a large grant of land and in 1613 he was raised to the Imrish peerage as Lord Chichester of Belfast. He had no children and his estates devolved on _ his brother, Edward, father of Arthur Chichester, first Karl of Donegal.

Another official whose copious and vivid writings add greatly to our knowledge of this period is Sir John Davies. The modernized spelling of his name is here used although in the Irish Calendars it appears as Davys. He was born in Wiltshire, England, in 1569 and took his A.B. degree at Oxford in 1590. His poetical works hold an established place in English literature and his literary ability gives a distinctive lustre to his official papers, but in Ireland he figures as a hard-working administrator. He arrived in 1603 to assume the office of Solicitor-General. In 1606 he succeeded to the post of Attorney- General. From first to last he took an active and prominent part in the Ulster plantation. He was a man of high personal courage and of versatile ability, a fine poet, a voluminous essayist on legal, antiquarian and historical subjects, an eloquent speaker and a vigorous man of action. He held office in Ireland until 1619 and died in England in 1626, after he had been appointed Lord Chief Justice but before he had assumed the office.

The scheme adopted for the plantation of Ulster was not the invention of anyone but was the outcome of the statesmanship of the age. Just such ideas as Bacon expressed in his Considerations presented to King James run all through the State Papers of this period. So early as October 2, 1605, long before the Flight of the Earls, Chichester wrote that the situation “can only be remedied by planting of English and others well affected in fit places.” Chichester held that none cf the fields in which colonization was then projected equalled Ireland. He remarks that he “knows of many who endeavor