“Scots Irish”
Kinda don’t like that term.
I guess it covers all the “Mc’s” and “Mac’s” who left Scotland for Ireland, discovered all the famine, and were too poor to get back to Scotland. Ended up taking the first boat-full-of-debtors they could find to the Colonies/States.
Let’s face it, they were Scots....
My mom was a Gillespie, and we grew up thinking that meant Irish. Some years ago my sister went to Ireland, where she was politely informed repeatedly that the Gillespies weren't really Irish Irish. :)
actually they may have been botjh
many (like my own families) went back and forth between Scotland and Ireland every few generation following the weather and fertile soil etc..
if their was famine in Scotland they went across the north end where it was only a short distance to Ireland 2 generations later the grandchildren came back..and so on..
My great grandfather William McClimont and his wife Anne Irvine were from Drumadonnel and Ballyroney, County Down, Ireland but in 1860 they stopped off to live in Dalry, Ayrshire near their McClymont and Irvine distant cousins for 5 years before they went to New Zealand..John worked in the iron mines in Ayrshire..
I also had Campbells in Ireland...William McClimonts mother was a Campbell born in County Down...Dromara...
They were a distinct group historically. A large group of Scots and northern border English were given a land grant in Ireland to settle in the 17th century by the English Kings, forming Ulster, now Northern Ireland. This is how that region became predominantly Protestant. The English Crown confiscated those Irish lands in order to transport some of their own internally persecuted population that resisted English rule, contributing to the strife over religious difference from the rest of Catholic Ireland that lasted until the 20th century.
After some generations in Ulster and various degrees of intermarriage, a group of those "Ulster Scots" or "Scots-Irish" migrated to the United States in the mid-18th century, forming the backbone of the Southern white population.
A great book about the history of the Scots Irish in America is Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America by James Webb, former Deputy Secy of the Navy and former U.S. Senator.