[muawiyah]

The greater number of most folk's Scottish ancestors didn't exactly "migrate here", nor was it to "escape English persecution". Rather, they were "transported here" and that was, in fact, evidence of "English persecution".

Back in 1700-10 the Brits hauled Scots off to America like so many cattle.

That trip was not considered a vacation.

There's holy ground generally unappreciated down at Smuggler's Creek in Alexandria VA. That's where the boats pulled up and Scots patriots transported in chains were tossed off to fend for themselves.

Many of them started the long-march to Alexander County in the Carolinas at this point ~ naked, cold, with no resources, and barefoot ~ a trail of tears.

Scots didn't travel in style to America until the Brits recruited them during the American Revolution to serve as tory militia in South Carolina (See: "The Patriot" with Mel Gibson)

[varina davis]

I’d rather lay claim to being related to William Wallace — or even Mel Gibson. Who knows? I may be.

[DeaconBenjamin]

Isn’t that North Carolina — as with the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge.

[DUMBGRUNT]

An off topic question.
My grandfather ^5 (Iam 6th gen) and his brother from Scotland fought with Cornwallis up to Yorktown.
How is it that they were left here? Abandoned? AWOL? TDY?
The family legend has it that Lord Cornwallis told them to write if they found any work, as he sailed.

Anyone ever heard of Beech Green Scotland? Circa 1759.

[the scotsman]

Britain (and Brits) does not mean England. Nor does UK/United Kingdom etc.

Scotland joined Great Britain (which was a phrase coined by a SCOT,btw, King James VI/I in 1604) in 1707. So before then Scotland was independent.

So there would have no ‘English’ hauling of Scots at that time. The last ‘English hauling’ would have been the Parliamentarian hauling of Scots Royalists to America as indentured slaves between 1651 and 1660, after the English Civil War.

Any hauling between 1660 and 1707 would have been Scots hauling their own to their minor American colonies, or Scots and English working together to despatch unwanted religious men and women to the colonies, as Scotland and England though independent, had the same monarchs, between 1603 and 1649 and 1660 and 1707(the Stuarts).

The Scots were quite happy to persecute their own, such as the Covenantors of the 1670’s and 1680’s, or recalcitrant Highland tribes (Glencoe anyone?)...

Hardly ‘English persecution’.