fcmv ireland

BACKGROUND
The migration of Irish Protestants from Ulster, Ireland's northernmost province, to the American colonies began by 1718. By the
American Revolution, more than 100,000 Ulster immigrants had arrived in America, representing the single largest movement from the
British Isles to British North America in the 1700s. In America these people and their descendants came to be known as the,
"Scotch-Irish," to recall their Scottish and Irish origins, and distinguish them for the Catholic Irish who arrived in the United States in
the mid-1800s.

Most Ulster immigrants came to the colony of Pennsylvania. Competing with the Germans for land in southeastern Pennsylvania, many
Irish families made their way through the Great Valley of the Appalachians to settle in western Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the
piedmont of North Carolina. By the end of the 1700s, theirs was the dominant English-speaking culture in the colonial American
backcountry.

PEOPLE
Most of the early immigrants from Ireland were descendents of Scottish and English Protestants who colonized Ulster during the 1600s
as part of the "Ulster Plantation," an effort by the English Crown and private investors to settle British people on Irish lands. The native
Irish landowners and peasants, largely Catholic and deemed a threat to Protestant English rule, were forced off their lands to make way
for the new settlers. By the end of the 1600s, most British settlers in Ulster were Scottish Presbyterians, but English Anglicans and
Quakers, and French Protestants, called Huguenots, also settled in the province.

British Protestant settlers and their descendents were primarily tenant farmers who leased their land from English and Scottish landlords.
Most were literate, and heavily involved in the local economy. The linen trade was strongly promoted by Ulster landlords to increase the
value of their estates. The production and export of linen became the main economic activity in Ulster after 1700. In many parts of the
province, tenant farmers focused their efforts on the cultivation of flax and spinning and weaving it into linen cloth.

Most Ulster Protestants were considered "dissenters" by the established Church of Ireland, and were not always allowed to participate
fully in the political, economic, civil, and religious life of Ireland. Still, they held fast to their convictions; Presbyterians, in particular,
established a large number of congregations throughout eastern and central Ulster.

FARMING PRACTICES
Because much farmland in Ulster was either mountainous and rocky or boggy and poorly drained reclamation was often needed to make
it productive.. Tenant farmers adapted their farming methods to suit the land. They often made long, narrow cultivation ridges that
drained water from boggy soils, and planted them with crops of oats, flax, barley, and occasionally wheat. Tenant gardens featured
"lazy-beds," cultivation ridges formed with spades and planted with potatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions, cabbage, and other garden
crops, and culinary and medicinal herbs.

Flax, which provides the fiber for the manufacture of linen cloth, was the major cash crop in Ulster, and more flax was grown there than
the rest of Ireland combined. Food crops were grown for subsistence, with oats being the dietary staple. Most families raised cattle and
swine, and occasionally sheep. Livestock provided families with butter and some meat, though most animals were sold at market. Horses
were the common draft animals, and used to pull wooden plows and carts.

LIFE IN THE IRISH FARMHOUSE
The houses of Ulster tenant farmers usually had one or two rooms that served all of the family's work and living needs. The most
important room was the kitchen, and all the cooking, eating, sleeping, and domestic chores such as churning butter or needlework took
place here. The family sat on low stools or Súgán (rope) chairs around the peat fire to eat and socialize. Common meals were oat
porridge, cooked in iron pots, or oat cakes toasted by the fire on iron Harnen stands, improved with butter and buttermilk, garden
vegetables, and occasionally meat. Food was served in wooden trenchers and noggins, or on pewter plates among the better-off
farmers.

Women in most Ulster households spun linen yarn for sale to linen weavers. Many tenant farmers were also weavers who produced
coarse linen cloth they sold for cash to linen merchants at regular markets. The cash they earned paid the rent on their farms and
allowed them to buy food during lean times. Weaving was done in the winter months, usually by the farmer himself or an itinerant
weaver who exchanged his work for room and board.

IMMIGRATION
Emigration from Ulster was part of the larger migration from the British Isles to North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Many migrants left Ulster for America in family groups, while others traveled as individuals and indentured servants. Those
who made the journey to the colonies were set in motion by a number of factors. In the early 1700s, religious tension between the
leaders of the Church of Ireland and Presbyterians was an important reason. The freedom and rights of Presbyterians and other
religious dissenters were restricted by law until after 1719 when they were granted official recognition and equal rights. In the decades
that followed, periodic famines, poor economic conditions caused by downturns in the Irish linen industry, and high rents were primary
reasons for emigration.

Increasing awareness of the opportunities available in America also attracted immigrants from Ulster. Although they migrated to several
American colonies over the course of the 1700s, the great majority of Ulster immigrants came to Pennsylvania where religious dissenters
were welcome and land was plentiful. Large-scale migration from Ulster to the colonies largely ended with the outbreak of the American
Revolution.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN CULTURE
In America, Ulster immigrants were often found in newly opened areas on the western edge of settlement. Here in the backcountry
they served as a buffer between Native Americans and older, established eastern settlements. Due to their numbers, they emerged as the
dominant cultural group in the backcountry. The one-room cabins built by early Ulster settlers were modeled on Irish houses, with one
difference; the building material changed from stone to log. Education and religion were important to settlers from Ulster, and they
established schools, academies, and Presbyterian churches in the places they settled. Some Ulster settlers also emerged as political leaders
in the backcountry. Such leaders advanced the idea of "natural freedom," which valued individual liberty and the right to be left alone.
Ulster settlers and their descendents were among the first supporters of American independence.