SCOTLAND HISTORY

How the Scots Made America by Michael Fry

Publisher's Synopsis
Ever since they first set foot in the new world alongside the Viking explorers the Scots have left their mark. In this entertaining and informative book, historian Michael Fry shows how Americans of Scottish heritage helped shape this country, from its founding days to the present. They were courageous pioneers, history-changing revolutionaries, great Presidents, doughty fighters, inspiring writers, learned teachers, intrepid explorers, daring frontiersmen, and of course buccaneering businessmen, media moguls, and capitalists throughout American history.

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America by James Webb

Publisher's Synopsis
More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England's Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, traveling in groups of families and bringing with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition, and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working class America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself.

Scots Irish in Pennsylvania & Kentucky by Bill Kennedy

Synopsis
Pennsylvania and Kentucky are two American states settled primarily at opposite ends of the 18th century by Ulster-Scots Presbyterians. In this fourth of the popular chronicles on this hardy, pioneering breed of people, Billy Kennedy vividly details the stories behind the early settlements and the enduring personalities who came to the fore during a fascinating period of history. William Penn and his Quaker community encouraged the European settlers to move in large numbers to the colonial lands in Pennsylvania from the beginning of the 18th century and the Scots-Irish were among the earliest families to set up homes in Philadelphia, Lancaster, Elizabethtown, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh. President James Buchanan was a Scots-Irish son of Pennsylvania, one of thirteen Presidents with Ulster family links, and many other illustrious citizens of the Keystone State trace their roots to immigrants who crossed the Atlantic from the North of Ireland. Kentucky, established as a state in 1792, was pioneered two decades earlier by renowned frontiersmen Daniel Boone and a few Ulster-Scots families, such as the WArnocks, the McAfees, the Logans, and the McGarys. Those were dark and dangerous days west of the Appalachian Mountains and through the Cumberland Gap and the bloody conflict between the settlers and the Indian tribes terribly stained the landscape of the Bluegrass State. Gradually, civilized society emerged in Kentucky by the beginning of the 19th century and it was Scots-Irish soldiers, hunters, politicians, lawyers, and plain ordinary farmers who were in the vanguard of bringing this about. This book records for posterity the outstanding contribution of the Scots-Irish in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and, as with the immigrant settlers in Tennessee, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Carolinas, it is a story well worth telling.

Scots in the USA by Jenni Calder

Synopsis
The map of the United States is peppered with Scottish place-names and America's telephone directories are filled with surnames illustrating Scottish ancestry. For the 27 million Americans with Scottish roots, it should come of no surprise that their ancestors helped shape American history from its beginnings. Jenni Calder's Scots in the USA reminds of us of the enormous role played by Scots in the foundation and creation of America, and provides new insight into Scottish-American history.

The Scots-Irish in the Carolinas by Billy Kennedy

Synopsis
The Carolina regions of the United States of America were settled in large numbers during the 18th century by tens of thousands of Ulster-Scots Presbyterians, who left their native shores for reasons of religious persecution and economic deprivation. In this third volume of the series on the hardy Scots-Irish communities who tamed the wilderness of the American frontier, journalist-author Billy Kennedy heads on a journey from the north of Ireland to the port of Charleston, South Carolina and the Carolina Piedmont, along the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania, through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, into the western highlands of North Carolina and down to the historic Waxhaws, where President Andrew Jackson spent his childhood and early youth. On this trail of the Scots-Irish in the Carolinas, five American Presidents emerge as direct descendants of the first frontier Carolina settlers. Also, John C. Calhoun, American Vice President for two terms, was the son of an Ulsterman who settled in the Carolina upcountry and literally hauled himself up by his bootlaces from a log cabin to a position as one of the nation's most influential policy makers. The culture, political heritage, and legacy of the Scots-Irish so richly adorn the historical fabric of American life. Through this series on the Scots-Irish, people on both sides of the Atlantic may develop an awareness of our illustrious past which will assist them in facing the future with renewed insight and wisdom. The contributions of the Scots-Irish to the building of the great American nation were profound and deserve our full recognition.

The Original Scots Colonists of Early America, 1612-1783 by David Dobson

Synopsis
About 150,000 Scots emigrated to America before the Revolutionary War, but the records on them are notoriously hard to find. However, it has been clear for some time that in archives in Scotland and England there is much information on a number of these emigrants. David Dobson has extracted data from a wide variety of sources including family and estate papers, testamentary and probate records, burgh muniments, sasine and deed registers, Sheriff's Court records, Court of Session and High Court of Judiciary records, port books, customs registers, contemporary diaries and journals, contemporary newspapers and magazines, professional and university records, Privy Council and colonial records, records of Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches, monumental inscription lists, and the 1774-75 Register of Emigrants. For each of the 7,000 persons listed, a maximum of twenty-three points of information is provided: name, date of birth or baptism, place of birth, occupation, place of education, cause of banishment (where applicable), residence, parents' names, emigration date and whether voluntarily or involuntarily transported, port of embarkation, destination, name of ship, place and date of arrival, place of settlement, names of spouse and children, date and place of death, where buried, probate record, and source citation.

America's Founding Secret: What the Scottish Enlightenment Taught Our Founding Fathers by Robert W. Galvin

Publisher's Synopsis
"In the history of America's founding, the names of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other founding fathers loom large. But few Americans today would recognize the role played by such men as Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, David Hume, and other philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment." In the Scottish Enlightenment, America's founders themselves found the philosophical underpinnings for a government conceived and defined with the intent to promote economic progress in commerce based on private capital means.