Reference to Scots In Old Book, and My Family Brainwashing

[Bugbear]

Unless I'm missing something, you're describing an entirely typical Scots-Irish family: starting in say 1600, Scottish settlers moved or were moved to Ireland (most often Ulster), spent a century or more there, and then moved on to the new world in circa 1700. When they arrived in America they were merely The Irish, but after the potato famine Irish arrived in vast numbers, the 'Scotch' (now 'Scots') tag was added on. Which was pretty fair because the two groups are distinct, both by custom and by choice. And I'll contribute the fact that some pretty weird 'origin' traditions in my own family were later either confirmed or greatly supported by research.

I didn't see your post before, sorry.

Well, it's difficult to be completely sure, in this case, other than it looks a whole lot more like this surname was adopted from the English during that time period... Anyway, it looks like they were culturally Irish before coming to America, and that is mainly what I am focused on. Also, this is one strand of the whole family tangle, there are plenty of other places and lines involved.

And I am only joking about lein and brats or velvet knee breeches.

[Lallans]

I didn't see your post before, sorry.

Well, it's difficult to be completely sure, in this case, other than it looks a whole lot more like this surname was adopted from the English during that time period... Anyway, it looks like they were culturally Irish before coming to America, and that is mainly what I am focused on. Also, this is one strand of the whole family tangle, there are plenty of other places and lines involved.

And I am only joking about lein and brats or velvet knee breeches.

People were transplanted to Ulster from both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border so an English ethnicity from that period is of course perfectly possible. The effort in large part seems to have been to reduce the ingrained fighting and general scrappiness of the people in the Border Marches following the union of the two kingdoms, so I would suggest that groups on both sides of the original border were culturally all but identical- certainly they seem to have switched sides just as readily as any group of people, historical or present-day, in the same situation. If you have a name that could be either English or Scottish or Scottish Lowlander, one way to decide which side your family would be on is to study where they landed in Ulster- for obvious reasons they usually weren't mixed in their new settlements.

[macwilkin]

People were transplanted to Ulster from both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border so an English ethnicity from that period is of course perfectly possible. The effort in large part seems to have been to reduce the ingrained fighting and general scrappiness of the people in the Border Marches following the union of the two kingdoms, so I would suggest that groups on both sides of the original border were culturally all but identical- certainly they seem to have switched sides just as readily as any group of people, historical or present-day, in the same situation. If you have a name that could be either English or Scottish or Scottish Lowlander, one way to decide which side your family would be on is to study where they landed in Ulster- for obvious reasons they usually weren't mixed in their new settlements.

You will also find the occasional land grant to a veteran of Cromwell's New Model Army, as well as Protestant refugees & settlers from Germany & France, the most famous example being the noted frontiersman David Crockett, whose ancestor came from La Rochelle.

Spot on post, though, especially regarding the borders. I highly recommend the late George Macdonald Fraser's The Steel Bonnets for a riping read about Scotland's "Wild West".

T.