The Scots-Irish on the Great Wagon Road
Migration Pathways for American Settlers from Ulster
Nov 22, 2009 Katharine Garstka
The American South is home to many people of Scots-Irish descent – a population whose ancestors originated in Scotland, but who had migrated in the 1600s and early 1700s to northern Ireland. Large numbers of this group then emigrated to North America.
Scots in Northern Ireland
Scots originally moved to Northern Ireland for the economic benefits of inexpensive, fertile land. They started this movement even before the British government encouraged such migration by instituting the Plantation of Ulster in 1609, which was intended to end the unrest by filling the land with English-speaking Protestants.
However, starting around the turn of the century, British Crown policies in Ireland changed, until the Ulster Scots became a repressed minority. Anglican authorities began systematized discrimination against Presbyterians, including the passage of repressive trade laws, such as suppressing export of Irish wool goods. Rack-renting, in which land rents were raised whenever a lease expired, also took their toll on the Scots-Irish farmers. Add drought, sheep disease, and smallpox to the mix, and by the early 1700s many people were looking for a better place to live
Scots-Irish in North America
Thus when the Scots-Irish learned of the opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic, they began a mass exodus. Most of the ships from Ireland landed in New England, so that the first stop for many Scots-Irish was Philadelphia. There quickly learned that land was available in the Pennsylvania back country, and that the Quaker establishment was averse to religious discrimination, thus making what seemed to be an ideal area in which to settle. Gradually, however, as the settlers poured in, land prices rose and the Quaker population became less welcoming, so the Scots-Irish then began to move south
The Great Wagon Road
They followed the 600-mile Great Wagon Road, which ran from Pennsylvania to Georgia. The Scots-Irish were not the only ones to use this migration path, for the increasing floods of German settlers used it, too. The Germans tended to be Protestant, as well: Amish, Mennonites, Lutherans, Anabaptists, and Moravians. The Germans and Scots-Irish both created settlements along the Great Wagon Road, and they generally placed themselves in self-contained settlements, not mixing with each other, as they were separated by language, religious, and cultural differences.
The Great Wagon Road was actually a number of roads, from Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia., and from there developing into a number of paths for migration to the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and then areas to the west.
The road started in Philadelphia, passed through Lancaster and York, and then to Mechanicsburg, which was named for the “mechanics” who built and maintained wagons. The road then crossed the Potomac River into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Going south, the road came to Roanoke, passed along the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains and into North Carolina, and eventually reaching Augusta, Georgia. Another fork from Roanoke went into the New River Valley and from there to the upper Tennessee Valley. This, in turn, joined the Wilderness Road that went to Kentucky.
Settlements developed all along the various routes that made up the Great Wagon Road. In some cases the settlers set down permanent roots; in others they purchased land, kept it a few years, and then sold it and moved further south, so that gradually the entire area was settled.
The Scots-Irish in the South
The Great Wagon Road led multitudes of Scots-Irish settlers into the southern and western states, where they found the land and freedoms they were seeking. Once there, they worked tirelessly to make a living in the backcountry, carving farms out of forests and woodlands, and creating lasting settlements.
Sources:
The Great Wagon Road, by Parke Rouse, Jr. (McGraw-Hill, 1973)
The Scotch-Irish, a Social History, by James G. Leyburn (University of North Carolina Press, 1962)
The Scotch-Irish, from the North of Ireland to the Making of America, by Ron Chepesiuk (McFarland & Company, 2000)
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