Volume 18 , Issue 28

Peculiarities of the European Stocks In Colonial America

It took us looking back through Oren F. Morton's book, "A History of Highland County Virginia," published by the author in 1911, to discover the peculiarities of our European ancestors in Colonial America and from where they derived.

We find that the English, the Lowland Scotch, the Saxon Irish, the Hollanders, the Germans, and the Swedes were of the Germanic stock, which was cool-blooded and persistent. The English people had come from the North German coast eleven centuries before, and in this time had grown much away from their German cousins. They were earnest, dignified, and strong-willed. They were also enterprising, industrious, and a lover of order. Wherever the English settled, they never failed to hold their ground.

The Lowland Scotch were shrewd and thrifty, and much less under the influence of aristocratic ideas than their English kinsmen.

The Welsh, the Highland Scotch, and the native Irish were of the Celtic stock, which was more turbulent than the other and more impatient of restraint. The Highland Scotch were at the outset of the seventeenth century a cluster of disorderly clans, each one much given to fighting its neighbors and stealing their cattle.

The Welch were industrious and prosperous, living on good terms with the English. The Celtic Irish had been much oppressed by their English masters because of their Catholic faith. To this circumstance was largely due their quick wit and their inclination to use words of flattery. The Saxon Irish were derived from the English who settled around Dublin in the twelfth century. They developed a difference from the English, just as the English developed a difference from the Germans.

The Hollanders resembled both the English and the Germans. They were industrious, thrifty, and progressive. The Germans from the Rhine had lived under very repressive rule, and because of this fact they were a little slow in getting used to the ways of colonial self-government. These people came almost wholly from the farming and industrial classes. They were peaceable and industrious, yet clannish.

The Huguenots differed from the English in being less stern in disposition, more active in mind, more intense in their affections, more chivalrous to woman, more flexible and hospitable to men and ideas, and more keen and enterprising inmates of business.

The Swedes, an excellent people, were few and were soon absorbed in the population around them.

The Scotch-Irish, during the colonial era were spoken of as Irish because they arrived from Ireland. But they were quite distinct from the Celtic Irish. They were fundamentally Scotch, especially the Scotch of the Highlands. There was also a considerable a mixture from the north of England and a slight sprinkling of Huguenots. They were thus a composite people, and such a stock was usually forceful.

The Huguenots were of the Latin stock, which, like the native Irish, was of warm sensibilities.

The consequence of rebellion and famine at the close of the sixteenth century, had made the north of Ireland become almost depopulated. The few native inhabitants were in a most wretched condition. The government confiscated a great amount of the land, and took measures to re-people this province of Ulster (from which our Mcgill ancestors derived).

The persecution of the Scotch-Irish people was industrial as well as religious. The Scotch-Irish began flocking to America in 1718. By 1775, 200,000, a full half of the Ulster people, had crossed the Atlantic. The emigrants from Ulster were among the hottest foes of King George during the crisis of the American Revolution.

In general, and as a matter course, the emigrants to America in the colonial period represented the pick of the European nations. In intelligence, progressiveness, and industry, they were well above themes of the people they left behind.
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