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Facts about the Ulster Scots - Part Four

In all an estimated 250,000 Ulster-Scots Presbyterians moved to America in the 100 years from 1710. They were people who became totally assimilated into the fabric of American society, they were after all the first Americans in many regions particularly in East Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and the Carolinas, North and South.

Their involvement in the American War of Independence is well recorded and the bravery and determination shown in battle like Kings Mountain underline the sort of people they were. Soldiers like Andrew Pickens from South Carolina stood out.

Tennessee's three Presidents - Andrew Jackson, James Knox Polk and Andrew Johnson, all of them incidentally born in the Carolinas - Jackson at the Waxhaws, Polk in Mecklenburg County, and Johnson at Raleigh, were of the Scots-Irish tradition. In fact, Andrew Jackson was born 18 months after his parents left Carrickfergus in County Antrim in 1765 and he is the nearest that we have to an Ulster-born American President. There were no fewer that 10 other Presidents with direct family links to the Scots-Irish settlers: James Buchanan, Ulysses Simpson Grant, Chester Alan Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Millhouse Nixon, James Earl Carter and William Jefferson Clinton.

John C. Calhoun, that redoubtable South Carolina statesman of theearly 19th century, was vice-president over two terms - his father Patrick Calhoun was a County Donegal-bom Presbyterian. And the age of 10 and, after becoming arguably the most influential personality in the continental Congress in the years following the Revolutionary War, and a close aide to George Washington, he designed the Great Seal of America.

Eight of the 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 were Scots-Irish - John Hancock, William Whipple, Robert Paine, Thomas McKean, Thomas Nelson, Matthew Thornton, George Taylor and Edward Rutledge. The man who printed the Declaration was John Dunlap, from Strabane in County Tyrone and the first public reading was enacted by John Nixon whose father was Ulster born.

Frontiersmen, soldiers and politicians Davy Crockett and Sam Houston were of the Scots-Irish tradition - Davy born at Limestone in East Tennessee, the grandson of an Ulster emigrant, and Sam Houston, born near Lexington in Virginia, of second generation Scots-Irish family from County Antrim. Their stories are legendary.