The Scotch-Irish in the Roanoke Valley

Courtesy of the History Museum of Western Virginia

The Scotch-Irish, sometimes called Scots-Irish or Ulster-Scots, and their descendants have lived in the Roanoke Valley for more than 250 years! The Scotch-Irish – actually Scots who lived in Ireland before they came to America – traveled through the Shenandoah Valley along “The Great Valley Road” (click here for more information about the Great Valley Road and SW Virginia) about the same time as the Germans from Pennsylvania to settle the land behind the mountains in the mid-1700s. Generally, the Germans were first in the northern valley from Winchester to Harrisonburg and the Scotch-Irish were first in Augusta and Rockbridge counties.

Both came here before we were first called Big Lick, around 1800, (Our valley was a part of Augusta County in 1738; then we were in Botetourt County when it was formed in 1770, until Roanoke County was created in 1838.)

The Scotch-Irish settlers moved from Scotland to Northern Ireland in search of better land. They were Presbyterians and few intermarried with Irish Catholics. But after four generations, the Irish economy turned sour so many headed for America where everything was plentiful.  They landed at Philadelphia, stayed for a time in Pennsylvania and then traveled south in search of more farmland for their big families.

The Scotch-Irish were tough Indian fighters, hard-working and thrifty - an old saying tells us that the Scotch-Irish “kept the Sabbath and anything else they could get their hands on.”  The Scotch-Irish and the early Germans had few if any slaves. They raised large families and depended on their children for farm work.

Two of the Roanoke Valley’s most prominent frontiersmen—Col. William Fleming and Gen. Andrew Lewis—were of Scotch-Irish descent and many descendants of the Scotch-Irish settling families live here today.

A wave of Irish Catholics came to Virginia after the disastrous Potato Famine of 1845. Many helped build the Virginia & Tennessee (later Norfolk & Western) Railway from Lynchburg west to Bristol and the Central Virginia (later Chessie) Railroad in Albemarle County. Some of their descendants were instrumental in building St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in the early 1900s.

The Scotch-Irish in the United States

Reprinted from "HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES"
By CHARLES A. BEARD and MARY R. BEARD
New York • THE MACMILLAN COMPANY • 1921

The Scotch-Irish.—Next to the English in numbers and influence were the Scotch-Irish, Presbyterians in belief, English in tongue. Both religious and economic reasons sent them across the sea. Their Scotch ancestors, in the days of Cromwell, had settled in the north of Ireland whence the native Irish had been driven by the conqueror's sword. There the Scotch nourished for many years enjoying in peace their own form of religion and growing prosperous in the manufacture of fine linen and woolen cloth. Then the blow fell. Toward the end of the seventeenth century their religious worship was put under the ban and the export of their cloth was forbidden by the English Parliament. Within two decades twenty thousand Scotch-Irish left Ulster alone, for America; and all during the eighteenth century the migration continued to be heavy. Although no exact record was kept, it is reckoned that the Scotch-Irish and the Scotch who came directly from Scotland, composed one-sixth of the entire American population on the eve of the Revolution.

These newcomers in America made their homes chiefly in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Coming late upon the scene, they found much of the land immediately upon the seaboard already taken up. For this reason most of them became frontier people settling the interior and upland regions. There they cleared the land, laid out their small farms, and worked as "sturdy yeomen on the soil," hardy, industrious, and independent in spirit, sharing neither the luxuries of the rich planters nor the easy life of the leisurely merchants. To their agriculture they added woolen and linen manufactures, which, flourishing in the supple fingers of their tireless women, made heavy inroads upon the trade of the English merchants in the colonies. Of their labors a poet has sung: "O, willing hands to toil; Strong natures tuned to the harvest-song and bound to the kindly soil; Bold pioneers for the wilderness, defenders in the field."

(see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16960/16960-h/16960-h.htm)