See also Notable Americans of Scotch-Irish descent

The South owes its unique heritage to a variety of sources, including Native Americans ; early European settlements of Spanish, English, German, French, Scotch-Irish, and Scottish ; importation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans ; historic dependence on slave labor ; the presence of a large proportion of African Americans in the population ; and the aftermath of the Confederacy after the Civil War.

Many English Americans and Scotch-Irish Americans moved to the territory at this time.

In the United States Census of 2000, 4. 3 million Americans ( 1. 5 % of the population of the United States ) claimed Scotch-Irish ancestry.

The author Jim Webb suggests that the true number of people with some Scotch-Irish heritage in the United States is more in the region of 27 million, possibly because contemporary Americans with some Scotch-Irish heritage may regard themselves as either Irish or Scottish.

Roughly another 3. 5 million ( or about another 1. 2 % of Americans ) identified more specifically with Scotch-Irish ancestry.

" This generation of pioneers ... was a generation of Americans, not of Englishmen or Germans or Scotch-Irish.

However, demographers regard this as an undercount because the index of inconsistency is high and many, if not most, people from English, Scottish, Scotch-Irish and Welsh stock tend to identify themselves simply as Americans or, if of mixed European ancestry, to nominate a more recent and differentiated ethnic group.

The United States is bound to the United Kingdom by shared history, a common language and legal system, culture, which can be traced back hundreds of years, including kindred, ancestral lines among English Americans, Scottish Americans, Welsh Americans, and Scotch-Irish Americans.

Scottish Americans are closely related to Scotch-Irish Americans, descendants of Ulster Scots, and communities emphasize and celebrate a common heritage.

The number of Americans of Scottish descent today is estimated to be 20 to 25 million ( up to 8. 3 % of the total US population ), and Scotch-Irish, 27 to 30 million ( up to 10 % of the total US population ), the subgroups overlapping and not always distinguishable because of their shared ancestral surnames.

Another 4. 3 million self-reported Scotch-Irish ancestry, for a total of 9. 2 million Americans self-reporting some kind of Scottish descent.

However, Michael Montgomery, in From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English, states " In Ulster in recent years it has sometimes been supposed that it was coined to refer to followers of King William III and brought to America by early Ulster emigrants …, but this derivation is almost certainly incorrect … In America hillbilly was first attested only in 1898, which suggests a later, independent development.

Similarly, the Scots who settled in Ulster, many of whom later emigrated, are known non-pejoratively in North America as the Scotch-Irish.

While once referred to as Scotch-Irish by several researchers, that has now been superseded by the term Ulster Scots.

Many descendants of the Scotch-Irish, as they are known in the United States, or Ulster-Scots, originated from the lowlands and borders region before migrating to the Ulster Plantation in the 17th century and later the American frontier, many prior to the American Revolution.

Borderers ( particularly those banished by James VI of Scotland ) took part in the plantation of Ulster becoming the people known as Ulster-Scots ( Scotch-Irish in America ).

Scotch-Irish is a traditional term for Ulster Scots who later emigrated to what is now the United States ; " Scots-Irish " is a more recent form of the American term, and is not to be confused with Irish-Scots, i. e., recent Irish immigrants to Scotland.

Most colonial settlers coming from the Irish province of Ulster came to be known in America as the " Scotch-Irish ".

The majority of Scotch-Irish originally came from the lowlands and border country of Scotland before migrating to the province of Ulster in Ireland ( see Plantation of Ulster ) and thence, beginning about five generations later, to North America in large numbers during the eighteenth century.

Records show that Presbyterian Scots and Scotch-Irish also moved into Colerain Township very early into its settlement.

The athletic teams ' nickname, Fighting Scots, was coined in 1928 by alumni secretary Harold Hermann ' 27 to reflect the Scotch-Irish heritage of the college's founders.

Bow's parents were descended from English and Scotch-Irish immigrants who had come to America the generation before.

This area was settled in the mid-18th century by Welsh, Scotch-Irish, and English farmers, who grew cotton primarily.

" In the United States, people who identify with the Ulster-Scots are usually called " Scotch-Irish.

His father was Thomas Mellon, a banker and judge who was a Scotch-Irish immigrant from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland ; his mother was Sarah Jane Negley Mellon.

Maximilian Adelbert Baer was born on February 11, 1909 in Omaha, Nebraska to Jacob Baer ( 1875 – 1938 ), who was Jewish, and Dora Bales ( 1877 – 1938 ), who was of Scotch-Irish Protestant American ancestry.

Born in Philadelphia in 1704, Allen was the son of William Allen, sr., a successful Philadelphia merchant of Scotch-Irish descent who had immigrated to America from Dungannon, County Tyrone, Ireland with his brother John and father.

Joseph Martin ( 1740 – 1808 ) was a brigadier general in the Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War, in which Martin's frontier diplomacy with the Cherokee people is credited with averting Indian attacks on the Scotch-Irish American and English American settlers who helped win the battles of Kings Mountain and Cowpens.

The Scotch-Irish, who had already begun to settle beyond the Proclamation Line in the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, were drawn into rebellion as war spread to the frontier.

The county's first Anglo settlers were what John Nova Lomax described as " Scotch-Irish backwoods folk.

These first settlers included German Reformed and Lutherans in the east, British Quakers in the south and west, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in the center of today's Guilford County.

The first white settlers, primarily of Scotch-Irish descent, came to White County, Illinois between 1807 and 1809.

Pelham ( pronounced " PEL-am ;" the " h " is silent ) was part of the Equivalent lands compromise, and was first settled in 1738 by mostly Presbyterian Scotch-Irish immigrants.

The town's first settlers were a mix of eastern Pennsylvanians and newly arrived immigrants of Scotch-Irish, German and English background, other ethnic groups would arrive in the early 20th century in small numbers.

The first settlers were Scotch-Irish immigrants.

From looking at what records do exist, and by the people still living in the Palmyra area, it is clear that the first settlers to live near Palmyra came from two distinct nationalities, the Scotch-Irish and the German Palatinates.

Of the first Scotch-Irish settlers in the Palmyra area, the surnames of Aspey, Campbell, Caruthers, Ewing, Galbraith, McCallen, McClure, McCord, Mitchell, Sawyer, Walker and Wilson are recorded.

The original " Derry " in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania was named after the city Derry in Northern Ireland, because the area ’ s first non-Indian inhabitants were Scotch-Irish.

It is difficult to identify when the first non-Indian settler arrived in what is now the Borough of Scottdale, although the area witnessed an influx of Scotch-Irish immigrants in the late 1770s.

The Lake City area was originally part of Williamsburg Township, which was first settled by a group of Scotch-Irish in 1736.

Although the Appalachian dulcimer first appeared in the early 19th century among Scotch-Irish immigrant communities in the southern Appalachian Mountains, the instrument has no known precedent in Ireland or Scotland.

Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, was the first of Scotch-Irish extraction.