Speech #1050008885

But at least half of the 44 million are Protestants. many of which are descendants of the ancestors of the presentday Protestant communities In Northern Ireland and Ireland. In the 1090 census. nearly 6 million IrishAmericans defined themselves as "ScotchIrish"-an American term which did not begin to be used widely until the mid19th century. Most of Protestant immigration from Ireland occurred in the 18th and early 19th centuries. whereas the majority of the large number of Irish who arrived in the United States beginning in the mid19th century at the time of the potato famine in Ireland were Catholic. The ScotchIrish in America are deseendants of the approximately 200.000 Scottish Presbyterians who settled in Ireland In the early 17th century. The modern Protestant majority in Northern Ireland are descendants of that Ulster Plantation. In the late 1600s. religious persecution of Scottish Presbyterians by England led some to leave Ulster and seek religious freedom in the American colonies. Many of these immigrants settled in the Chesapeake Bay area. One such immigrant. Francis Makemie. is the father of American Presbyterianism. The largest numbers of ScotchIrish immigrants. about 250.000. left for the American colonies in the 18th century in the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War. They left Ulster less for religious than economic reasons. because of the decline in the linen industry. failed harvests. and high rents for tenant farmers. Many of these immigrants were so poor that they made their way to th colonies only by becoming Indentured servants. The destination of the earliest of these immigrants was New England although many of these subsequently moved inland to the frontier. In "The ScotchIrish and Ulster." Eric Montgomery writes of these immigrants: Ideally suited for the new life by reason or their experience as pioneers in Ulster. their qualities of character and their UlsterScottish background. they made a unique contrIbution to the land of their adoption. They became the frontiersmen of colonial America. clearing the forests to make their farms and. as one would expect. they had the defects as well as the qualities of pioneers. President Theodore Roosevelt described them as "a grim. stern people. strong and simple. powerful for good and evil. swayed by gusts of stormy passion. the love of freedom rooted In their very hearts core." The ScotchIrish were staunch Calvinists and their religious differences with New Englands Congregationalists led. after 1725. to a shift in their immigration from New England to Pennsylvania. These Immigrants first settled near Philadelphia. but soon spread west throughout the entire State. Others went south to the Carolinas and Georgia. always extending the frontiers. The Log College was established to train Presbyterian ministers near Philadelphia in 1726 or 1727 by ScotchIrish minister Rev.