Scotch-Irish-L Archives

Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 1999-03 > 0920958578


From: Mac McCutchan <>
Subject: Re: List Encouragement
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 1999 00:49:38 -0500


Linda Schreiber has come up with a super set of "...what kinds of links
should be included....". They look so good, in fact, that they may come
pretty close to describing the terms of reference for both the website
and the mail list. One small comment, and a couple of suggestions:

Comment: I think I disagree regarding the relative priority of the
website and the mail list, although I don't feel strongly about it, and
would like to help with both. Websites are hard, and when complete,
some of them come dangerously close to becoming static displays. Lists,
on the other hand, are anything but static...especially if this one is
an example. I've learned much more, and gained much more enjoyment from
this list than I have from the excellent website. My hope would be that
the mail list would not lag the website by much....

Suggestion: Linda S suggested a fairly recent timeframe - "...What do
we want here? 1800? 1780? 1830? Can't cover it all." If we don't start
at least as far back as 1725, we're going to miss the first really big
moves...the 200,000 SI and 10,000 Germans I keep talking about were all
pretty much here and well down the pike by 1750. If we're going to
concentrate on the northern end of the trail (and I agree we should), I
suggest 1715 or even earlier as a start date. The SI in Pennsylvania
were already crossing the Susquehanna by around 1725, were in the
southern Shenandoah Valley by 1732, and in the Carolinas by around 1745
(down the Great Wagon Road, that is...I guess they came in through
Wilmington even earlier).

Minor suggestion: I suspect we'll want to pay quite a lot of attention
to the religious patterns Linda S mentioned. They were tremendously
important to the early settlers, and the tendancy of the SI
Presbyterians and the German Dunkards, Mennonites, Reformed Lutherans,
etc., to settle together were one of the significant patterns.

I get the impression it's starting to take shape...so where do we go
from here?

Mac McCutchan

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