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Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 1999-10 > 0939441739


From: Horatio Paul McAfee <>
Subject: What We Are
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 23:02:19 -0500


About this “Scotch Irish” terminology – I detest that usage. I refuse
to identify my ancestors or myself as a beverage. The correct term
would be “Scots Irish” but even that is not good. The Protestant people
we are talking about had almost nothing in common with the Catholic
Irish and vice versa – the distrust continues to this day in Northern
Ireland.

I like the term “Anglo Celt” for that usage distances us from all the
trappings associated with what is Irish. T.R. Fehrenbach, the fine
historian, uses that terminology a lot. His exquisite history of Texas,
Lone Star, is about the best description of the Anglo Celt (ok, Scots
Irish) that I have seen and I recommend it to anyone wishing to get a
measure of how their ancestors thought and acted and the hell they went
through because of their Calvinist beliefs. If you are “Scotch Irish”
and read Fehrenbach, you will come away with a heightened appreciation
for our remarkable kin.

Two things are important in any consideration of our people: (1) The
complete and often savage hatred they bore for the English. Yes, they
were often the first to volunteer to fight as patriots in the
revolutionary war, but study the Battle of Kings Mountain. What our
Overmountain ancestors did to the body of the British Colonel Patrick
Ferguson after they killed him is a measure of just how complete their
hatred was.

Another important consideration is (2) the religious element – the Anglo
Celts’ Calvinisn brought them all sorts of persecution. They were denied
basic civil liberties everywhere they went because their religion
differed so greatly from the established religions. No wonder that they
clamored for freedom of religion and insisted on it as a basic right in
the new American constitition. Their Calvinism insisted that each man,
woman and child learn to read and make decisions on their own. Each
father was considered capable of interpreting the Bible himself without
benefit of a clergy that would tell him what to think. This was a
dangerous and revolutionary concept in a world ruled by priests and
bishops and popes. In colonial Virginia one of Greenwood ancestors went
to jail for preaching an "unauthorized religion." Other Scots Irish
fared no better when they refused to pay the tithes required to support
the authorized church.

Our ancestors were restless, energetic people who kept moving on –
moving on. As they moved down into Tennessee and on West they pulled the
American nation behind them. This is some of the stuff that animates my
pride in my forefathers. My McAfee, Chisholm, Young, McMahon,
McFarland, Whiteside, Witcher, McKenzie and countless other Anglo Celt
fathers made a nation. Ain’t that something?

Horatio Paul McAfee

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