News Articles/Editorials

March 17, 2008

Belfast Telegraph (Ireland): Dispelling the myths about Irish-Americans

By Professor Brian Walker

All over the world, people with an Irish background and their friends are celebrating St Patrick's Day today. This will be especially so in the USA, where around 40 million Americans claim an Irish ancestry.

But who exactly are these people? The answer to this may appear obvious, but in fact there is considerable debate on the exact numbers of Irish Americans, Scotch Irish and others whose ancestors came from Ireland.

Thirty years ago most people believed that they had a good idea of the number and make up of those in America with an Irish background. For example, The Harvard Encyclopaedia of American Ethnic Groups, published in 1980, stated that some 16.4 million Americans claimed Irish descent.

The general assumption was that these people were nearly all Irish Americans, that is descendants of Catholic Irish who arrived in America in large numbers from the time of the Great Famine onwards.

What about the descendants of the Scotch Irish, mostly Presbyterians who had emigrated from Ulster to America in the 18th century?

Unlike the Irish Americans who were an easily identified, well organised and influential community, the Scotch Irish were not greatly in evidence 30 years ago.

The 1980 Harvard Encyclopaedia claimed that they had become assimilated very largely into general American society and by the 20th century were no longer a distinct group: it ventured a guess that by 1980 there were probably some eight million Americans with a Scotch Irish background.

These assumptions now received a major upheaval due to the results of the 1980 US census, published in 1983. For the first time, people were allowed to indicate the country of their ancestors.

They could give Ireland, but not Scotch Irish, Northern Ireland or Ulster. The outcome was that some 40 million people recorded Ireland as their land of origin. This figure caused enormous surprise, but was taken to reflect a much larger Irish American community than had been expected.

A second shock was to follow with the publication of the results of a number of opinion polls which, for the first time, sought to link country of origin and religious denomination.

Their findings cast a new and controversial light on the census return of 40 million with an Irish background. They investigated those who declared Ireland as their country of origin, but did not include the category of Scotch Irish.

They revealed that a majority of people who acknowledged an Irish background were Protestant. For example, a survey by the Gallup polling organisation in the 1980s put the figure at 54%.

How did people explain the presence of this unexpectedly high number of people with an Irish background, who are also Protestant? The main explanation to emerge centred on the Scotch Irish, who became the focus of new attention and interest.

We know that the first large wave of Irish emigrants, numbering around 200,000 to 250,000 persons, arrived in the American colonies in the 18th century, and most of these were believed to be Ulster Presbyterians and descendants of Scottish immigrants to Ireland in the previous century. When they came to America, they were most commonly called Irish, but also sometimes, Scotch Irish.

It has been argued that because these people arrived earlier than the bulk of new Catholic immigrants from the time of the Irish Famine onwards, and because of a simple multiplier factor, their descendants today make up the largest group of those with an Irish background.

From the early 1990s onwards, however, the importance given to the Scotch Irish as the main reason for the high number of Protestants in the Irish diaspora in America has been challenged by more new evidence.

In the 1990 census, for the first time, people could register Scotch Irish to indicate their ancestry. A total of 5.6 million people recorded Scotch Irish while 38.7 million acknowledged Irish.

In one way, the Scotch Irish figure was substantial, considering that this group had previously been regarded as totally assimilated, but in another way it was low in relation to the much greater number of Irish with a Protestant background: at around half of the 44 million Irish and Scotch Irish in 1990, this group should have numbered some 22 million.

In 2000 the census figures were Irish 30.5 million, a fall of eight million or 21%, and Scotch Irish, 4.4 million, a fall of 1.2 million or 23%. It seems that many of these missing Irish and Scotch Irish are registering simply as American.

Recently the National Opinion Research Centre has published figures for its latest 2006 general social survey, which links ethnic identity to religion. It included an Irish but not a Scotch Irish category. The survey showed that of those who mentioned their first ethnic identity as Irish, 48% were Protestant, 29% were Catholic and 15% were other or no religion.

What this shows is that Protestants remain around 50% of those with an Irish background, but yet self declared Scotch Irish are a significantly smaller minority. The Scotch Irish figure is only around 15% of the total Irish and Scotch Irish. This leaves a very sizeable section of people who are Protestant and who register an Irish identity but do not declare a Scotch Irish background. Who are they?

A range of explanations have emerged to answer this question. One is that many of them in fact come from a Scotch Irish background. Senator Jim Webb has publicly argued that the Scotch Irish are an underestimated and unappreciated group and he has put their numbers as much higher than 4.4 million, which would suggest he is including many of these other Irish Protestants as Scotch Irish.

Why don't they describe themselves as Scotch Irish in the census? In response to this question we can note that in the 18th century many from this background often called themselves Irish rather than Scotch Irish.

It has also been argued that these people indicate Irish in the census and opinion polls because of their origins with Ireland and because the Scotch Irish image of individuality and self reliance linked to the American Revolution accords with how they see themselves.

Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, is an example of someone today with such Scotch Irish roots through his mother who is descended from a member of the Young family who left Co Antrim in the 18th century and became a famous revolutionary general.

A second explanation is that these figures of Irish with a Protestant background include descendants of people who were Catholic. Several historians claim that the figures for the Irish in 18th and early 19th century include Catholics who became Protestant, or more significantly, Baptist or Methodist, mainly because their structures were more suitable for frontier conditions. It can be noted that many Presbyterians also became Baptists or Methodists for the same reason.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, in predominantly Protestant America, other people from an Irish background became Protestant. A good example is Ronald Reagan whose father was from an Irish Catholic background, but who followed the Protestant faith of his mother.

Finally, there is the explanation that there are people in America who have Irish ancestry and are Protestant, but who are not from a Scots, Ulster or Presbyterian background. In Ireland, north and south, there has been, and still is, a sizeable section of people from a Church of Ireland background, whose roots would often be more English than Scottish, and who also emigrated in large numbers.

Recently, historians have claimed that the number of emigrants from this background has often been ignored; they have also stressed that this Protestant emigration, including Church of Ireland and Presbyterian, was important not just in the 18th but also in the 19th and 20th centuries.

An intriguing example of someone from this background is prospective American Democratic presidential candidate, Barrack Obama. A year ago it was reported in this paper and elsewhere that his mother's ancestor, Fulmouth Kearney, had come as a 19-year-old from Ireland in 1850. Subsequently, Canon Stephen Neill identified Kearney as a native of Moneygall, Co Offaly, and a member of the Church of Ireland.

This plurality of identity reflects not only the variety of people with an Irish background in America, but also the great variety of the inhabitants of Ireland, from where they came.

At present in America there is a renewed vitality among those Irish from a Protestant background, especially among the Scotch Irish, and also members of Irish America are witnessing important change and renewal.

The disparate strands of the Irish diaspora in America have sometimes in the past been widely apart, and their experiences and histories have often greatly differed, but now people in America, as in Ireland, are learning to appreciate such varied elements and to value the achievements of this multi-faceted Irish diaspora.

Brian Walker is Professor of Irish Studies at the School of Politics at Queen's University, Belfast

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