Genealogy...
Genealogy, from the Greek genea and logos, meaning "descent" and "knowledge" respectively, is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Using various historical records and even genetic analysis, genealogists obtain and compile information about a family to demonstrate kinship among its members.
Genealogy is often a hobby, although professional genealogists may be contracted to conduct research. Much of the research depends on data sharing among researchers and volunteerism. Genealogists usually specialize in a particular group, such as their own family or a group of related families, following the descent of a particular surname or related surnames. Genealogists and family historians often join family history societies, which usually index records to make them more accessible to members and engage in advocacy and other efforts to preserve public records and cemeteries.
Historically, genealogical research was focused around nobility and members of the aristocracy. Now, genealogy has became more widespread, with those of more common ancestry researching and maintaining their family trees. With the advent of the Internet, which has become a major source of data for genealogists, from useful message boards and mailing lists to Ancestry.com, the largest online site for family history research, the resources readily accessible to hobbyist genealogists have vastly increased, resulting in an explosion of interest family history.
Genealogical research is a complex process. Historical records, such as birth, marriage, and death records, deeds and wills, and even genetic analysis, researchers demonstrate kinship amongst themselves and other family relations, both near and distant. Reliable conclusions are based on the quality of sources, the information within those sources, and the evidence that can be drawn, directly or indirectly, from that information. All evidence and conclusions, together with the documentation that supports them, is then assembled to create a cohesive "genealogy" or "family history." Historical, social, and family context is essential to achieving correct identification of individuals and relationships.
Compiled with permission under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License from the Genealogy article on Wikipedia.com.
The word "clan" is from Scottish Gaelic clann, meaning "children", but its full meaning is understood as "children of the family". Each clan was a large group of related people descended from one progenitor, all owing allegiance to the patriarchal Clan Chief. The clan may have also included a large group of loosely-related septs, or smaller families usually connected to the primary family by blood or geography, all of whom looked to the Clan Chief as their leader and protector.
Many of the clans trace their origins from various pre-Christian immigrants and invaders of ancient Scotland, namely the Irish to the west, who gave Scotland her name (from the Scotti, the Roman name for the Irish Celts that invaded western Scotland), the Anglo-Normans in the south, and the Vikings to the north. Some clans can even trace their collective ancestry back to the original inhabitants of Scotland, the mysterious Picts, so named by the Romans for the tattoos that covered their bodies from head to toe. Some clans claim ancient Celtic mythological deities as progenitors while others trace their ancestry back to the 5th century High King of Ireland. Others proudly boast descent from the famous Scots King Kenneth MacAlpin who united the Pictish tribes and the Irish tribes under one crown in the 9th century.
Historically, a clan was made up of everyone who lived on the Chief's territory. Through time, clans would be made up of large numbers of members who were unrelated and who bore different surnames. Often those living on a Chief's lands would over time adopt the clan surname. A Chief could add to his clan by adopting other families. Today, anyone who has the chief's surname is automatically considered to be a member of the Chief's clan.
Clan membership commonly passes patrilineally, or by way of the father, through the surname. Historically, children who take their father's surname are part of their father's clan and not their mother's. However, today it is common for people to claim clan membership through their mother's side of the family.
Today, affiliation with the modern Scottish Clan gives one a sense of identity and shared descent to all of Scotland's progeny throughout the world. The Clans continue to maintain a formal structure of Clan Chiefs officially registered with the court of the Lord Lyon, King of Arms, which controls the heraldry and Coat of Arms. Clans are often form large clan societies and organizations, offering family memberships, clan-related genealogical assistance, and organized clan tours of Scotland.
Compiled with permission under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License from the Scottish clan article on Wikipedia.com.
The Scottish Clan in America...
In the early 18th century, the New World was flooded by immigrants from the Highlands of Scotland, many of them settling in the mountainous regions of the Southeast.
Following the Jacobite Rebellion and the subsequent Act of Proscription, the clans underwent a sharp decline in the 18th century. The clans were increasingly portrayed as bandits, and the British crown launched regular military expeditions to the Highlands to keep the clans in check and extract taxes. The Act of Proscription of 1746 made harsh restrictions on the ability of the clans to bear arms, and on their culture, traditional dress, native toungue, and even their music. The feudal authority that the Clan Chieftains had once enjoyed was no more.
The brutal repression of the British government in an effort to curb the rebellious activities of the Highlanders drove many members of these once prolific clans to foreign shores, spreading Scotland's children to eastern Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and North America. Clan Chiefs increasingly became landlords, looking to the clan lands mainly to provide them with a suitable income. Having lost the traditional obligations of clanship, fellow clansmen were forced into poverty and away from their ancestral homes. Raids on the western Isles of Scotland for cheap labor and the forced conversion of the remaining clan lands to grazing lands for more profitable cattle and sheep sent the remaining members of the once great clans searching for a new home.
From around 1725 clansmen and women began emigrating to the New World. Here they would find a home much like the Old Country in the mountains and foothills of Appalachia. According to Celeste Ray in her book Highland Heritage, the largest colony of Highlanders arrived in 1739 upon the Thistle. Three-hundred and fifty Highlanders from Argyllshire in southwest Scotland landed on the shores of North Carolina and settled the area known as the Cape Fear Valley. Many came for generous land grants and a ten-year tax exemption promised by Gabriel Johnston, native Scot and colonial Governor of North Carolina, who encouraged thousands of Highland immigrants to settle in North Carolina. In all, an estimated 20,000 natives of Scotland emigrated to America in the eight years prior to the American Revolution.
Compiled with permission under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License from the Scottish clan article on Wikipedia.com.
The Scotch Irish...
While many Highlanders settled the foothills of Appalachia, the brave pioneering Scotch Irish continued their move westward. The "Scotch Irish", a term claimed to have been coined by Queen Elizabeth herself in the 16th century, refers to Scottish Lowlanders who emigrated to the northern province of Ireland known as Ulster, mostly during the Plantation of Ulster, a planned process of colonization that took place during the early 17th century in which English and Scottish Protestants were settled on land that had been confiscated by the British government from Catholic Irish landowners. Just a few generations after arriving in Ulster, considerable numbers of Scotch Irish migrated to the North American colonies throughout the 18th century. Between 1717 and 1770 alone, 250,000 settled in what would become the United States.
The Scotch Irish were so named to convey their distinctiveness from the Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlanders who settled the Carolinas in the early 19th century, whose counter-intuitive loyalty to the British crown survived long after the American Revolution. The designation "Scots-Irish" is relatively recent and regarded by some as an incorrect though well-intended effort to accommodate Scottish preferences. Whilst modern Scots generally prefer the term "Scots" to "Scotch" when referring to themselves, the word "Scotch" is the favoured adjective as a designation, literally meaning "of Scotland", suggesting that the Scotch Irish were Scots who inhabited Nothern Ireland. The name served to distinguish them from the native Catholic Irish who came to America with the famines of the mid-19th century. Unlike the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders who kept alive cultural ties with their homeland, the English-speaking Scotch Irish who arrived before the Revolution readily relinquished any cultural links with Northern Ireland. Having also lost any connection with their Scottish homeland and having no ties to Northern Ireland, where they had always been an ethnic minority, many Scotch Irish were quick to shed any connection with their Celtic ancestry and embrace the newly-found independence of the American Republic.
The Scotch Irish entered America through the ports of Philadephia, Chester, and New Castle. Frontiersmen by nature, the Scotch Irish pushed westward past the coastal English settlements into the lowlands of the Cumberland Valley of central Pennsylvania. The Cumberland Valley was part of the larger Great Appalachian Valley (sometimes called the Shenandoah Valley), bounded to the southeast by the Blue Ridge Mountains, and cradling the Great Wagon Road, a colonial American thoroughfare stretching from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and the primary route for settlement of the Southern United States by the Scotch Irish. Surrounded by the fertile Piedmont region, many of our ancestors moved into western portions of the Carolinas, some moving further to the west into Tennessee and Kentucky whilst others continued south into Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
The lowland foothills of Appalachia were mostly settled by the Scotch Irish. The word "hillbilly" has often been applied disparagingly to them, this word having its origins in Ireland, always in reference to the colonial Scots of Ulster. The name derives from the conflict between the protestant supporters of King William and Queen Mary and the Roman Catholic supporters of the deposed King James II of England. Supporters of William were referred to as "Billy's boys". Even the pejorative term "redneck" refers to the wearing of red handkerchiefs around their necks to signify their Presbyterian faith.
Compiled with permission under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License from the Scotch Irish American article and the Plantation of Ulster article on Wikipedia.com.
Resources...
In an effort to offer guidance and assistance to the members of the Caledonian Society of Alabama in discovering their family history, we hope to soon unveil the new office of Society Genealogist.
In the meantime, please visit our Helpful Links page for a list of various Internet resources for genealogical research.
