They were originally Scottish settlers in Ulster, the same people who (when they didn’t emigrate, became Unionists/loyalists. They mostly came in the 18th century, because of rent gouging by landlords. There were maybe 100,000 of them, first to PA, and then to the Carolinas.
They were settled in ulster in an attempt to drive the Irish out of the cities and towns. This was part of the forced settlement and ethnic cleansing of Ireland in the 1600s.
I’m something of a genealogy nerd and this is one of my niche bits of knowledge: due to trading routes and the like, there is no distinct Scottish genealogy, only Scotch-Irish (because f the British) but there is a distinct Irish lineage. So he doubly erases the Irish.
I dunno. My family are lowland Scots who arrived in the Carolinas probably during the Scottish Marian Civil War in the 17th century
This goes back way further than the 17th century. Think pre-Roman. Think pre-land bridge collapse.
Then you're talking about early Celtic Pictish ppls ? Celtic migration of Gaels from Ireland and British Celtic tribes was around 1 st century BCE I believe.
Probably well before that.