When we consider the names of three Ulster Scots entrepreneurs who contributed much to the emergence of the North American continent - John Macomb, Alexander Turney Stewart and Timothy Eaton - certain trends emerge in terms of that which is common in their lives.
For two out of the three New York was important as a base for their business; for another two out of the three the building and development of Department stores was important; another two out of the three established family business dynasties. Of course, it was not the same two out of the three each time because, as is the way of things, their life-stories overlapped each other.
All three showed the Ulster Scots characteristics of courage, innovation and a willingness to take on fresh challenges in fresh fields. All three became millionaires.

JOHN GORDON MACOMB made his fortune by procuring and supplying the particular needs of the wealthy market that a standing army represents. His family were Ulster Scots of three generations who settled in Ulster in 1619 at the Scots colony of Donegore in Co Antrim. Almost a century later when John Gordon Macomb was born, in 1717, they had moved a little distance within Co Antrim to Dunturkey near Ballyclare.
John Gordon Macomb was by no means poor, being already a successful businessman with premises in Bridge Street Belfast - near the docks - as it then was, when he decided to emigrate to America in 1755. He sailed with his wife Jane, sons William and Alexander and daughter Anne. John Macomb saw the potential of developing his mercantile career further by supplying the luxury needs of officers in the British Colonial Army. Either he possessed considerable luck or he had considerable foresight in this decision in that the army did not receive formal orders to move to America in significant numbers until a couple of years later with the onset of the seven year French and Indian war.

Call it what you will - intuition had led Macomb to establish his business base in Albany, New York. From here he supplied officers with all manner of fancy goods from telescopes and books to snuff and wine. By the end of the seven year war, Macomb had prospered sufficiently to be appointed as a County Judge.
In 1775 the American Colonies declared Independence and Macomb's foresight and good fortune faltered in that he backed the losing British forces instrumentally by himself supplying five hundred men to support General Burgoyne at the Battle of Bennington. This caused him to have a narrow escape when he was hunted like a fox through the woodlands of New York State. He narrowly escaped with his life.
The Macomb entrepreneurial dynasty was built further however by his son Alexander who was only seven when he left Dunturkey. Eleven years later he, like his father before him, struck out for fresh challenges when he left New York and headed west for Detroit Michigan, which was then on the frontier of the wilderness. Here he developed a lucrative business in bartering for furs with the Indians. By the time Alexander Macomb had reached 26 years of age his business accounted for one third of the entire fur trade of North America. During the War of Independence, unlike his father and brother William, Alexander Macomb supported the American cause and was in favour to such an extent that he was able to buy from the American Government 4.5 million acres of land - in fact much of the State of New York. This deal became known as 'Macomb's Purchase'. He owned a house on Broadway in New York City which he let to George Washington who made it his temporary residence in 1790. Alexander Macomb senior died in Georgetown DC in 1831. His son also called Alexander was born in Detroit 3rd April 1782 and received a classical education in Newark, New Jersey.
In time he was to join the American army and fulfil the ultimate goal for a soldier when he was appointed Major General and Commander-in-Chief of the American army. This was a post which he held from 1828 until 1841. Many soldiers across America returning from the war of 1812 had named towns and counties 'Macomb' in honour of their hero.
The Macomb family's entrepreneurial history represents a microcosm of the colonial business history of America. The family moved from supplying British troops to commanding the American forces. In all their enterprises they looked for the opportunity to 'read the runes' of supply and demand in America and to strike out for new challenges and new markets whilst pushing the frontier back in more ways than one.

ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART also began his fantastic entrepreneurial career in New York. Of all the Americans who have figured in 'America's Richest' Register Alexander Turney Stewart is today still listed as the 5th richest American of all time. When he died in 1876, the whole front page of the New York Times was filled with the details of his funeral and the names of the legions of prominent American citizens who attended the ceremony to pay homage to his memory and achievements.
In contrast with this recognition Turney Stewart's was a life that had begun very inauspiciously 73 years earlier when he was born on a tenant farm at Knocknaree in the townland of Lissue near Lisburn, Co. Antrim. Alexander's father died shortly after he was born and his young mother remarried almost immediately. Shortly after her wedding, she and her new husband emigrated to New York. However, Alexander's maternal grandfather Turney was not comfortable with the baby accompanying his mother and stepfather at this time and kept the boy at Lissue until he was well into his teenage years. Ironically, his mother's choice of New York as her new home gave Stewart an almost accidental connection with the city where he would eventually make his fortune. Having received a classical education in nearby Magheragall and spent much of his time amongst his Ulster Quaker neighbours (where he absorbed their business patterns and beliefs), young Stewart initially became an apprentice in a store in Chichester Street, Belfast. Always restless in this environment, he set sail for New York when he was 17 years of age and initially worked for a brief time as a teacher.
When he had 'surveyed the lie of the land' in this way he returned home briefly and claimed a significant inheritance (reputed to be worth $10,000 in those days) from his grandfather Turney. With this he developed a dry goods business and in time opened the first Department store in the world which New Yorkers dubbed the 'Great Iron Store'. This was eventually sold as Wannamaker's and is today the site of Macy's New York landmark store. By 1848 Stewart had become a millionaire and when he developed an even bigger, grander store the 'Hawkeye novelist' James Fenimore Cooper described it as being "more like a palace than a store". This phrase struck a note with the public and it became known simply as, 'The Marble Palace'. In time Stewart opened branches of his business empire in Paris, Belfast, Chicago, London and Philadelphia and diversified into owning hotels and theatres.
During the American Civil War Stewart supported the Northern cause and donated more than $5,000,000 in equipping Lincoln's Union Army. After the war when President Lincoln mooted the notion of repaying Stewart for his contribution he casually dismissed the matter with a scratch of his pen saying, "don't mention it - it was nothing".
The Civil War also affected his beloved Ulster, however, in that the "Cotton Famine" impacted in particular on the Lagan Valley since the supplies of cotton from the Confederate States were severely disrupted. Turney Stewart sent two ships to Belfast Lough which were loaded with grain for the relief of the suffering of the poor cotton weavers of the rural areas around his native Lisburn. In the two returning ships, which were now empty of their cargo, he loaded 139 emigrants from the area and gave these friends and former neighbours jobs in his thriving business enterprises in New York.
Notwithstanding his all time position as the 5th richest American, he became the third wealthiest living American in his own lifetime,  just behind William Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Both these millionaires had built their fortunes as a result of the efforts of more than one generation of family dynasties. In Stewart's case he was a 'self-made man' and exhibited the traits of risk taking, self-confidence and foresight that became the recurring characteristics of the Ulster Scots in their business ventures in America and throughout the world.
In 1869 he put these skills to good use when he designed, developed and built Garden City on Long Island New York. He established no dynasty, however, for he and his wife Cornelia were childless. Turney Stewart's wealth was renowned to such an extent that shortly after his death in 1876 there followed a bizarre incident in which his body was 'kidnapped' and held to ransom before being eventually returned for burial in the crypt of Garden City Cathedral.
He was an entrepreneur who, in one lifetime, achieved a momentous amount and had a remarkable impact on the business life of the United States in time of both war and peace.
In terms of the North American continent TIMOTHY EATON did for the Department store in Canada what Alexander Turney Stewart had already achieved in the United States. Eaton's unique contribution, building on innovation, was his genius in combining the Department store with the development and popularising of the mail-order catalogue. With this he was able to supply shoppers across the vast prairies, mountains and wastelands of rural Canada. Like Turney Stewart, he had come a long way from his roots in rural Ulster. Eaton was born in 1834 into a strict Presbyterian family on a farm near Ballymena, Co. Antrim. His older brothers and sisters had emigrated before him to Canada, their need to do so having been accentuated by the ravages of the Potato Famine in the area in 1846. Timothy Eaton decided that school was not for him and instead he was apprenticed to a small shop in nearby Portglenone for seven years. During this time it is reputed that he slept each night under the counter which he worked at during the day.  Aged twenty he decided to venture forth and joined his brothers and sisters in Canada in 1854.
In 1856 the Eaton family opened a modest store in Kirkton and then later in St Mary's Ontario where they also ran a bakery. Timothy Eaton initially worked in these family businesses but in 1869 he struck out from the rest of the family and moved to Toronto which by then had
amassed a population of seventy thousand citizens. He reckoned correctly that this offered him considerable market potential amongst an emerging industrial working class who had discovered newly found purchasing power. He opened a Department store on Yonge Street where he was innovative in introducing 'fair deal' concepts that we now take for granted such as cash sales, fixed prices and refunds for unsatisfactory goods.  Business prospered and in 1883 he built a bigger store with electric lighting and a fire safety sprinkler system. The store now stocked dry goods, clothing, hardware and electrical goods. However Eaton's entrepreneurial master-stroke came in 1884 with the introduction of his mail-order catalogue which was afterwards much deployed throughout both Europe and North America. At the time the concept was as revolutionary as is selling goods on the Internet today. The 'book' was known colloquially as the 'Farmers' Bible' and sold everything from kitchen gadgets to milking machines. Its advertising slogan claimed that it covered Canada from 'sea to sea' and meant that people living in remote areas now had access to goods that had previously been beyond their reach. So successful was the enterprise that a separate building had to be erected in Toronto as a warehouse for the mail-order business on its own.
In a more profound way than the other two Ulster Scots entrepreneurs described here, Eaton developed a reputation for being a humane employer. He introduced store closing and earlier staff 'quitting' at 6.00pm on weekdays and 2.00pm on Saturdays in July and August. He saw the ethical and practical benefits of allowing his staff time for relaxation and family recreation. By the time Eaton died in 1907, his was an entrepreneurial career that had seen the building of a second Department store in Winnipeg, two factories for the manufacture of 'own brand', goods, offices in Europe and the creation of an 'empire' that employed an overall work force of 9,000 people. Eaton's strict Reformed Faith remained a strong personality factor all his life and he resolutely refused to sell either liquor or tobacco. In memory of this aspect of his life and its impact on his business principles, his family built and endowed the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church which opened in his beloved Toronto in 1913, where it is still thriving today.
As a result of his entrepreneurial flair, Timothy Eaton's was a life that touched most, if not all Canadians of his time, and as a result of moving ahead of the times, revolutionised shopping and business throughout the North American continent.