Voyage to the New World

How the Ulster-Scots came to America

An estimated quarter of a million people emigrated from the north of Ireland to America through the 18th century, most of them of Scottish Presbyterian stock whose ancestors had moved to Ulster during the Plantation years of the 17th century.  Religious persecution and economic and social deprivation were the main causes for the movement across the Atlantic, with the offer of a new life in rich and fertile surroundings helping to persuade many to forsake their homeland.  These hardy resolute immigrants became first citizens of American frontier lands opened up in the movement from the eastern seaboard regions of the New World and, over several generations, they created settlements that were to become the backbone of the United States as a nation.

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