In a message dated 8/5/99 4:57:10 PM Central Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: > It is also certainly very true that SOME Scots-Irish families were highly > educated and were very good record keepers, especially those who kept close > ties to the Presbyterian church. But I think it is safe to say that as a > general rule, most of them were not. [I take as my authority on this point > the excellent book by David Hackett Fisher, "Albion's Seed," which has long > discussions contrasting the Scots-Irish with the English settlers in > colonial > North America.] Jim, you have a higher opinion of David Hackett Fisher and "Albion's Seed" than I do. And more learned people than I have voiced their own disagreement with him. Because of the great distance to North Carolina, members of the Robertson-Donelson Party that established the Cumberland Settlements in Middle Tennessee in 1779/1780 immediately set about establishing self-government. They drew up and each man signed the Cumberland Compact. There were approximately 250 signers, and all but one signed with his name. You may argue that they were not representative of the Scots-Irish on the frontier, but they certainly contradict the stereotype Fisher has given us. Scots have been referred to as the managers of the British Empire because it was they, not Englishmen, who staffed the offices and kept the records of England's far flung colonies. The term "borderer" and Scots-Irish are not interchangeable. The only thing they have in common is the Scottish origin. Borderers lived on the border between Scotland and England; the Scots-Irish were those who had lived in Ireland at least a generation or two, having been transported there by England to help in their subjugation of the Irish. I will concede this: its rather difficult to give your children a classical education on the frontier while defending them from Indian attack, and the Colonial Establishment on the eastern seaboard had adopted England's practice of using the Scots to do what they couldn't or wouldn't do. Education and intelligence are two more terms that are not interchangeable, and one would do well to keep that in mind when buying in to stereotypes. Joyce