Welcome to The Scottish Emigration Blog!
I decided I needed a project during summer vacation and blogging seemed like a good one. The general rule of thumb is to blog about what you are truly interested in. Well, my favorite aspect of history is migration patterns, particularly emigration from Scotland to the United States. I'm not sure how many other people are interested in Scottish Emigration too, but I expect I'll find out.
My dissertation was written on emigration from the parishes near Inverness to Scotch Settlement, a community in Ohio, during the early nineteenth century. It wasn't a bad dissertation if I do say so myself. However, with an overwhelming teaching load over the past several years and an indecisive nature, I have done very little with it. I hope that the blog will help me figure out what to do.
The plan for this blog is for me to share my interests in Scottish Emigration, primarily to the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Posts will be a mixture of things I have found out since I completed my PhD, things that I discovered but were not relevant to the dissertation, and bits and pieces of new research. I'm not entirely certain what form future posts will take or how often they will occur; it will be an adventure for us all.
Again, welcome. Please stay, leave a comment, and visit again soon.
4 comments:
Emigration is a puzzling subject. It is so easy to look at the Home Country and say: "How could they bear to leave?". And then to wonder, "How could I bear to go back?" It is also very interesting (and strange) to study the views of those left behind. Did you go to Inverness yourself? Did you see the Loch Ness Monster?
Yes, I've been to Inverness three times. The emigrants I studied for my dissertation came from several parishes in that area. Alas, no, I did not seen the Loch Ness Monster even though I toured the Loch twice and looked really, really hard.
Amanda, I've always found Scotland interesting. That may be because my father's mother was from Scotland. My husband's paternal side of the family came from Scotland. They were "border people" living on the Scotland/England border. I find it very interesting that they did not have a clan tartan because they found it easier to steal livestock wearing the tartan of the clan they were stealing from. Guess that explains how they came to America with Oglethorpe (did I spell that right?); he brought debtors and thieves from the English prisons to Savannah. Denny's clan went to western Texas. Sometime in the early 1900's a Dodd living in New England designed a tartan for the Dodd clan. When I found the pattern at a Highland Games I had a blanket woven for Denny and one for his father. Our granddaughter inherited Dad's blanket. She will also inherit her grandfather's blanket when I pass on. I look forward to following your blog and hearing interesting stories from other followers.
Nicki
Hi Nicki, it's great to hear from you. I didn't know that Denny's family had gone from Texas or that you had blankets woven in his family's Tartan. That was really a thoughtful gift!
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