Happy St. Patrick’s Day
The Legal Genealogist has no idea what happened to it.
And chances are, after a year of pandemic home cooking, it wouldn’t fit anyway.
But it was — without question — my favorite piece of clothing for St. Patrick’s Day. A blouse I wore for years that made people smile… and those who were particularly discerning smile even more.
From any distance at all, the blouse appeared to be green. That’s the overall impression anybody got from it, and the vast majority of those who saw it would offer a St. Patrick’s Day greeting.
But if you looked really carefully from a closer distance… there were flecks of orange in the green.
Because, you see, I am not Irish.
As far as I can tell, not even a little bit Irish.
100% German on my father’s side — he was born there.
And on my mother’s side, what I am, as far as I can tell, is mostly Scots-Irish.
And I am particularly fond of descriptions of this group by James F. Burns, professor emeritus at the University of Florida.
“Call them the other Irish — the invisible Irish, the Scots-Irish. They’re more associated with corn, coal, and moonshine than green beer,” he wrote in one piece, published four years ago. “They’re the offspring of Scots whom King James transplanted to northern Ireland at the same time he was colonizing Jamestown in Virginia and producing the King James Version of the Bible in the early 1600s. There was a mass migration of Scots-Irish to America from 1717 to 1775, … Not known for good manners or refined habits, they were ideal raw material for frontiersmen, pouring south into Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas, and on into Georgia, Alabama and the Florida panhandle.”1
In another earlier article, Burns described the Scots-Irish as “good hearty stock, although the Scotch-Irish were stubbornly independent, even cantankerous.”2
The emphasis, of course, is mine. And yeah, that pretty much sums us up.
So… as someone with Scots-Irish ancestry… Protestant, not Catholic… what do I do with St. Patrick’s Day?
Wear green… with flecks of orange, of course.
Because on these shores, there’s reason to assert that St. Patrick’s Day was first celebrated by the Scots-Irish:
In the eighteenth century up to a quarter of a million Protestants living in the north of Ireland immigrated to the United States. These were mainly Ulster-Scots or Scots-Irish people. Although St Patrick’s Day is a religious holiday in the Catholic calendar, it may come as a surprise to realize that the first Irish Americans to organize public celebrations for St Patrick’s Day were from the Protestant Ulster-scots tradition.
The first St Patrick’s Day parade ever recorded in the world took place in Boston on 18th March 1737. However, at this time, Boston had no significant Catholic Irish community. The parade was organized by the Irish Society of Boston, a group of merchants and tradesmen who had emigrated from Ulster, the northern province of Ireland. The vast majority of them were members of the Protestant tradition.
In 1780 George Washington allowed his Irish troops to have a holiday from the War of Independence on 17th March. These troops were, again, almost universally of Scots-Irish stock.3
Good enough for me.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
In orange and green.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “In orange and green,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 17 Mar 2021).
SOURCES
- James F. Burns, “Learning From Our History: A St. Pat’s Day visit with Scots-Irish past,” Dayton Daily News, posted 17 Mar 2017 (https://www.daytondailynews.com/ : accessed 17 Mar 2021), emphasis added. ↩
- James F. Burns, “St. Patrick’s Day is a time to remember ancestors, particularly the Scotch-Irish,” Deseret News, posted 16 Mar 2015 (https://www.deseret.com/2 : accessed 17 Mar 2021), emphasis added. ↩
- Marie McKeown, “Can Orange Mix With Green? St Patrick’s Day and the Irish Protestant Tradition,” Owlcation, posted 4 Apr 2017 (https://owlcation.com/ : accessed 17 Mar 2021). ↩
I do the same (wear green AND orange)! Scots-Irish Presbyterian ancestors left Ireland in the early 1700s for North Carolina. Felt funny wearing green when I didn’t feel very Irish.
I hit a road block trying to find the roots of my paternal grandmothers Scottish roots. The maternal Cameron’s were fairly easy. I finally found a lead that placed the McGruthers birth in Ireland! If I get back far enough, do many of the Irish have Scottish roots?
Many do. Some reading you might want to do:
https://www.americanheritage.com/scotch-irish
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Scots_Irish
Interesting, because my Irish/Scotch-Irish ancestors also came to America in the 1700s, to PA, OH and on West. Were protestant; Buchanan Presbyterian church, Monroe County Ohio founded by my 3rd great grandfather. Further back is hard to research, as I have no clue where in Ireland they may have come from, but your article provides new info i do not have.
Hello Judy
And a happy St. Patrick’s Day to you too.
I can cherish a dual nationality courtesy a “Scots-Irish” grandfather who was an Irishman, Ulsterman and Derryman to boot – Presbyterian, Covenanter stock and all that.
The paper trail we have suggests our antecedents were among those who came over to Ireland in the 17th century. Many collateral branches continued to North America and elsewhere.
Our Y-DNA trail however is clear Gaelic in origin.
What we don’t know is when and how often we crossed the Irish Sea, between Ireland and Scotland, and in what direction!
The Big Y DNA tree puts me close to the north-west of Ireland – where we sprung from and where we returned.
Take care, do keep safe folks.
Warm regards
David Mitchell
Yes! My mom always told me growing up that I was supposed to be wearing orange and not green, but I couldn’t without getting pinched. My Scots-Irish went into western Pennsylvania, also a frontier area with rabblerousing. 😀
And the descendants of those independent Scots-Irish types (along with the English and Scots from the borderlands) who settled the southeast are the ancestors of the hotheaded rabble-rousing types who won’t wear masks, and defend police in their brutality unless they are themselves attacking said police; who won’t listen to reason but choose to believe completely imaginary conspiracy theories, because they’d rather follow a modern-day trumped-up “Bonnie Prince Charlie” and his fables than listen to reason or truth.
I can say all this because I’m descended from those folks, too, but have cousins who fit this description to a T. My own evincing of these traits has to do with rebellion against rules that have no basis in reason (parking regs, entry-and-exit doors that are placed opposite to the flow of traffic, Post Office closure times….)
And, do you know why it is that the other color put with the St. Pat’s green is always orange (it doesn’t have to do with the color wheel)?