Cracker craic: the politics and economics of Scots-Irish cultural promotion in the USA

Abstract

A growing number of festivals celebrate ‘Scots-Irish’ heritage in the USA, spreading out of the southern highlands traditionally associated with the eighteenth-century settlement of migrants from Ulster. Myths and confusion still abound with respect to Scots-Irish identities, yet the newfound visibility is undeniable. Does this cultural revival represent a consequence of the genealogy boom or an attempt to capitalize on it? Is it part of a turn in depressed regions toward cultural heritage tourism as an economic development strategy? Does it represent an outgrowth of multiculturalism or white ethnic backlash against ridicule and ‘reverse’ discrimination? State tourism offices and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, supported by federal government grants, have played a central role in encouraging commemoration of Scots-Irish culture. Heritage, genealogy, and economic development have come together in these projects, with implications for both the cultural legacy of Ulster Scots migrants to the USA and cultural policy more generally.

Keywords:

• Scots-Irish
• heritage tourism
• Appalachia
• ethnic festivals
• Ulster Scots

Notes

1. Parade is an American nationwide Sunday newspaper magazine, distributed in more than 500 newspapers. The most widely read magazine in the US, it has a circulation of 33 million and a readership of 63 million (www.parade.com/corporate/parade_facts.html).

2. There are well over 300 Scottish Highland games and gatherings annually across the US and Canada, many of them in mountainous areas and/or where the St. Andrew’s Society or another Scottish organization takes the initiative. There are also festivals in places where Highland Scots concentrated in the eighteenth century and later, such as Scotland County and the Cape Fear Valley, North Carolina; Savannah and Darien, Georgia; and Alma, Michigan.

3. Many descendants of Ulster Scots migrants in the Appalachian highlands remained loyal to the Union during the American Civil War, but others and especially those in places like the Kentucky Bluegrass and the Virginia Piedmont backed the Confederacy. Exhibits of Civil War artifacts and history are commonplace at Scots-Irish events, many of which take place in areas where battles were fought, and Northern blue and Southern gray are generally represented on an equal basis and honored as patriotic Americans.

4. Members of Pittsburgh’s prominent Mellon family provided significant funding for the Ulster-American Folk Park and Centre for Migration Studies, the centerpiece of which is the original cottage where their patriarch Thomas Alexander Mellon was born, in rural County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. A relocated brick plantation house built around 1825 in Sumner County, Tennessee, by Francis Rogan, the son of Catholic immigrants from Tyrone, recently opened as an attraction at the Park and presents a discussion of slavery. Except for committed members of heritage organizations, many average Americans of Scots-Irish descent have until recently been unaware of their ancestry and are of modest means – therefore not liable to contribute to projects related to Ulster and Ulster migration.