Life on the Frontier (Note: this information would apply to all of our UK ancestors, including English and Welsh):
Most of the pioneers who settled the American frontier in the 1700s made their living by subsistence farming. Eventually small towns sprang up, and ministers, blacksmiths, merchants, clerks, and other professionals soon followed. But the frontier farmer still found it necessary to be as self-sufficient as possible, and the farms in those days were miniature colonies where all manner of industries were practiced. While both men and women wore clothing made of homespun material (or store-bought if they could get it), the men of the frontier families tended to adopt the dress of the Indians for working and hunting. From deerskins the pioneers would make fringed leather jackets, breeches, leggings, and moccasins, which became the daily uniform of the frontiersman. Money was scarce on the frontier, and store-bought goods were very expensive. The settlers manufactured everything they possibly could, but sooner or later they were forced to borrow money or to purchase items on credit. [1]
The typical house on the Appalachian frontier in the 1700s was the log cabin or log house. The log cabin was introduced by Finnish and Swedish settlers around 1638 in New Sweden, on the banks of the Delaware River. The early Nordic version of the log cabin generally had only a single door, facing south to let the sun in. The Scotch-Irish modified this design to incorporate two doors facing east and west, located directly across from each other for cross ventilation. Many of these early log houses included an upstairs room where the family slept. Windows were few, but frontier homes often featured small openings in the walls called “loopholes” from which guns could be fired for defense. The frontier settlements were always located close to springs or creeks so that fresh water was readily available for drinking and cooking, although bathing was an infrequent luxury at best. Homes were heated by fireplaces, with the chimney and the fireplace generally at one end of the house. Cooking was done in iron pots suspended over the fire, and lighting was provided by candles or oil lamps. Most of the furniture was homemade, consisting of a table of hewn planks, plain benches and a few chests. The bedstead was usually a rough frame supporting a straw mattress. [2]
The frontier settlers grew a variety of crops, some of which they brought from Europe and some of which were native to America. Grains like wheat, oats and rye were very popular, and mills where these grains could be processed became important early industries. One of the most important crops for the pioneer farmers was “Indian corn” or maize, which they adopted from the Native Americans. It was was easy to dry and store, could be eaten by humans and most farm animals, and could be ground into meal to make bread and cakes. It could also be fermented into whiskey, a drink which the Scotch-Irish were long accustomed to both in Scotland and Ireland. Not only was whiskey easy to manufacture and store, but it was also easily marketable and quickly became an alternative to cash on the American frontier. Corn whiskey was the most popular drink at social gatherings and in the home, and even ministers engaged in its distillation and use. The settlers also quickly found that fruit trees like apple, peach, pear and plum thrived on the southern frontier. Not only could these fruits be eaten but they could be easily fermented into brandy, which soon became second only to corn whiskey in popularity on the frontier. [3]
Money in the colonies: Prior to the completion of independence in the 1800s, America consisted of hundreds of individual economies ranging from small villages to large groups of merchants—the latter with close connections to the economies of Europe. Being quite limited in scope, most of these systems operated independently of each other and experienced minimal, if any, influence from the outside world. Each set values and prices had a basis in the local conditions. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Americans had a difficult time finding hard money.[3] The economic policies of England prevented the exportation of coins from England and did not allow the colonies to mint their own. People also used paper money, barter, wampum, and commodities like corn, wheat, tobacco, or furs that a local economy accepted as legal tender. Because the value of these other forms of money had little consistency to them, colonists took to using coins from other countries including several Spanish and Portuguese coins, the French louis d’or (“French guinea”); the Dutch rijksdallder, German reichsthaler, and Danish rigsdaler (all called the “rixdaller”); and the Dutch leeuwendaalder (the “lion dollar” or “dog dollar”). https://allthingsliberty.com/2016/09/dollar-revolutionary-america/
Hunting was also a universal method of providing food for the family. Game and fowl abounded in the forests of the Appalachians and the Piedmont, and the early frontier hunters found buffalo, elk, deer and bear plentiful. The fields and pastures were filled with wild turkey and quail, and the rivers and creeks teemed with beaver, otter and muskrats as well as a variety of edible fish. The forests and mountains were also home to predators like mountain lions, wildcats and wolves, and every home included some type of weapon for protection. The weapons of choice along the frontier were the knife, the tomahawk, and the highly-accurate flintlock rifle. While the standard military weapon of the day was the smooth-bore flintlock musket, the musket was too inaccurate for game hunting, although it could be used as a “fowler” or shotgun when loaded with multiple shots. The American rifled flintlocks were originally developed by German and Swiss settlers in Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, and by 1732 they were being manufactured commercially there. Based on earlier European hunting rifles, they were modified by the gunsmiths in the colonies to suit the needs of the American hunters. The barrels were longer and more accurate, and they were more rugged than their European counterparts. The front sights were blade-type or bead-type, while the rear sights were notch-type. Although originally developed in Pennsylvania, these weapons eventually became known as “Kentucky rifles” because of their extensive use by eighteenth-century hunters in the area between the Cumberlands and the Mississippi River known as Kentucky. Describing the accuracy of these excellent rifles, we are told that in the colonial days the favorite target for militia practice was the head of a tack at 20 yards, the head of a turkey at 60 to 100 yards, and the body of the turkey at 200 yards; at 400 yards these rifles could regularly hit an object the size of a horse. [4]
The Ulster colonists who migrated to North America were proud of their Scottish heritage and still considered themselves to be Scots, even after spending several generations in Ireland. Upon their arrival in America, they were dismayed to find that the English colonists referred to them simply as “Irish,” and made no distinction between the Protestant inhabitants of Ulster and the Catholic inhabitants of the rest of Ireland. This offended the Ulster immigrants, and they began to use the term “Scotch-Irish” to distinguish themselves from the native Irish. [5]
They retained the characteristic traits of their native stock but borrowed some things from their Irish neighbors. Their religious principles swayed their political opinions; and in maintaining their forms of worship and their creed they learned the rudiments of republicanism before they emigrated to America. They demanded and exercised the privilege of choosing their ministers and spiritual directors, in opposition to all efforts to make the choice and support of the clergy a state/governmental concern.
After emigrating to America, they maintained, in all the provinces where they settled, the right of all men to choose their own religious teachers, and to support them in the way each society of Christians might choose, irrespective of the laws –and also to use what forms of worship they might judge expedient and proper. From maintaining the rights of conscience in both hemispheres, and claiming to be governed by the laws under legitimate sovereigns in Europe they came in America to demand the same extended rights in politics as in conscience; that rulers should be chosen by the people to be governed, and should exercise their authority according to the laws the people approved. In Europe they contended for a limited monarchy through all the troubles of the seventeenth century; in America their descendants defined what a limited monarchy meant, found it to signify rulers chosen by the people for a limited time and with limited powers; and declared themselves independent of the British crown.
Footnotes
- Michael C. Scoggins, Scotch-Irish A Socail History (1962), pages 4-5.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.