British Immigration clues for ancestry research tutorial.
One of the essential considerations in finding our ancestors is immigration research. Immigration/migration patterns reveal clues to finding the country of origin of immigrant ancestors and so much more.
British Immigration to America for Ancestor Research
Table of Contents
- Think like A Historian Not As Genealogist for Immigration
- Other Resources to Help Trace Immigrant Ancestors
- America: People on the Move
- English Immigration
- Irish Immigration
- Scottish and Scotts-Irish Immigration
- Welch Immigration
Return to British Immigration to America Table of Contents
Think like A Historian Not As Genealogist for Immigration
Look at immigration from a historian’s point of view and not from the genealogical point of view. You’re trying to understand what your ancestors did and why. As a genealogist, you wonder why your ancestors migrated, and you look for clues that might direct you to the birthplace in your country of origin. As genealogists, we first search through deeds, wills, bible records, and other documents. Documents can tell you that your ancestor sold his property from one person to another, but it does not tell why he then picked up and moved from Virginia to Tennessee. When you add seek to understand immigration patterns of the time and people, your chances for success expand dramatically because you understand what your family was thinking, see what others individuals were doing, where they were going, and where they came from.
By learning about the immigration patterns for a specific ethnic group to which your ancestor belonged in the period they lived, we begin to see trends that correlate to our family, such as the ports they arrived, the counties and cities from which they came, and where they settled, the reasons for decisions that were made, the types of records they left behind and where.
You start by answering the question:
- What was their ethnic background or group to which you think they belonged?
- Where were they Puritans, Welch, or Germans?
- Now you begin to answer the questions:
- Why did they come?
- When did they come?
- Where did they settle?
- What were their social and work conditions?
- What was their religious background?
Return to British Immigration to America Table of Contents
Other Resources to Help Trace Immigrant Ancestors
Are you developing a family history for an individual or family? Are you trying to find their immigrant origins? Start by seeing the articles
- 5 Steps to Finding Immigrant Ancestor Country of Origin
- Overcome Research Brick Walls to Find Ancestor’s Country of Origin
The following videos can help you get a head start in understanding immigration cand country of origin ancestor research.
How to Find the Origin of Immigrants Coming to America
An introduction to immigration and migration historical research. You will be introduced to a five-step methodology to find the immigrant origins when conducting individual and family history research.
Addition videos include:
- What Records to Search to Discover Immigrant Origins-Part 1
- What Records to Search to Discover Immigrant Origins-Part 2
- How to Find Immigrants Real Surname and Life Event Dates
The following are records I have found extremely helpful and full of clues to finding an individual’s birthplace and immigrant origins. It is designed to provide a quick reference and direction of finding and searching for records as probable places to find information. You can use these records to develop an immigrant paper trail to assist you in finding and tracing an individual immigrant’s origins. Check out these articles:
Check out the following country profiles to learn more about their immigration and migration in America.
| Immigration and Migration in America | ||
| Czechs and Slovaks | Danish | Dutch |
| English | Finnish | French |
| German | Greek | Hungarian |
| Icelandic | Irish | Italian |
| Norwegian | Polish | Russian |
| Scandinavian | Scottish | Swedish |
| Welch | United States Western Migration | |
Articles include:
- British Immigration to America for Ancestry Research
- Scandinavian Immigration to America for Ancestry Research
- Western European Immigration to America for Ancestry Research
- Eastern European Immigration to America for Ancestry Research
- Western Migration in America for Ancestry Research
Learn more about immigrant records at “Immigrant Records at the National Archives.”
America: People on the Move
When you stepped back and began looking at my ancestors as part of an ethnic group at a given time and place, you quickly see that America is a land of people on the move. Our ancestors were part of groups that, for specific reasons, felt a “push’ to move to escape political or religious oppression, wars, and violence, and major natural disasters. The reasons include:
- War or another armed conflict
- Famine or drought
- Disease
- Poverty
- Political corruption
- Disagreement with politics
- Religious intolerance
- Natural disasters
- Discontent with the natives, such as frequent harassment, bullying, and abuse
- Lack of employment opportunities
- These factors generally do not affect people in developed countries; even a natural disaster is unlikely to cause out-migration.
When you are pushed, where do you go? One senses the “pull” America had upon our ancestors. Economic and professional opportunities were the foundation for our ancestors coming to America. It was the availability of lands for farming, an abundance of jobs, and higher salaries. The reasons include:
- Higher incomes
- Lower taxes
- Better weather
- Better availability of employment
- Better medical facilities
- Better education facilities
- Better behavior among people
- Family reasons
- Political stability
- Religious tolerance
- Relative freedom
- Weather
- National prestige
The following immigration/migration profiles are provided as an example of valuable information for finding the origin of your ancestors and helping to understand your ethnic heritage better. This information is not all-inclusive, but it will be a good starting point for you to expand upon.
English Immigration
What are some of the important English immigration facts?
The English government could not afford to sponsor colonization in the Americas, so it fell to the hands of big business. In 1606 two charter companies, the Plymouth Company and the London Company were formed to create colonies in North America.
The Jamestown immigrants in the colony’s first half-century were, for the most part, single, male tradespeople and laborers from the cities of England. Many planned to return to England and thus had little community spirit. About 40 percent of the immigrants to the Chesapeake Bay area in the seventeenth century were indentured servants.
Between 1630 and 1640, about twenty thousand English men, women, and children came to New England in what is known as the Great Migration. The Puritans in Massachusetts believed that only certain people were “God’s elect” or “saints.” They developed an examination to determine which ones among them were saints.
Seventy thousand English “war brides” immigrated to the United States in the 1940s. They were English women who met American service members stationed in England during World War II and married them.
Why did the English come?
Opportunity. The primary motivation was undoubtedly economical. Rich may have been looking for a good investment. Extensive population growth
- Population explosion, increasing from three million people in 1500 to over five million by 1650.
- London’s population grew from about 200,000 in 1600 to 575,000 in 1700.
- 25 to 50 percent of the population lived in poverty.
Wages for workers in England lagged far behind price increases. The roles people played within the social world were already set. The nobles, or “gentlemen,” owned all the large land spreads. A person born to a low position would likely maintain the lowly status.
Inheritance laws (the passing of one’s wealth from one generation to the next) were ruled by a system called primogeniture. The family’s wealth passed to the oldest son upon the father’s death. The system ensured that the estates of the wealthy did not get divided into small pieces and remained in the hands of a few. Ensured aristocracy (government by the elite or a small privileged class) remained intact. Younger members of some families of wealthy families America as an opportunity to make a fortune. Plagues (deadly epidemic diseases) and famine were common.
Religion
Upheavals in the religion of England played a significant role in settlement of the New World, particularly New England. England moves from Catholic to Protestant. Before the sixteenth century, England had been a Roman Catholic state.
- Starting in 1529, King Henry VIII (1491–1547) broke the English Church from Rome and the pope (the head of the Roman Catholic Church).
- In Henry’s young son, Edward VI, who ruled from 1547 to 1553, England’s national church was made into a genuinely Protestant church. This Christian church denies the pope’s authority and accepts the Bible as the only source of revealed truth.
- Henry’s daughter, Catherine of Aragon, took the throne and proclaimed all of England Roman Catholic. When the Protestant leaders rebelled, Mary had many of them executed.
Mary died in1558andwas succeeded by Elizabeth I, who reigned until 1603. Elizabeth strove to unify England under one religion that all would accept.
- She created a state church—its beliefs and leaders were chosen by her with a Protestant basis but retained many Roman Catholic practices.
- The religion was called the Church of England, or the Anglican religion.
- The compromise worked well for most of the people of England, but there were dissenters.
- The Protestant nature of the church displeased a portion of the many Catholics in the country, and there were Protestants who wished to “purify” the Church of England of the remnants of Roman Catholicism.
This group of Protestants, called the Puritans, arose in England in the 1560s. Elizabeth invited Puritans to participate in England’s political system and form their places of worship as long as they recognized her as the head of the Church of England.
The Puritans did not wish to separate from the Church of England, only to wait for its reform. Elizabeth was skillful in bringing the country together, and it was only after her death that the great migrations of religious dissenters (nonconformers) would begin.
When did the English come?
The first Massachusetts Bay Company settlers landed in Massachusetts in 1630, followed by ten years of the largest migration to the New World. Reasons included:
- The harassment of Puritans in England.
- The economic problems.
- The lure of land was ripe for the taking (the English did not believe Indians were proper owners).
- The idea of creating a new moral order and a new society.
- Approximately sixty thousand people left England during those years, two-thirds heading in other directions.
What was the English religious background?
Puritans. Many American immigrants in New England were Puritans and developed their communities according to Puritan principles. Like the Plymouth settlers, the Puritan immigrants intended to settle permanently in America. They often came as families or, if single, were placed in family groups. Average ages in the thirties and forties.
The New Englanders settled in an orderly fashion, forming themselves into small groups that bought land from the Indians, petitioned the legislature for the right to become a town, and then moved to the townsite and set up. Husbands, wives, and their children set up housekeeping immediately. Those men and women who were as yet unmarried boarded in the houses of those who were married.
The towns that the first immigrants established filled quickly, and those who came on later ships spread out and created new towns. New England towns came in many sizes and shapes. Some had individually owned farms, and others had community fields where all the townspeople worked together and split up the crops. Colonists usually followed a basic pattern.
The site for the town was chosen by the colony’s government and was generally given to a group of about thirty or forty families. The people in the group had generally known one another back in England, but they might take in a “stranger” if they had the right skills and good standing in the community.
The typical New England village had a town green with a meetinghouse (church). The homes were arranged near the meetinghouse and close to one another. Most government works was done at the local level by the town officials. New England towns had their militias, groups of citizens organized for military service. The Puritans believed that only certain people were “God’s elect,” or in their terminology, “saints.”
They developed a form of examination to determine who among them were the saints. They ruled that only saints could get the governor’s vote to keep their commonwealth pure. (A commonwealth is a form of government based on the common good of the citizens rather than the rule of a monarch.)
Are there any clues to English naming patterns?
In 18th & 19th Century Britain, families generally tended to name their children in a specific pattern as follows:
Males
- Firstborn Son – father’s father
- Second-born Son – mother’s father
- Third-born Son – father
- Fourth-born Son – father’s eldest brother
- Fifth-born Son – father’s 2nd oldest brother or mother’s oldest brother
Females
- Firstborn Daughter – mother’s mother
- Second-born Daughter – father’s mother
- Third-born Daughter – mother
- Fourth-born Daughter – mother’s eldest sister
- Fifth-born Daughter – mother’s 2nd oldest sister or father’s oldest sister
It is also common to use:
- The mother’s maiden name as a second name;
- The surname of close friends as a second name;
- Give another child the same name as a previous child who had died; or
- Give a child the name of a relative or friend who had recently died.
New England & Virginia Naming Patterns
Early settlers seemed to favor names for their associated moral qualities. Among girls’ names, which were no doubt intended to incite their bearers to lead godly lives, were: Content, Lowly, Mindwell, Obedience, Patience, Silence, Charity, Mercy, Comfort, Delight and Thankful.
In Virginia and New England, a popular custom was using surnames as given names. This mainly occurred with boys, but it was not unknown to girls. Some names were also chosen for their magical properties, and astrologers were consulted to find a “fortunate” or “lucky” name.
In Virginia, Biblical references were less common. Early settlers often named sons for Teutonic warriors, Frankish knights, and English kings. William, Robert, Richard, Edward, George, and Charles. Daughters received the name of Christian saints and traditional English folk names, such as Margaret, Jane, Catherine, Frances, and Alice, along with English favorites Mary, Elizabeth, Anne, and Sarah.
Irish Immigration
What are some of the important Irish immigration facts?
In 1691 the British enacted the first Penal Laws in Ireland, which prohibited Irish Catholics from receiving an education, entering a profession, purchasing land, voting, holding public office, owning any weapon, or owning a horse of more excellent value than five pounds. The Penal Laws remained in effect until 1829, ensuring that Irish Catholics were impoverished and powerless to rebel against their oppressors.
Starting in 1845, a mysterious disease killed Ireland’s potato crop. Because the tenant farmers of Ireland had little besides potatoes to eat, an estimated 1.5 million people died of starvation or related diseases within just a few years.
In 1847, as the potato famine raged, Parliament legislated that the Irish poor were the responsibility of the landowners. After that, when landlords evicted the tenant farmers from their land, they either paid to have them placed in workhouses or sent them off to the New World. An estimated two and a half million Irish Catholics entered the workhouses during the potato blight. An estimated one to one and a half million obtained inexpensive one-way passage on rickety ships heading for the New World.
Irish Catholic immigrants in the United States tended not to move inland to the rural areas but stayed in East Coast cities and towns. By the 1840s, nativist organizations were gaining strength. The American Party, later known as the Know-Nothing Party, claimed that immigrants—primarily the Irish and Roman Catholics—threatened to destroy American values and democracy.
As the Irish American population grew in the northeastern cities, its growing numbers increased its voting capacity. Urban Irish Americans across the country organized into political machines made up of precincts working under a boss whose power depended on his ability to deliver up the district’s votes. Because they manipulated the voting system by granting favors, political machines always had some criminal element, but the extent varied greatly.
Second-generation Irish American women, anxious to escape the household-help business, we’re determined to get an education. In 1850, 75 percent of Irish women in the United States were domestics. Irish American women stayed in school longer than Irish American men at the turn of the century.
When did the Irish they come?
Irish immigration to North America had begun well before the potato famine. There were Irish among the colonial settlers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Others continued to arrive after the United States was formed in 1783. Between 1815 and 1845, the grim condition of the Irish economy, a population explosion in the country, and the poor treatment of the Catholics initiated mass migration.
It is estimated that about 1 million Irish Catholics immigrated to the United States in that pre-famine period. In 1840 Irish immigrants made up about one-half of all immigrants to the United States. Another 1.5 million Irish Catholic immigrants arrived in the United States in the potato famine years, and another 2.6 million came from 1860 to the present.
When discussing Irish immigration to the United States, distinguishing between the Catholic and Protestant Irish (Scotch-Irish) immigrants is necessary because their experiences differed significantly. Northern Ireland faced less discrimination and tended to come to the new country with job skills and money to get started.
Where did the Irish settle?
The early nineteenth-century Irish Catholic immigrants were primarily male and usually poor, illiterate, and unskilled. Many of the hundreds of thousands of desperate passengers who emigrated from Ireland during the famine years found cheap passage to Canada and went there with the intention of traveling from Canada to the United States.
- The ships they boarded were called “coffin ships” because so many people died during the voyage from infectious diseases.
- The dead were thrown overboard. For the living, the conditions aboard were often nightmarish.
- 1847, about seventeen thousand people died while at sea, and another twenty thousand died after landing due to diseases picked up onboard.
- Once in Canada, the ships were generally quarantined (subject to enforced isolation from the public to prevent the spread of infectious disease) at an island near Montreal called Grosse Isle.
- The many immigrants quickly overwhelmed the island, many of whom were near death and carrying disease.
- Many made their way from Canada down to New England and New York. They stayed mainly in the East and South, in Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Charleston, South Carolina.
- Other Irish people made their way to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York.
- The Irish immigrants who made it away from the eastern seaboard, especially those who made it to the West Coast, did not have the same experiences as the majority that remained in the East.
What were the Irish social and work conditions?
The immigrants were not Ireland’s poorest people since they could not afford the passage, but they often arrived without much more than the clothes on their backs. Those coming from rural Ireland mainly were not used to the industrial society or big cities, but they adapted.
When they arrived in the New World, the young Irish immigrants quickly got to work in low-paying, heavy-labor jobs. They sent their earnings back to Ireland to bring their families over to the United States as soon as possible.
- This migration pattern is called chain migration and has been practiced by many immigrants since the Irish.
- Chain migration works in this way: An individual or group of immigrants goes to a new land and gets established with a job and a place to live. They then help bring friends and family, who come, get established near the earlier immigrants, and then help bring their kin and friends over.
The earlier immigrants help the new ones settle, and a new community of people who had connections in the old country has arisen in the new country. In cities, whole neighborhoods formed people from a particular village in the Old World.
- They often lived very close together, as they had done in their clachans at home.
- Houses built for one family often housed several Irish families.
- The city tenements and slums were often unhealthy, with poor sewage and no running water.
By the 1850s, the Irish comprised half the population of New York and Boston. Young, unmarried, Catholic, and mainly of peasant background, the immigrants faced adapting to an urban and predominantly Protestant environment. Confronting intense discrimination in employment, most Irish men found work as manual laborers, while Irish women took jobs mainly in domestic service.
Discrimination had a necessary consequence: it actively encouraged Irish immigrants to participate in politics.
- With a strong sense of ethnic identity, high rates of literacy, and impressive organizational talents, Irish politicians played an essential role in the development of modern American urban politics.
After the 1850s, the migrations from Ireland were no longer made up of single young males, and most Irish immigrants came over as families. After 1880, slightly more women than men were immigrating. The Irish tended to live in tenement houses (apartment buildings in poorly made cities and lacking in safety and sanitation features) because that was all they could afford.
What was the Irish religious background?
The Irish are most known for being Protestant and Catholic. The people from Northern Ireland (Ulster) were called Scotch-Irish. After 1600, they had settled in Ulster because they were encouraged by the English to plant a Protestant Presence in Catholic Ireland. Scotch-Irish belonged to Presbyterian churches and farmed land obtained from the English for several generations.
America was a predominately Protestant nation. Catholics were feared and detested, and Americans thought that their culture, religions, and backgrounds could not be retained if thousands of Irish immigrants moved in.
More than any other organization, Catholic Church made a concerted effort to welcome the new Catholic immigrants. Catholic citizens helped them find jobs and homes; sisters (nuns) taught their children English in Catholic schools; priests tried to protect their political interests and shield them from a sometimes hostile Protestant environment; the local church held religious festivals and social events. It is important to stress that the neighborhood Catholic church was not just a church; it was the focal point of a whole community, a whole way of life. Even if the relationship between the Church and Catholic immigrants was often far from perfect, local parishes provided millions of heartbroken, homesick immigrant men and women the familiar comforts of ritual and belief that gave their world meaning.
Are there any clues to family naming patterns?
The Irish model is consistent with the Standard Naming pattern for the first two sons and daughters. For the third child of each gender onward, alternate names are used, based on the Grandmother’s, Grandfather’s, Mother’s, Aunt’s, and Uncle’s names.
- First son full name of a paternal grandfather
- Second son full name of a maternal grandfather
- First daughter full name of a paternal grandmother
- Second daughter full name of a maternal grandmother
Scottish and Scotts-Irish Immigration
What are some of the important immigration facts?
The first Scottish immigrants to America were prisoners of War, sent (or transported) to the colonies by English ruler Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) after he defeated Scotland in 1650.
After the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the British placed the Act of Proscription upon the Highland Scots, which prohibited them from almost every aspect of practicing their traditions: wearing their tartan kilts, bearing arms, and even playing their traditional pipe music. The act destroyed the Highlands clan system.
In the early 1600s, British King James I (1566–1625) decided he wanted a Protestant population in Northern Ireland. From 1608 to 1697, about 200,000 Presbyterian Scots from the Lowlands immigrated to Ulster in Northern Ireland. Later, when these immigrants relocated again to North America, they would become known as the Scotch-Irish.
In the American Revolution (1775–83), Scotch-Irish Americans generally joined the rebel cause, while Scottish Americans tended to side with the British crown. Golf was invented in Scotland and brought to America by Scottish and Scotch-Irish immigrants.
Scottish
Scottish: When and why did they come?
The first Scottish immigrants to America were prisoners of War, forcibly sent to the colonies by Cromwell after he defeated Scotland in 1650.
- Served out their sentences by laboring in the English colonies of North America.
In 1707 the Act of Union made Scotland and England and Wales, part of the United Kingdom, share a single parliament. Scots were given the same freedoms as English citizens. Trade between Scotland and America increased after the 1707 Union of the Parliaments. Scottish emigration mainly was to Virginia, where tobacco was high in production and financially rewarding business.
In the early eighteenth century, moreScotswere transported to America as political prisoners of England in 1715 and 1745.
- More than fourteen hundred defeated Jacobite rebels (Scots who wanted to return a Stuart monarch to the throne of Britain) were sent to America.
- Forced to become indentured servants—people who contracted to work for an agreed-upon term with someone in the New World in exchange for their passage.
Another large group of involuntary immigrants was Scottish soldiers brought to America by the British to fight in the French and Indian War (1754–63).
- The French and Indian War was a war over territory in America between France and England where Indians fought as allies to the French.
- When the soldiers were discharged at the end of the War, most Scottish soldiers elected to remain in America.
- The British offered them land in western Pennsylvania as an alternative to being shipped home.
- Of the twelve thousand Scottish soldiers discharged, only seventy-six returned to Scotland.
Voluntary Scottish immigration to America picked up between the union with England (1707) and the American Revolution (1776–83).
- Conditions were already tricky for Highland Scottish farmers with a cold, rainy climate, short growing season, and rocky ground.
- In the Highlands, one method of earning a living had been armed raiding of the more prosperous Lowlands.
- In the mid-eighteenth century, the British prohibited the Highlanders from bearing arms.
- Without being able to raid, there was not enough work to support the clans.
Landlords began to raise the rents for Scotland’s tenant farmers (farmers who rented their land), seizing grazing grounds and evicting tenants to Scottish squash uprisings. Wealthy landowners in America advertised for indentured servants, immigrants who would work for years in exchange for passage to America. Several Scots jumped at the opportunity and hired on. Others sold their farms and livestock to pay for their passage. Some Highland clan leaders organized mass migrations to the New World. Whole communities would pack up and emigrate.
Scottish: Are there any clues to family naming patterns?
Many Scotts families follow the custom of naming their children after the grandparents in the following manner.
- The firstborn son is named for the paternal grandfather.
- The second son was named after the maternal grandfather.
- A third son is named after the father.
- Firstborn daughter for the maternal Grandmother
- Second daughter for the paternal Grandmother
- Third daughter for the mother.
Notes: This could cause families to have two children with the same name if the grandparents had the same name. The process also starts over if the parent remarried, so it is common to find half brothers or sisters with the same names. Not all Scotts families followed this pattern, but many continued it long after leaving Scotland. One above variation was for the eldest son to be named after the mother’s father and the eldest daughter after the father’s mother.
The Scotch-Irish
Scotch-Irish: When and why did they come?
From 1608 to 1697, about two hundred thousand Scots immigrated to Ulster in Northern Ireland. King James, I decided he wanted a Protestant population in the area and soon began evicting the Irish Catholics. The immigrants were from Scotland’s Lowlands and were almost entirely Presbyterian. They settled in communities and cities in Northern Ireland with some English immigrants.
The Protestants in Northern Ireland built up a thriving textile (cloth-making) industry and successfully farmed the land. Lived in constant fear of attack by the Irish, who had been driven off their land. 1632-King Charles, I tried to impose the Church of England elements upon their Presbyterian church.1639-Charles demanded that the Scots swear loyalty to the crown and reject the National Covenant.
- The king’s required oath against the famous covenant became known as the “Black Oath.” The penalties for not taking the oath were harsh.
- When the Scotch-Irish resisted his demands, the king sent troops to evict them from their farms.
In the early eighteenth century, the Ulster-Scots began to leave Ireland in large numbers, seeking self-government and religious freedom.
- Disappointed in the English government
- Tired of being attacked by the Catholics in Ireland for being Protestant and by the Anglicans (the official church of England, also Protestant) for being Presbyterian.
Ulster-Scots had been the victims of English landlords who charged outrageously high rents.
- They sought a new place to live where they could own their land and practice their religion freely.
- Pennsylvania encouraged religious freedom for all, and in the early eighteenth century, it was still a largely unsettled frontier, so it was beautiful to the Scotch-Irish.
By 1749, about 25 percent of the total population of Pennsylvania was Scotch-Irish. Many of their descendants still live in towns such as Gettysburg, Chambersburg, Carlisle, and York.
Scotch-Irish: Where did they come from?
Between 1717 and 1775, these English/Scottish Borderers (a much better name for them) came into the port at Philadelphia in great numbers. Some came directly from the Northern English counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Westmoreland, Durham, Cumberland, and Northumberland.
Some came directly from the Southern Scottish counties of Ayr, Dumfries, Wigtown, Roxburgh, and Berwick. Others had gone to the Northern Irish counties of Derry, Down, Armagh, Antrim, and Tyrone and migrated to America. A few Northern Irish came with them, but most of the people in this migration were English or Scottish.
Scotch-Irish: What were the naming patterns?
These Borderers brought their child-naming practices with them. There was a pattern, but they were the least likely group to follow it.
- The pattern in this dominant male society was for the two eldest sons to be named after their grandfathers
- Third son after his father.
They also used Biblical names (John the most common), Teutonic names (Richard or Robert the most common), names of Border saints, such as Andrew, Patrick, or David, Celtic names, such as Ewan/Owen, Barry, or Roy, names from other cultures, such as Ronald or Archibald, names of Scottish Kings, such as Alexander, Charles, or James, names of brave border warriors, such as Wallace, Bruce, Perry, or Howard, place names, such as Ross, Clyde, Carlisle, Tyne or Derry.
Sometimes they made up names or feminized family names and gave them to their daughters (i.e., Hoyt=Hoyette). The most common names for girls were the same as in all 3 of the other groups of English immigrants–Mary, Elizabeth and Sarah.
There were also some naming taboos: they did not use Scottish Highlander names, such as Douglas, Donald, Kenneth, Ian, or Stewart; they did not use Gaelic names, such as Sean, Kathleen, Maureen, or Sheila.
Scotch-Irish: Are there any clues to family naming patterns?
Scots/Irish and naming pattern 1700 – 1800. These Scottish naming patterns are outlined in the book “In Search of Scottish Ancestry.” The basic naming pattern used by Scots/Irish is based on the English pattern. The Scottish tended to stick to one of two accepted naming patterns more rigidly than other nationalities.
- First son paternal grandfather first daughter maternal Grandmother
- Second son maternal grandfather second daughter paternal Grandmother
- Third son father third daughter mother
- Fourth+ son other family members fourth+ daughter other family members
This variation was common in Scotland, particularly in the highland areas.
- First son maternal grandfather first daughter paternal Grandmother
- Second son paternal grandfather second daughter maternal Grandmother
- Third son father third daughter mother
- Fourth+ son other family members fourth+ daughter other family members
Welch Immigration
Why and when did Welch come?
The earliest group was a Baptist congregation that founded a settlement called Swansea (1677) in Massachusetts near the Rhode Island border. The significant migration of this era began in 1681 when Welsh Quaker gentry obtained a tract of 40,000 acres in Pennsylvania. By 1790, ten thousand persons of Welsh birth or ancestry were in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Smaller Welsh settlements were found in other parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the Carolinas. The Welsh in Pennsylvania were generally well-to-do. The 1782 Lancaster County tax rolls showed that the Welsh, although only one percent of the population, were 7 percent of those paying more than forty pounds in annual taxes.
In the 19th century, during the significant immigration period of the 19th century, most Welsh, particularly the skilled workers, came from the urbanized, heavily populated areas of South Wales. Most Welsh abandoned their homeland for purely economic reasons. Welsh farmers were growing weary of long agricultural depression and poor treatment at the hands of Church of England landlords.
Suitable land was scarce, to begin with, and the English legal code “disinherited” all younger sons–the law of primogeniture. Welsh miners and quarrymen left a slumping job market to capitalize on the sudden expansion of 19th-century America’s industrial economy. In the 1890s, the McKinley Tariff cut off the importation of Welsh tinplate, thus drying up the industry and forcing the tinplate specialists to move their lucrative enterprises to the U.S.
Where did Welch settle?
Settled: All original thirteen colonies; Colorado; Kentucky; Michigan; Tennessee; Wisconsin. During the 19th-century wave of Welsh immigration, at least one-third of the newcomers settled in Pennsylvania, particularly in the anthracite coal regions around Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. Pittsburgh’s bituminous coal and steel center settled in industrial areas in New York and Ohio.
As the West opened up, Welsh miners pushed on to the coalfields and copper fields of Colorado and the goldfields of California. Following the Civil War, Welsh farmers migrated to Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kansas.
Return to British Immigration to America Table of Contents
Are there any clues to Welch naming patterns?
The Welsh used an ancient Patronymic naming system whereby married children took their father’s forename as their surname. Women rarely took on their husbands’ family names instead of retaining their maiden names.
This model makes it relatively easy to deduce grandchildren’s names from grandparents and vice versa. An example of this in practice would be Catherine Hughes (daughter of Hugh Hughes and Susan Thomas) married Richard William (son of William Prichard and Sarah Evans) the name of their children in order would be William Prichard, Hugh Hughes, Richard William, Sarah Evans, Susan Thomas and Catherine Hughes
This makes family history complex, but a commonly used naming standard in place combined Christian names with patronymic surnames.
- First son full name of a paternal grandfather
- Second son full name of a maternal grandfather
- Third son full name of the father
- First daughter full name of a paternal grandmother
- Second daughter full name of a maternal grandmother
- Third daughter full name of mother
The source material for this resource is a compilation from the following references:
1. Benson, Sonia. U.S. Immigration and Migration Almanac. Ed. Sarah Hermsen. UXL-GALE, 2004. eNotes.com. 2006.
2. Daniels, Roger. Coming to America. A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, New York, New York: HarperCollins, 2002.
3. Dollarhide, William. British Origins of American Colonists, 1629 – 1775, Bountiful, UT: Heritage Quest, 1997.
4. Dollarhide, William. Map Guide of American Migration Routes, 1735 – 1815, Bountiful, UT: Heritage Quest, 2000.
5. Wills, Chuck. Destination America. The People and Cultures That Created A Nation, New York, New York: D.K. Publishing, Inc., 2005.
6. Research Outlines by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City, UT.
