Conestoga wagon, 18th century

A history of Ireland in 100 objects: Conestoga wagons were first made by German immigrants in eastern Pennsylvania in the 1730s. Longer and deeper than European wagons and with small, manoeuvrable wheels, they were capable of carrying families and heavy freight over rough terrain, making them the ubiquitous vehicle of the push by European settlers westwards across the Appalachian Mountains into the Native American-occupied territories.

Covered at first with hemp and later with canvas, they became the characteristic shape of the great migration from Ulster in the half-century after 1718.

In that year, Jonathan Dickenson, a merchant in Philadelphia, noted the arrival of 135 “passengers from the North of Ireland” – “they say [a] Considerable Number will follow next summer”. He was right: in all, about 200,000 people left Ulster, most of them Presbyterians whose origins lay in Scotland. (The entire Presbyterian population of Ulster was probably little more than 500,000.)

This exodus changed both Ireland and America. Here, it affected the balance between the Protestant and Catholic populations. On the other side of the Atlantic, the so-called Ulster Scots or Scotch-Irish destroyed British government efforts to draw a limit to the western expansion of the white colony, grabbed huge amounts of Native American land and became one of the largest components of European settlement in Virginia, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas and Georgia. From the classic image of the frontiersman to country music, and from the populism of Andrew Jackson to evangelical religion, they left a huge imprint on American culture.

Why did they leave? Presbyterian ministers tended to stress religious persecution as the primary factor: the Test Act of 1704 excluded Presbyterians from public office and ended recognition of their clergy. But economics were almost certainly more important. Between 1714 and 1719, Ulster suffered a succession of bad harvests. Leases given in the aftermath of the Williamite victory were running out and landlords sought higher rents. The Ulster migrants were not refugees – their passage to America was typically well organised and carefully prepared, with whole communities often travelling together. The lure of free land in America was nonetheless enhanced by economic discomfort at home.

Initially welcomed by the Calvinist communities of New England, the Ulster Scots gradually came to be seen as burdensome and fractious. This, along with their hunger for land, encouraged them to push beyond the established frontiers. Ironically, this brought them into conflict with a fellow Irishman and convert from Catholicism, William Johnson, who controlled relations between the colonists and the Native American nations. Johnson railed against the Ulster Scots as “ignorant people” who “think they do good Service when they Knock an Indian in the Head”. But neither Johnson’s efforts nor the frequent and bloody conflicts with Native Americans could prevent them from pushing westwards.

This dynamism and the independent spirit of their Presbyterianism made the Ulster Scots a powerful force in the shaping of an emergent American identity. It is telling that the Declaration of Independence was printed by John Dunlap, born in Tyrone, first read in public by John Nixon, a first-generation Ulster Scot, and first signed by John Hancock, who was also of Ulster Presbyterian descent.

Thanks to Andrea Kennedy

Where to see it Ulster American Folk Park, 2 Mellon Road, Castletown, Omagh, Co Tyrone, 048-82243292

[ nmni.com/uafp ]