Part 6

Kentucky and Tennessee were both settled from the colonies immediately to the east, but largely by the Ulster Scots, coming from western Pennsylvania through the mountainous districts of Virginia and North Carolina. These Ulster Scots came south along the Appalachian valleys, which trend in a southwesterly direction. They were reinforced by the numerous groups of the same people, who came up from South Carolina. Kentucky was much more purely English than Tennessee.

It is a fact but little understood, that the frontier was not much reinforced from the coast but extended itself. In other words, the frontier from the beginning was pushed onward by the backwoodsmen, each generation advancing a little farther westward and making new clearings.

The people along the coast, after a couple of generations of severe privation, became relatively rich as compared with the frontiersmen. The inhabitants of the coast cities for the most part preferred a sea-faring life rather than the hewing out of a homestead in the wilderness. There have been many cases in our Colonial history where men went from the coast towns to the wilderness, but for the most part they were content to stay at home.

As to the original racial complexion of the colonies, New England was purely Nordic and English. The handful of Ulster Scots in New Hampshire was not to be distinguished from the English, and the individual Huguenot families around Boston were only trifling in number. This remained true of all New England during the Colonial period.

In New York, however, conditions were different. Dutch New Amsterdam, afterwards English New York City, was always an important port and attracted to itself from the earliest times a substantial number of foreigners. In addition to the Dutch founders a considerable number of French Huguenots were among the earlier settlers. There were also a few Germans and Portuguese.

The west bank of the Hudson was less accessible and desirable than the east bank, but there were some substantial colonies of Palatine Germans settled there and up the valleys of the Mohawk and its connecting streams. These last played a creditable part in the heavy fighting which raged in this district with the British settlers, who were for the most part Loyalists. There were also some small colonies of pure Scotch along the Mohawk.

One of the results of the Revolution was the expulsion of the Iroquois Indians, who had occupied New York westward from near Albany to Buffalo. They had sided with the British and had committed many atrocities. Their lands were immediately occupied by New Englanders, coming chiefly from or through Vermont, so that New York State west of Albany became little more than an extension of New England, except that the settlers had become Presbyterians.

Many of the colonists who came to New York from Holland were refugees from the provinces now included in Belgium--in other words, they were either Flemings or French Huguenots. The real Dutch in the province came from the north of Holland and were mostly Nordic Frisians.

In addition to the large migration from Ulster very many English Protestants from Leinster came to America by way of New York immediately after the Revolution. The Catholic Irish did not come in any numbers until after 1845.

The Huguenots were pre-dominantly Nordic. For example, New Rochelle in New York was settled directly from Old Rochelle which is, even today, one of the purest Nordic districts remaining in France. It is entirely safe to say that the Huguenots from Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy, who came to the American colonies by way of England and Holland were overwhelmingly Nordic. Some of those from southern France were probably Mediterranean.

Outside of the Port of New York the Dutch population was confined to the Hudson River towns, chiefly on the east bank, up to and including Albany and Schenectady. The Dutch element of New Jersey was very small.

New Jersey was almost all English, except a few Scotch settlements. It was settled directly from England by way of Perth Amboy, Elizabeth, and Freehold in the north. South Jersey was settled from Pennsylvania. There were a few German communities scattered throughout the north-central part of New Jersey, but, on the whole, the State can be counted as purely English.

The case of Pennsylvania was somewhat different. The original settlers on the west bank of the Delaware, around Philadelphia, were English Quakers with a certain number of Welsh, who probably were for the most part Nordic. This section was the most cultured and important part of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia was the port of entry of two important migrations in the eighteenth century. First, the Ulster Scots, who came in great numbers after 1720. In fact, most of the Ulster Scots in America entered the colonies through Philadelphia and, to a less extent, through Charleston, South Carolina. These late comers found the desirable land along the Delaware had been taken up, so they moved westward to the Indian frontier. They were a restless, brave, and pugnacious people, and immediately assumed the burden of the Indian fighting, often without the support or even the sympathy of the Philadelphia Quakers. They were numerous and soon spread along the foothills and valleys of the Appalachians southwestward through western Maryland and Virginia into North and South Carolina, whence they again crossed the ridges westward, until, by the time of the Revolution, they had laid the foundations of Kentucky and of Tennessee. They were, of course, pure Nordics and of North England and Lowland Scotch origin. They had resided for two or three generations in North Ireland. Being fervent Presbyterians, they had not mingled with the Catholic Irish.

In 1790 these Ulster Scots in the colonies numbered about 200,000 and the pure Scots about 300,000 and taken together they were, next to the English, the most important element. They were, as said above, pre-eminently pioneers and Indian fighters and the same fact appears in the history of practically every frontier of British colonies during the next century. They were a highly selected group when they first went to Ireland, which was at that time to all intents a frontier. Since that time the Scots and the Ulster Scots have everywhere shown the characteristics of the ideal pioneer. They played a predominant part in the settlement of the southern part of the Middle West.

The next most important racial element was the Germans. In fact, it was the only non-British element of importance in the colonies. At the time of the Revolution the Germans numbered about a quarter of a million and by 1790 they have been computed to have been about 9 per cent of the total population of the colonies. They settled in the districts of Pennsylvania immediately west of Philadelphia around York and Lancaster, where they are to be found today. They were a peaceful and industrious people, and have to some extent retained their language and customs down to the present time. A very few of them joined their neighbors, the Ulster Scots, in the migration to the Southwest. They were not particularly loyal to the American cause during the Revolution nor in the preceding French Wars, and their presence in the colonies excited much hostility. They were refugees, who had fled down the Rhine from Alsace and the Palatinate to escape the French when Louis XIV invaded and devastated their country. With them were many refugees from German-speaking Switzerland together with Hussites from Moravia. While there were some Lutherans and Calvinists among them, most of the "Pennsylvania Dutch," as they were called by the English colonists, belonged to small and obscure sects. Dunkards, Schwankenfelders, Amish, and Mennonites still maintain their special religious communities. Their language is Alemannish and this German dialect is still spoken in Alsace and Switzerland. In addition to their colonies in Pennsylvania, there was a small settlement of Moravian Brothers in the western part of North Carolina.

Maryland was originally settled under a charter to Lord Baltimore as a refuge for English Catholics, but from the beginning these latter were very few in number and by 1690 were so thoroughly outnumbered that they were deprived of the franchise.

Virginia, the most important of the colonies next to New England, if the latter be taken as a whole, was pure English in the tidewater district, that is, as far west as Richmond. Beyond were many Ulster Scots, who, it must be remembered, were very largely English.

North Carolina was much the same, except that the Ulster Scots were relatively more numerous.

South Carolina had an English planter aristocracy and was much purer English and had less Ulster Scotch than her northern neighbor. It had also a considerable French Huguenot element, by far the largest and most influential in the colonies. These Huguenots, while not very numerous, were nearly all men of culture and social standing and played a large part in the development of the country.

Georgia was substantially of the same racial complexion as South Carolina.

V

THE PURITANS IN NEW ENGLAND

Taking up the settlement of the colonies more in detail, we may commence with New England. The first inhabitants of Massachusetts were pre-dominantly from the eastern half of England. This contains the counties in which Nordic influence had probably been the strongest, and the early settlement of Massachusetts was by an overwhelmingly Nordic stock, judging alike by place of origin and by family and personal names. A study of the origin of the pioneers of Plymouth, Watertown, and Dedham shows that two-thirds of them came from a region along the English coast between London and the Wash and mostly from the southern part of that stretch of territory.

Although given an important position by historians because of its priority and the romantic incidents connected with its founding, Plymouth Colony, because of its small size, played only a minor part in the early development of the American nation. Its settlers, as shown by the detailed accounts available concerning many of them, were people of the lower and middle classes, mostly of good character but attracting to their numbers also adventurers and men of more doubtful quality.

Within five or six years after the landing at Plymouth Rock, the Plymouth settlers were already outnumbered by other settlers in New England, while Plymouth itself was the parent of a number of other settlements that outstripped it. During the decade 1630-40 it became a province of eight small towns, seven of them stretching for fifty miles along the shore of Cape Cod Bay, from Scituate to Yarmouth, with Taunton lying twenty-five miles inland. The entire colony would probably have moved to the Connecticut River valley, had not the competition of settlers from Massachusetts Bay been too strong. Two generations after the original settlement there the number of inhabitants of Plymouth was no greater than it was at the start.

In the decade of 1620-30 there was a rapid but sporadic settlement of small towns on or near the Massachusetts coast, but the first great migration was that represented by the arrival of Governor Winthrop's fleet in Massachusetts Bay in 1630. The new arrivals settled Boston, Charlestown, Medford, Watertown, Roxbury, Lynn, and Dorchester. During the next decade the Puritan emigration from England continued, again largely from the northern and eastern counties, overwhelmingly of as nearly pure Nordic stock as Great Britain could show.

The difference in antecedents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from that of Plymouth is reflected in the differences in geographical and social origin. The Pilgrim Fathers, as every one knows, took their start from Scrooby in Yorkshire at the point where this county joins Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire, under the leadership of Bradford, the local postmaster and Robinson the clergyman. The capital for the enterprise was almost all subscribed in London, and only one-third of the first settlers were members of Robinson's congregation. The part of Scrooby and Holland in that colony has therefore often been exaggerated. The English founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were on the other hand not merely religious dissenters, but powerful members of the Puritan nobility. The group attracted to their enterprise was therefore one of a somewhat wider social outlook. It was distinguished for the same reason from most of the later emigration.

The people who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the decade of 1630-40 doubtless had every desire to better their condition, and their zeal in seizing land from the Indians showed that they were able to put this desire into effect successfully. Their motive in emigrating, however, was more political than was that of many later colonists, most of whom came frankly to find fortune in a new country.

There were among them a sprinkling of members of the important county families and even a few representatives of the Puritan gentry. Alumni of Cambridge were liberally represented among the clergy, together with a few from Oxford, although few other professional men seem to have been in the group. Many of the settlers were from families of merchants, among whom Puritanism had made great progress in England. The bulk, however, consisted of more or less well-to-do yeomen and artisans.

Since a large part of this Puritan migration, which probably amounted to 20,000 between 1620 and 1640, came in groups often following their local clergymen, it is fairly easy to determine from what parts of Great Britain the early population of Massachusetts came. The evidence all indicates that little of it was from the far north of England where Puritanism had made comparatively slight progress. The greater proportion of the settlers came from the Puritan stronghold of East Anglia comprising the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, and eastern Hereford. Next to this was the emigration from Wessex including Dorset, Somerset, and eastern Devon. Following came contributions from Kent, from the midland counties of Buckingham, Northampton, and Leicester, a considerable group from the borders of Wiltshire, Hampshire, and western Berkshire with some from as far west as Gloucestershire near the Welsh border. A large Boston group came from Lincolnshire (which was the home of the ancestors of the Boston-born Benjamin Franklin) and of course there was a strong contingent from London, which was largely Puritan and Presbyterian. Towns in Massachusetts tended to be settled by people who were all from the same region in England; and as the expansion of Massachusetts was very largely in the form of congregations from given towns, these populations often kept together for a long time. Frequently the town's name indicates the old home. Thus Gloucester was settled by men from that county and Dorchester was named for the town in Dorset from which its early settlers came with the Rev. John Maverick, although it contained an element of Lancashire people from the neighborhood of Preston, Liverpool, and Manchester.

Along with the desire of these settlers to better themselves, to acquire the ownership of land, and to seek fortune in new countries, the disturbed political conditions in Great Britain particularly urged Puritans to migrate. British documents of the period throw many sidelights on the nature and scope of this movement. Thus Lord Maynard, in a memorandum to Archbishop Laud in 1638, laments "the intention of divers clothiers of great trading to go suddenly into New England." He hears daily of incredible numbers of persons of very good abilities who have sold their lands to depart and says there is danger of divers parishes being impoverished.

Since some of them liked the Massachusetts government no better than the one at home, the tide of emigration turned strongly toward the West Indies, the British islands of which were rapidly filled with Nordic stock. The history of Nordic settlement in the West Indies is little known and is exceedingly instructive in connection with a study of the peopling of the New World. Bermuda was colonized in 1612, Saint Kitts in 1623, Barbadoes and Saint Croix in 1625, and Nevis three years later. By 1640 Massachusetts had about 14,000 settlers; but Saint Kitts had almost as many and Barbadoes decidedly more. The number of Englishmen who migrated to the West Indies was perhaps three times as large as the number who went to all New England.

Down to the end of the eighteenth century the West Indies were flourishing, populous, and wealthy, but these islands then ceased to have any world-wide importance--not merely because of economic and agricultural changes, such as affected the sugar industry, but because the white man in the tropics could not compete on even terms with the Negro. It will be pointed out later that these islands are now virtually Negro territory, and they have become centers of emigration into the United States of a black population of low economic and social status--the Nordics having died out, or lost their original characteristics, or gone elsewhere.

From 1640 the emigration from Great Britain to New England almost stopped and the tide turned the other way; many settlers in Massachusetts either returning to England or going to the West Indies. The natural increase of the population from then on accounts for most of the growth of the New England colonies. Even here, however, the Bay State fell behind Virginia in rate of increase of white population.

Almost as soon as they had established themselves around Massachusetts Bay, groups of settlers began to push out in all directions, partly to get better or cheaper land, and partly to get greater independence of action. In this way the settlement of Connecticut was begun as early as 1634. In the next year emigrants arrived in Connecticut from Dorchester and Watertown in Massachusetts and in 1636 from Newton. They established settlements in the Connecticut River valley bearing the names of the Massachusetts towns from which they came until the names of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford were substituted. In 1638 came the settlements at New Haven, Guilford, Milford, and elsewhere. Stratford, Fairfield, Norwalk, and Stamford were established not many months later as a challenge to the Dutch from New York who regarded that part of Connecticut as their own domain. By 1640, at least a couple of thousand settlers were in Connecticut; Hartford, New Haven, and New London becoming in their turn the main gateways of immigration into the whole back country. The settlement of New England was, in general, however, from south to north, proceeding along the river valleys.

The fisheries and the excellent supply of timber for naval construction led to scattered settlements on the coast of Maine even earlier. The lack of navigable rivers delayed penetration into the interior--but during the seventeenth century the Massachusetts people had settled along most of the river valleys. Even to this day the interior of Maine is very largely backwoods. This territory was claimed by Massachusetts as a part of its own dominion, from which it did not separate until in 1820 when it was admitted as an independent State to offset Missouri in Henry Clay's famous compromise.

As Indians were gradually dispossessed, the population of Massachusetts continued to push westward. In 1676 the end of King Philip's War removed the fear of Indians for a time and led to particularly active movements of population inland. Meanwhile settlements had been made in New Hampshire and Rhode Island. The first settlement in New Hampshire had been made by David Thomson, a Scotsman who established himself on the coast; but its population came from Plymouth Colony and later from other parts of Massachusetts. The spread of the English in the New Hampshire mountains and forests, where the Indians continued hostile for a long time, was slow, and even at the time of the Revolution, New Hampshire contained few settlements of any size. The greatest development came toward the end of the period here considered. In 1700 it held but 5000 or 6000 souls. Up to 1760 only the coast towns had any considerable population, but the peace of 1763, which finally removed the French and Indian menace, resulted in a rapid penetration of settlers largely from Connecticut. In the next fifteen years 30,000 people are said to have entered New Hampshire from Connecticut alone, and a hundred new towns had been planted.

Rhode Island already had a few settlers before Roger Williams founded Providence (1636), though that is generally regarded as the beginning of the colony. Portsmouth was founded in 1638, Newport and Warwick in 1639, and in 1644 these settlements were united under one government. Because of its small size, Rhode Island plays in a sense only a minor part in the history of the formation of the early population of North America. But it served as a place of entry for colonists from all sources, and it likewise attracted settlers from the other colonies, due to its conspicuous policy of political and religious toleration. In another way the small size of Rhode Island led to its being a source of colonization. Its available land resources were so small that large families soon exhausted them and there was no recourse except to get out of the colony. It was therefore an incubator for colonists and furnished more emigrants in proportion to its population than did other colonies which had greater resources wherewith to care for their own people. It may be said that while Massachusetts is the parent of all New England, the whole of New England is in some sense a parent of Rhode Island. In either case, the racial homogeneity of the population is conspicuous, the little groups of settlers who represented other than Nordic stock being insignificant in numbers however much they may appeal through sentiment to the pride of their descendants.

Vermont was settled late, its main occupation not coming until after the Revolution. At first a part of New Hampshire, it attracted occasional settlers from that State and its neighbors, but there could hardly be said to have been a permanent settlement until Brattleboro was founded in 1740.

The settlement of Massachusetts west of the Connecticut River began in 1725, when the Berkshires were invaded and Sheffield established. Settlers steadily pressed north and west, and gradually took possession of the territory between the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain. The Connecticut River was the first American frontier, as Alaska was the last.

At the time of the Revolution Vermont was very much of a frontier, in which a lawless and defiant lot known as the Green Mountain Boys held possession and yielded allegiance to no one. Within six weeks after the collapse of Shays's Rebellion, more than 700 families are said to have migrated from western Massachusetts into Vermont. Many New England soldiers who had fought over this ground in the Revolution had marked it as offering desirable home sites, and came into it to take up land and clear it, to bring their families, and establish isolated settlements which gradually coalesced into something like a settled country. The increasing influx of New Englanders led to the surrender of New York's claims on the territory, so that it took its place as an independent State in 1791, the first to be added to the original thirteen.