Samuel Swett Green

The Scotch-Irish in America Samuel Swett Green

The Scotch-Irish in America was first delivered as an address to the American Antiquarian Society in 1895 and later published by Charles Hamilton of Worcester, Massachusetts, in the same year. This well-annotated essay provides a clear and informative overview of the history of the Scotch-Irish in north America and includes a useful bibliography of works consulted. As interesting as the address itself is the Appendix, which contains an exchange of rather tetchy correspondence between the author, Samuel Swett Green (a prominent figure in the founding of the American public library system), and Thomas Hamilton Murray, in various newspapers, including the Boston Pilot. Among other matters, Hamilton took issue with the term "Scotch-Irish".

Green's address offers a great introduction to the subject, but, twenty years later Henry Jones Ford, a professor at Princeton, was to publish a much more comprehensive history under the same title - The Scotch-Irish in America (ISBN 978-1910375495).