Quotes from James G. Leyburn

A person in search of his ancestors naturally likes to believe the best of them, and the best in terms of contemporary standards. Where genealogical facts are few, and these located in the remote past, reconstruction of family history is often more imaginative than correct.

People who migrate are usually either dissatisfied at home or ambitious to improve their lot; but upper classes are already successful, and so have no reason to go to a wilderness to start afresh. Plain as these facts are, people still look for distinguished ancestors. It seems not to be enough that one's family tree shows decent, ambitious, God-fearing people; they must be wellborn.

It was not, as some suggest, Calvinism that made Scots hard: it was Scottish character that made Calvinism, already congenial to the national spirit, even more rock-ribbed than its Genevan counterpart.

Thousands of the Scotch-Irish began their New World careers as servants.

Abbot E. Smith, an authority on the subject, estimates that 'not less than a half, nor more than two-thirds, of all white immigrants to the colonies were indentured servants or redemptioners or convicts,' and that, beginning in 1728, 'by far the greatest number of servants and redemptioners' came from Ireland. It would seem, therefore, that more than one hundred thousand Scotch-Irish came to America as indentured servants.