I learned a long time ago that the best way to keep a list chatting is to do a bit of fishing. Anything that one can think of to send that might cause some discussion. And I turned to my Morrison family. The TN part of the h2 Morrison family have the folklore that brothers came from Scotland. While there is a bit of folklore in the Cabell County Morrison group that the original Morrison immigrant came from Donegal....both could be correct! If you go to:
http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2017/02/county-donegal-and-morrison-family.html
You will see on the map that is on this blog post that if one was still living in Isle of Lewis when one decided to move, almost certainly the best way to move would be via boat or ship....and Donegal or Derry might be the first stop....as likely as anyplace. Now I can blow up my own theory a million ways....our h2 Morrison group may have already moved many generations ago to Scotland mainland. Or for whatever reason never have been on the Isle of Lewis at all. At this point, our research group has no real proof of any scenario. I wanted to put into one place some of the ideas that I was looking at this morning.
From Wikipedia here is a definition of the Scotch-Irish:
These included 200,000 Scottish Presbyterians who settled in Ireland between 1608 and 1697. Many English-born settlers of this period were also Presbyterians, although the denomination is today most strongly identified with Scotland.
and from https://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/wrv/v4/n4/s71i.htm
In order to clarify this paradox in the "Scotch-Irish" terminology, we shall have to go back to the old Whitehall Palace in London, on a day in September 1607, only four months after the English had planted the first permanent colony in America. King James I was disturbed by reports of further turbulence in his unruly Irish dominion. He decided to act on a proposal by Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland, to repeople the island with Protestants.
That was the beginning of the Ulster Plantation. What then formed nine counties of Northern Ireland (now six counties) was actually re-peopled in the 17th century with Protestants from Northern England and the Lowlands of Scotland. The proportion was roughly four Scots to one Englishman. They largely displaced what Macaulay referred to as the "aboriginal Irish," who were almost wholly Catholic. The Scots were Presbyterians and the English Anglicans with some dissenting creeds.
Thus we have the Scotch-Irish who later were to be such a large factor in settling the New World. They disliked the term because they held the native Irish in contempt as an inferior people. The Irish, on their part, were equally averse to being linked in any way with a people they hated as invaders. But language grows without consent and in spite of ordinance. And so a hyphenated term that was repulsive to both parties and misleading in context was woven into history.
The incident has a rough parallel in the Democratic-Republican Party of Madison’s and Monroe’s time.
It is one of the ironies of British empire rule that having settled Ulster with people of the Protestant faith, it was not long until the British were presecuting the residents of the Plantation for holding to their dissenting Presbyterianism. By 1715 the Anglican church establishment had been so tightened that Presbyterians could not hold civil or military office, nor be married by their own ministers.
Even more galling to the Orangemen (as they came to be called after the Revolution of 1688 when William, Prince of Orange, became joint sovereign with his Queen Mary) were the trade restrictions imposed by the English as though on "foreigners." The transplanted Scotch and English had made agriculture and stock-raising thrive on the rocky hills of Ulster. They had introduced flax growing and built a high-quality linen industry, and were engaging in superior woolen manufacture. Deprived of the right to export their goods even to the motherland or the other English colonies or to import from anywhere but England, their source of a livelihood was narrowed to bare subsistence.
It was under these circumstances that there began early in the 18th century and continued until around 1775 the great exodus of the Scotch-Irish to America.
I was playing with these ideas this morning and found the below information on Wikipedia using Isle of Lewis as the search term:
Following the 1745 rebellion, and Prince Charles Edward Stewart's flight to France, the use of Scottish Gaelic was discouraged, rents were demanded in cash rather than kind, and the wearing of folk dress was made illegal. Emigration to the New World increasingly became an escape for those who could afford it during the latter half of the century.
and
Clan Morrison is a Scottish clan. The Highland Clan Morrison is traditionally associated with the Isle of Lewis and Harris (Leòdhas) around Ness (Nis) and Barvas (Barabhas), and lands in Sutherlandaround Durness. There are numerous Scottish clans, both Highland and Lowland, which use the surname Morison or Morrison. In 1965, the Lord Lyon King of Arms decided to recognize one man as chief of all Morrisons, whether their clans were related or not.
Sooooo....if our Morrison family descends from the traditional Clan Morrison, they likely have roots in the Island that is called Isle of Lewis and Harris. It is marked on the below map by a red marker.
When I look at my ethnicity reports, I almost always have a small percentage of Scandinavian. I have said to others that it is likely from my Irish ancestors because of the fact that the Vikings raided Ireland over and over and almost certainly women were raped...Looking at the Isle of Lewis, I see that the land was actually settled for a while by Norwegian Vikings. My Scandinavian roots may have come from my Morrison family!
From Wikipedia using Isle of Lewis as search term:
In the 9th century AD, the Vikings began to settle on Lewis, after years of raiding from the sea. The Norse invaders intermarried with local people and abandoned their pagan beliefs. At that time, rectangular buildings began to supersede round ones, following the Scandinavian style. Lewis became part of the Kingdom of Mann and the Isles, an offshoot of Norway.
Interestingly enough I received a message from one of the trivia sites in the last day or two talking about Viking settlements in what is now Scotland. On the below map the marker marks th Orkney Islands with the red marker.....Isle of Lewis and Harris is to the left on this map with Stornoway as one shown on the map. According to Wikipedia, Stornoway is the capital of Isle of Lewis and Harris.
In case you have interest in reading about the Viking ruins here are two sites:
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/08/12/viking-drinking-hall/
and
https://www.history.com/news/viking-drinking-hall-scotland-discovery
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