Irish and America

tual numbers involved. It is estimated that in the period between 1717 and 1775 something like a quarter of a million Ulstermen settled in the North American continent and, between 1820 and 1920, something like four-and-a-quarter million people emigrated from Ireland to earn a living in the United States. The reasons for going were many. The Ulster folk who emigrated did so voluntarily, and were almost entirely of Presbyterian stock, seeking to escape from the Protestant Ascendancy, with which they had little or nothing in common. The early Irish from the South were often bondsmen, who had sol