Scotch-Irish, according to James Leyburn, "is an Americanism, generally unknown in Scotland and Ireland, and rarely used by British historians".Leyburn p xi. It became common in the United States after 1850.Leyburn p. 331. The term is somewhat ambiguous because some of the Scotch-Irish have little or no Scottish ancestry at all: numerous dissenter families had also been transplanted to Ulster from northern England, in particular the border counties of Northumberland and Cumberland. Smaller numbers of migrants also came from Wales, the Isle of Man, and the southeast of England, and others were Protestant religious refugees from Flanders, the German Palatinate, and France (such as the French Huguenot ancestors of Davy Crockett).Robinson, Philip, The Plantation of Ulster, St. Martin's Press, 1984, pp. 109–128 What united these different national groups was a base of Calvinist religious beliefs,Hanna, Charles A., The Scotch-Irish: or the Scot in North Britain, North Ireland, and North America, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1902, p. 163 and their separation from the established church (the Church of England and Church of Ireland in this case). That said, the large ethnic Scottish element in the Plantation of Ulster gave the settlements a Scottish character.
