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THE APPALACHIAN EXPERIENCE by Cratis Williams Southern Appalachia begins with the southern border of Pennsylvania and extends like a huge thumb into the heart of the South, terminating in northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. It includes West Virginia and parts of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. As Harry Caudill has pointed out, it is one of the richest regions in natural resources in the world and at the same time has more poverty in it than any other region in America. Approximately thirteen million people now living were born in Appalachia. Nine million are living in the region now, and four million born there have migrated, mostly to northern industrial cities where they have tended to gather in ghettos of poverty but, according to observers who live along the highways leading out of Appalachia, try to get back "down home" every weekend. Of the thirteen million Appalachians, approximately 94% of them are descended from ancestors who were living along the border at the time of the American Revolution. It has been estimated that not more than 30 million of our country's total population of approximately 220 million are descended through all lines from pre-Revolutionary American ancestors. Of these, 43% are natives of Appalachia. Appalachian people, while far from being homogeneous, are much like one another throughout the region. The Eastern Kentuckian is more like a North Georgian than he is like a native of the Bluegrass region of his own state. The North Carolina mountaineer is more like a West Virginian or an Eastern Kentuckian than he is like a North Carolinian from east of Greensboro. Not only do Appalachian people think, speak, and act like one another throughout the Southern Highlands, but they also look much like one another. The average mountain man is taller than the average American. Appalachian people more often are blond and fair of complexion, have blue or gray eyes, balanced facial features and body proportions, than natives of other sections of the states in which they live. How may we account for the Appalachian person? What is his background? Why is he different? What has been his experience? Hardly anyone who has acquainted himself with the history of the region and its people doubt that the "character" of Appalachian people was determined by the presence of the Scotch-Irish among the early settlers in the mountain country. They were more numerous than the considerable number of Germans, Swiss, Hugenots, Welsh, and English. In the process of border acculturation, others surrendered their own language for the old-fashioned Northern English dialect spoken by the Scotch-Irish as they married into the large Scotch-Irish families and accepted their ways. Thus, the Appalachian experience has been a continued chapter in the story of the Scotch-Irish experience. 4 The label of "Scotch-Irish" was given to those migrants from Northern Ireland who began in ever increasing numbers for over 50 years to arrive in the colonies about 1720. Strictly speaking, they were neither Irish nor Scots. A more accurate label would have been Anglo-Celts. However, of those who came, most of them bore Lowland or Scottish Border family names, many beginning with "Mc" rather than "Mac." Others had English, Welsh, and Hugenot names. Only a few had Irish names. Regardless of the name, one who came from Northern Ireland was called Scotch-Irish, but he identified himself as "Arsh," as many mountain folk continue to do. The story of the Scotch-Irish within historical times began in 55 B.C. with the invasion of Great Britain by Julius Ceasar. The hereditary leaders of the Britons, who were Celts and of the same stock that had spread across Europe prior to the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations, who escaped murder or capture by the Roman armies fled northward or westward toward Scotland and Wales. The Scots, struggling for survival in an inhospitable highland country beyond the mountain rim, had no room among them for migrants. The fleeing Celts, unable to get over the rim into the Highlands, hid and later settled as small farmers in the hilly country along the Scottish Border. Far removed by blood kinship...

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