Scotch-Irish--What does that mean?

Scotch-Irish is the term for American descendants from Ulster, Northern Ireland.  Scottish lowlanders and northern Englanders immigrated to Ulster from Scotland and England mostly in the 1600s due to religious persecution.  

The Scottish lowlanders  and northern Englanders were  Separatists who had turned their back on the Catholic Church as well as the Church of England.  Instead, they embraced the Presbyterian faith.  In the 1630s, English King Charles I tried to force them out of their church and into the Church of England.  Instead of submitting, they immigrated to Ulster where there was greater religious freedom.  Later attempts by the crown to restrict religious freedom in Ulster caused immigration to the American

In the 1600s most of the immigrants to the colonies said they were Irish.   It was not until the 1800s following the surge in Irish immigration after the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, that the descendants of the earlier arrivals began to commonly call themselves "Scotch-Irish" to distinguish themselves from the newer, poor, predominantly Catholic immigrants. 

So, if your ancestors were Scotch-Irish, you might not have Irish blood, you might not even have Scottish blood but your ancestors did at one time live in Northern Ireland and were probably Presbyterian.

My Scot-Irish lines:

Maternal

Barr 

Blythe

Meloy

Reed

Wills

Paternal

Black

Buchannan

Forsythe

Ryan

Sawyers