Spudly Protestants

What a funny-name, the "Scotch-Irish". It sounds like "Vodka-Poles" or "Bourbon-French". Mind you, there are worse names, but still.... In any event, the Scotch-Irish are indeed a people with their own peculiar history, and they have certainly had a huge impact on American history, giving this country 12 of its 44 presidents to date. To some, they are called "Ulster Scots", because they were primarily Scotsmen (and women) who migrated to Ulster County in English-occupied Ireland in the early 17th century for land. Unfortunately, the 17th century wasn't a good century for Ireland (or England, for that matter), and the Ulster (Protestant) Scots found themselves caught in the Catholic-Protestant struggle for the English throne which finally ended in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution that overthrew King James II and replaced him with the (Protestant) Dutch Willem (William) and Mary of Orange County in the Netherlands. In the midst of James' last attempt to hold on to his royal inheritance, Catholic Ireland rose up in rebellion against the new Protestant king in London, which led to bloody fighting in primarily-Protestant Ulster County ending in defeat for Catholic forces at the Battle of the Boyne (River) in 1690 -- but not before Scotch-Irish strongholds like Derry had to endure horrific sieges. Catholic Ireland was brutally re-subjugated, but not all Protestants are (were) created equal, and the Protestant victory notwithstanding, the Scotch-Irish had little to celebrate. They were hated by their Catholic Irish neighbors as usurpers but also considered second-class citizens by the English aristocrats ruling Ireland. The last straw came in 1703 when England decreed that only those belonging to the Church of England (and its sister church in Ireland) could enjoy full legal rights in Ireland, which left the primarily Presbyterian and Lutheran Scotch-Irish out in the cold. They began leaving in droves, heading for the harsh frontier (but free) real estate to the west.

You would think that, having endured the starvation and gruesome conditions of the sieges of 1689-90, the last thing the Scotch-Irish would do is name their new settlements after the miserable places they'd just left in Ulster County, but, well, that's exactly what they did and New Hampshire colony gained hordes of Scotch-Irish immigrants in the early 18th century who eventually dotted the New Hampshire landscape with towns with names like Londonderry, Derry and Antrim.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying the obvious, which is, well, what would you expect a boatload of people from Ireland -- religion notwithstanding -- to bring to America? Besides alcohol. Lots of alcohol. I am referring of course to the spud. The granite-pocked fields of Londonderry, New Hampshire are apparently the first place in North America where potatoes were grown, soon to spread throughout the country to give us Tator Tots and French...er, "Liberty Fries". Ironically, potatoes actually come originally from Peru and were brought to Europe by some incredulous Spaniards, but they eventually caught on and it was the Scotch-Irish who brought them to English-speaking America, via New Hampshire.