Whatever his or her name or national origin, everyone is a Scot for the day in Michigan at Alma’s Highland Festival and the Detroit St. Andrew’s Society Highland Games. Legions of people from throughout the Midwestern United States and Canada flock to hear bagpipe bands and Scottish fiddlers; see Highland and Scottish country dancing and athletic contests; eat Scottish meat pies, scones, shortbread, and oatcakes; purchase Scottish apparel and souvenirs; search family trees at clan tents; and otherwise enjoy all kinds of sights and activities that recall Scottish heritage. The Highland Games in Detroit, first presented by the St. Andrew’s...

The word “Scot” originally meant “raider.” The first so-called Scots were actually Celtic immigrants from what is now Ireland, but the land to which they gave their name was already inhabited by another Celtic people called the Picts. By the sixth century, Scotland was divided among four peoples—Picts, Scots, Britons, and Angles. Visitations from, incursions by, and romances with other peoples infused the blood of Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Norse, Romans, and Normans. For whatever reason, the name eventually used to designate any inhabitant of the land the Romans called “Caledonia” was “Scot.” (Although “Scottish” is purported to be the...

Meanwhile, Scots had been settling in North America since the earliest colonial days, and they are said to have been at the forefront of western migration in America. Literate as they were, the immigrant Scots had for some years been writing letters home to tell of their freedom and economic status in the beauty of the New World. When we think of Scots in Michigan, we usually think of Scottish immigrants and their descendants. However, the first Scots in the Great Lakes region were primarily fur traders and soldiers in areas claimed at various times by Spain, France, and Great...

Although Scots were prominent in early Detroit, the city certainly was not a Scottish enclave. George Stark (In Old Detroit) is quoted by George Graff as saying, “It is a curious reflection of Detroit’s growth that the Scots, reputed to be the most clannish of the people of the earth, exhibited no such tendency in settling down in Detroit. The Scots were to be found everywhere in the old town. There was never a mass movement nor a mass settlement hereabouts.”¹³

The only Scottish settlements in preindustrial Michigan seem to have been in the “Thumb” region—Huron, Sanilac, St. Clair,...

Scottish professionals and merchants did, of course, settle in cities. By 1849, enough “Scotchmen” (their term) lived in Detroit to call for the organization of a St. Andrew’s Society, “for the relief of the indigent and unfortunate of our Countrymen, and for the promotion of harmony and good feeling amongst ourselves.” Perhaps the most enlightening document about Scottish immigrants in the Detroit area is Fred Dunbar Wessells’sHistory of the St. Andrew’s Society of Detroit, 1849 to 2000.¹⁹

Named for Scotland’s patron saint, the St. Andrew’s Society of Detroit is the oldest benevolent organization in Michigan. In the early days,...

A classical and gleefully wicked Scottish toast is “Here’s tae us! Wha’s like us? Damned few and they’re a’ deid!” (“Here’s to us! Who’s like us? Damned few, and they’re all dead!”). The search for information about Scots in Michigan is complicated by a number of factors, not the least of which is the need to define “who’s like us.”

Documents about Scottish immigration vary in their terminology, depending on their origin and focus—cultural or legal, for example—and date of publication. Birth records in some North American jurisdictions once designated the parents’ and the newborn child’s “nationality” or...

Having shown that we don’t know exactly what a Scot is, let’s consider Scottish immigrants. Statistics on Scottish immigration to Michigan are difficult to come by and often unreliable. One reason for the difficulty and unreliability is that the union of Scotland and England in 1707 officially conferred the term “British” upon the people of both countries, and even before that event, Scots were commonly referred to as “North Britons.” As noted earlier, contrary to popular assumption and usage in the United States, “British” is not synonymous with “English” but rather includes the Scots, the Welsh, and the Northern Irish—...

One entire category of Scots who were, in effect, exiled to another country and subsequently settled in America were once referred to in immigration records as Irish, having come to this land from Ulster, or Northern Ireland. Between about 1605 and 1620, some twenty thousand Lowland Scots were sent to Ireland by James vi and i (that is, the sixth of Scotland and the first of England) to relieve England of both the Irish problem and the Scottish problem. Apparently the idea was to keep the Presbyterians and the Roman Catholics busy fighting amongst themselves rather than against the English....

Perhaps the greatest difficulty in tracing the Scots in Michigan is concisely illustrated in the title of Charlotte Erickson’s bookInvisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century America.³⁰The culture, language, and religion of English and Scottish immigrants were essentially adopted as the standard early in the development of America. InMichigan: A History of the Wolverine State,Willis Dunbar says, “Of the immigrants who came to Michigan from other countries, the English and the Scots were quickly and easily assimilated due to the absence of a language barrier and the similarity of British and American...

Lacking sound information about Scottish settlements in Michigan, and despite reservations about surnames, we might suppose that a cheap, quick, easy, unscientific, and statistically invalid estimate of Scottish influence in Michigan would be to consider place names. Of the 161 entries on sixteen randomly picked pages of Romig’sMichigan Place Names,24 of the names appear to be of Scottish origin—that is, about 15 percent.³⁷In many cases, however, the names had been given in honor not of a city or town in Scotland but rather of originally Scottish settlements elsewhere in the United States or Canada. Other Scottish-sounding...

Culturally, geographically, and economically, the history of Scots in Michigan is inextricably tied to the history of Scots in neighboring Canada, especially Ontario. For instance, James McGill, born in Glasgow in 1744, became rich as a founding partner of the fur-trading North West Company (in which Scots predominated both as partners and employees). The Montreal-based company’s interests ranged throughout present-day Michigan and Ontario and even beyond the Great Lakes region. When the company’s lands and power diminished through American victories over the British, McGill was able to cut his losses by trading large tracts of land around the trading and...

In what ways has Michigan’s culture been influenced by all those Scots? Again, the virtually complete assimilation of “invisible immigrants” impedes any respectable assessment. No discussion of culture would be complete without recognition of the philanthropy that supports education, science, the arts, and humanitarian causes. Bruce notes that, “Despite their parsimonious stereotype, Scots are also good at giving money away. As of 1993, thirteen of the largest charitable foundations in the United States … had been started by … Scottish-Americans.” Scottish-Michiganders, evidently, are especially good at giving money away, as Michigan can claim two of the thirteen: W. K. Kellogg...

Some native-born Scots on both sides of the Atlantic are bemused and occasionally offended by what they consider to be romantic nonsense on the part of North Americans of Scottish ancestry who dress up in kilts, go to Burns suppers, celebrate St. Andrew’s Day, join clan societies, and profess delight in bagpipe music. Especially ridiculed in the Old Country are those who come “home” to display their wealth, their superior knowledge of Scottish culture and history, or their purported kinship with famous Scots. A BBC video documentary about Scotland vividly conveyed the director’s great amusement with the goings on at...

One should not suppose that all immigrant Scots are interested in having their emotions “rallied by haggis, whisky, sherry trifle, and a piper in full ceremonials.” Some are stirred not by spirits but by spiritual concerns. The late Donald MacLeod of Livonia was a native of the Isle of Lewis who, unable to find employment after World War I, came to Michigan by way of Ontario, eventually to work in the automobile industry. Mr. MacLeod reported that church membership played a large role in Scottish social identity until the early 1900s. Even if once associated or identified with Scottish heritage,...

As I think we have shown, any sensible discussion of Scottish ethnicity in Michigan must recognize that Scots accompanied the French as the first Europeans to set foot in lands we now call Michigan and that a large proportion of pioneers from New England, New York, and Canada were of Scottish descent, as were southern immigrants in later years. Along with most other states, Michigan has so long been imbued with Scottish and English “ethnicity” that Scottish singularity is practically out of place as a piece of the so-called ethnic mosaic of the state. In effect, the cultural mainstream in...