"As a child growing up in a rural isolated section of the East Tennessee mountains, I wondered why the old folks, with whom I spent much of my time, never talked about their European origins.  They were a colorful, jolly lot, and they, of all people, were wont to tell stories about their families, about the wild and romantic frontier their fathers and mothers tamed.  They were reflective, philosophical, and even studious when it came to unwritten history; but in referring to the 'old' family members they never got beyond Virginia, North Carolina, or possibly Pennsylvania."

"I never heard a family member nor a neighbor talk of someone being English, German, Italian, Scotch-Irish or anything else.  Having reflected on this for years I've concluded that because of generations of migration, the continuing flow of lore and stories of ancestry was almost totally broken.  There was little or no contact with parents, and most often there was none at all with grandparents.  So, we were all Americans, and if pushed as to where one's family was from, the family patriarch might say...'they came from across the waters.'"

Dr. John Rice Irwin (Founder and Director, Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee)
From page 10, The Scots-Irish in the Hills of Tennessee by Billy Kennedy.