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Introduction The term Ulster will be unfamiliar to many American readers. It refers to the north-eastern par·t of the island of Ireland, known as Northern Ireland, which forms part of the United Kingdom with England, Scotland and Wales. It was from Ulster that between 200,000 to 300,000 people came to settle in the American colonies in the first half of the eighteenth century. In Northern Ireland these emigrants were known, and are known today, as Ulster-Scots. In America they came to be known as Scotch-Irish. In the United States they and·their descendants became what I choose to refer to as Ulster-Americans. This Ulster-American community, settling initially in ]Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas, but soon spreading West in the vanguard of American expansion, has furnished the United States with many of its most notable individuals. The likes of John D Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Edgar Alien Poe, Stonewall Jackson and even John Wayne spring immediately to mind. This publication focuses on those twelve individuals who attained what General Douglas MacArthur referred to as the 'last and highest call of America, the Presidency'. Considering the fact that America has had only 42 presidents, that twelve of those (or 29%, almost one in three) were of Ulster descent is surely a remarkable achievement and worthy of note. America is very conscious of her Catholic-Irish heritage hut appears to know little, while owing much more, to the Ulster- Protestant tradition that embedded itself in the American colonies and helped produce the United States and those twelve presidents whose story follows. Back to American Presidency Menu
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