However pleasing such statements may
be from an ultra patriotic viewpoint it is very unsatisfactory from
the biological or historical side of the question, which is
undoubtedly the most important to be considered. The neglect of these
items of origin, etc., makes the task of positively identifying
certain individuals as of Scottish origin or descent a very difficult
one. One may feel morally certain that a particular individual from
his name or features (if there be a portrait) is of Scottish origin,
but without a definite statement to that effect the matter must in
most cases be left an open question. One other cause of uncertainty,
and it is a very annoying one, is the careless method of many
biographers in putting down a man's origin as "Irish," "from Ireland,"
"from the north of Ireland," etc., where they clearly mean to state
that the individual concerned is descended from one of the many
thousands of Scots who settled in Ulster in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Notwithstanding this uncertainty the proportion
of men of undoubted Scottish origin who have reached high distinction,
and whose influence has had such far reaching scope in the United
States, is phenomenal. "Let anyone," says Dinsmore, "scrutinize the
list of names of distinguished men in our annals; names of men eminent
in public life from President down; men distinguished in the Church,
in the Army, in the Navy, at the Bar, on the Bench, in Medicine and
Surgery, in Education, trade, commerce, invention, discovery--in any
and all of the arts which add to the freedom, enlightenment, and
wealth of the world, and the convenience and comfort of mankind; names
which have won luster in every honorable calling--let him scrutinize
the list" and he will be astonished to find how large a proportion of
these names represent men of Scottish birth or Scottish descent.
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