But Why Did They Come?

As a kid I asked my Dad… "Where did our family come from? Why did they come? Oh, and when did they come?" (I can't explain why, even as a child, I have always been interested in family origins.)

Dad's family memories were firmly rooted in Texas… Lewis Allison’s history reached as far back as east Texas of the 1920's and spilled over the Arkansas border. Arkansas is where he thought grandma Parilee came from.  (Arkansas was about 50 miles away.) He had heard a rumor of Allisons perhaps coming from Pennsylvania. Essentially, no origin memories were written into our family stories.

"I don't know, doll, I guess they were hungry," was the best answer I ever got.  (Actually he said "hongry" with the Texas twang that he never quite lost.)  "I guess they were Irish", he said. So as a child I always envisioned Dad's grandma as a starving girl standing in a muddy Irish field on an island surrounded by water. 

The truth of why "they" came is a lot more complex than I could have ever imagined.

As a child of course I didn't realize that " they" would include a cavalcade of kin with a bevy of surnames beyond Allison.

Back then I didn't know that the Allisons weren't Irish. They weren't really Scots either. They were a separate group that we in the United States now call "Scots Irish". They are more accurately termed "Ulster Scots".

Learning the history of Ulster gave me the answer to my questions: why and when.