Leaders of the Nations

Andrew Jackson

The parents of Andrew Jackson left Boneybefore, near Carrickfergus, in 1765. Jackson’s father died shortly before he was born in 1767 and he was raised in modest circumstances in the Waxhaws, on the border between North and South Carolina. He went on to become a successful lawyer and businessman in Nashville, Tennessee, and was a celebrated war hero after defeating the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

Jackson served as President from 1829 to 1837, and was the first holder of the office not to have come from a privileged background. Though a highly controversial figure, not least because of his policies towards Native Americans, his impact on the United States was so great that the period of his presidency and the years following it is known as the ‘Age of Jackson’.

James Buchanan

The father of James Buchanan, James Buchanan senior, was born near Ramelton, County Donegal, in 1761. Buchanan senior emigrated to America in 1783 and his son, the future president, was born in 1791. In 1833, while travelling across Europe, Buchanan stopped off in Ireland. One of his biographers wrote that during this trip he ‘visited the home of his ancestors at Ramelton’. Buchanan was President on the eve of the Civil War.

Chester Alan Arthur

Chester A. Arthur’s father left Cullybackey, County Antrim, for America in 1815. Born in Vermont in 1829, Arthur was elected Vice-President in 1880. Following the assassination of President Garfield in 1881 he succeeded to the presidency. In 1882, Arthur’s son, Chester Alan Arthur junior, visited the ancestral home in Cullybackey with his aunt Mary, the President’s sister.

Ulysses S. Grant

Though much happier as a soldier than a politician, Ulysses S. Grant followed the path from war hero to President, serving from 1869 to 1877. Grant’s Ulster ancestry was through his maternal line. The Simpson family farmed for generations at Dergenagh, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone. In 1879, Grant visited Belfast and afterwards wrote, ‘There are no more thrifty, self reliant & contented people in Europe to-day than the people of north Ireland’.

William McKinley

The last Civil War veteran to serve as President, William McKinley’s ancestors emigrated to America from Conagher, outside Dervock, County Antrim, around 1743. Prior to becoming the 25th US President, McKinley had served as a Congressman and Governor of Ohio. In 1893 he welcomed the Scotch-Irish Society to Ohio. He was assassinated in 1901 in the first year of his second presidential term.

Theodore Roosevelt

McKinley was succeeded as President by another man with Scotch-Irish ancestry, Theodore Roosevelt. His ancestors are said to have been Irvines, Craigs and Bullochs from the Gleno area of County Antrim. Writing about ‘that stern and virile people, the Scotch-Irish’, Roosevelt observed that they ‘formed the kernel of the distinctively and intensely American stock who were the pioneers of our people in their march westward’.

Woodrow Wilson

President from 1913 to 1921, Wilson was born in the Presbyterian manse in Staunton, Virginia, and grew up very conscious of his Scotch-Irish ancestry. His grandfather is believed to have been from Dergalt, near Strabane, County Tyrone. He once said, ‘The stern Covenanter tradition that is behind me sends many an echo down the years’. On another occasion, with some humour, he remarked, ‘No-one who amounts to anything is without some Scotch-Irish blood’.

"The family from which General Andrew Jackson is descended were ... among the emigrants from Scotland to the province of Ulster. They were strict adherents to the Church of Scotland, and transmitted their religion, as well as their dialect, to their descendants of the present age." From Life of Andrew Jackson, by Amos Kendall, 1843. Kendall was one of Jackson’s ‘Kitchen Cabinet’.