Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania, 1770-1830

A rigorously researched and extremely readable study that offers a refreshing and long overdue insight into the beliefs and practices of Presbyterians of Irish origin in North America. . . . It is essential reading for those interested in the development of Presbyterianism in North America, but also has much to offer those with interests in women’s history and the history of the family more broadly.

Peter E. Gilmore has written a finely-textured book that shatters myths as it reconstructs a community that we thought we had known. This first-rate study uncovers the fascinating story of how an elusive group of Irish migrants, in a dynamic period of American history, defined themselves as a people and recast their faith lives. In doing so, they shaped the world around them.

In Peter E. Gilmore’s deft handling, the Irish Presbyterians of western Pennsylvania appear not as the hard-drinking, hard-fighting, fiercely insular and individualistic Scots Irish of today’s popular culture. Gilmore presents serious, hardworking immigrants who built farms, formed communities, and created congregations in a new land where they disciplined themselves through the institutions of the church and responded vigorously to the market revolution and reform movements transforming American life in the early nineteenth century. Anyone interested in the Irish and Scots Irish in America will need to read this book.

In this fine book, Peter Gilmore pierces through that veil of legend to show readers the stuff of day-to-day existence in Scots-Irish communities. . . . the chapters add up to a richly textured portrait of an ethno­religious community to which there was more than usually meets histori-ans' eyes. Gilmore's Presbyterians turn out to be just as interesting-and more real-than the Scots-Irish they replace.

Whereas older studies of Scots Irish immigration and of early American Presbyterianism often conclude in 1776, Gilmore emphasizes that far more Ulster immigrants came to the New World in the half-century following the
American Revolution than before, and he argues persuasively that their contributions to the development of Presbyterianism in the United States were at least as important as those of their predecessors, who led the First Great Awakening of the 1730s-40s. Gilmore’s book is both a fine example of immigration/ethnic history and an
important study of American religious history. . . . readers of both Gilmore’s book and his earlier essays, cited in the notes, may garner an even more thorough appreciation of the complex history of western Pennsylvania’s Irish Presbyterians.

Gilmore’s book provides an excellent exploration of the contribution of Irish immigrants to the development of Presbyterianism in western Pennsylvania in the early national period. In doing so, he reveals much about the characteristics of this immigrant group and the ways in which they tried to ‘build a new Ulster in the transappalachian backcountry’.

Gilmore distinguishes himself as serious scholar of the archives. . . . [Irish Presbyterians is] well-researched and meticulously documented.

Gilmore promises and delivers a regional study examining the Irish diaspora related to Presbyterians’ adjustments to western—mostly southwestern—Pennsylvania. His examination provides a thorough look at Protestant Irish life in the Pennsylvania backcountry, including the influence of traditions that offered religious renewal and an emotional connection to Old World customs. He convincingly shows ways these events helped maintain moral order and community identity.

Gilmore delivers what he promises, a look into a small subsection of American history that is highly influential in building and creating Western Pennsylvania through their understanding of community through faith.