Heritage

Origins in England and Scotland
    Kelton Crest

Migratory Patterns

Texas Families

Scotland: Real and Imagined

Irish Diaspora

The roots of Modern Texas lie in the British Isles, in an ethos that largely failed in Europe but was successfully transmitted to America, and above all, the American West. But if the racial stock and ethos of Texans came largely from the British Isles, the present Texan consciousness was made primarily in America. For the Texans are a people who made their own history. If they carried their language, religion, and much of their cultural baggage across the Atlantic, they created their own consciousness on the passage through the Appalachians, down the Mississippi, through the forests, and across the plains. And they made their mythos in Texas. And this is the history and mythology that Texans look back upon, not to some dim memory of the old country.

A majority of Texans are still descended at least in part from Old American stock that entered the Mexican province, the Republic of Texas, or the State of Texas between 1824 and 1900. Between 1824 and 1835, Texas became the frontier paradise of America. Thousands of Americans, both poor and substantial, shed their citizenship to acquire Texas holdings. The society was based on land ownership. Every landholder was in determined theory a peer among equals, a member of a pure male democracy. Inequitably, the more enterprising and richer, the Groces and McNeels and others, gained an aura of leadership, but -- and it is important to understand this -- they were lords only upon their own land. These folk sought the land and opportunity, surely -- but they were also consciously fleeing something: a vision of the world in which community or state transcended the individual family and its personal good.

Used by permission of the author.