31 Andrew Jackson was entirely of North British stock; his parents emigrated from Carrickfergus, northern Ireland, in 1765.
James Knox Polk was descended from William and Margaret Pollock [shortened to Polk], emigrants from Londonderry in 1698; the future President’s mother was Jane Knox and his maternal grandmother was Mary Wilson; both were of North British origin.
James Buchanan’s father emigrated from County Donegal to the backcountry in 1783.
Andrew Johnson’s parents were Jacob and Mary (McDonough) Johnson; his paternal grandfather was Andrew Johnson, who migrated from Ulster to the backcountry ca. 1759.
Zachary Taylor’s progenitor James Taylor emigrated from Carlisle, Cumberland County.
Rutherford Hayes’s namesake came from Scotland, ca. 1680.
Chester Arthur was the son of Ulster emigrant Alan Arthur who had been born in Dreen, County Antrim (the house is now an historic site), and after attending college in Belfast came to Quebec, ca. 1818 (Sam Henry, “The Ulster Background of Chester Alan Arthur …,” Ulster-Irish Society Year Book (1939), 38-46).
Grover Cleveland’s mother Ann Neal was the daughter of an Anglo-Irish immigrant to the backcountry.
Benjamin Harrison’s mother was Elizabeth Irwin, of a rich and powerful Anglo-Scottish border family in backcountry Westmoreland County, Pa.; his paternal grandmother was Anna Symmes, of New England ancestry; his paternal father was John Scott Harrison, of Virginia.
William McKinley’s father, and also his mother Nancy Campbell Allison, came mostly from border immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania, ca. 1740; but an important family influence was great-grandmother Mary Rose, an English Quaker whose forbears came to Pennsylvania with William Penn (Robert P. Porter and James Boyle, Life of William McKinley (Cleveland, 1897)).
Theodore Roosevelt’s mother Martha Stewart Bulloch was of border Scots ancestors who came to South Carolina in the 18th century; his paternal grandparents were Cornelius Van Schaik Roosevelt (entirely Dutch) and Margaret Barnhill of Pennsylvania.
Woodrow Wilson’s father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was the son of an immigrant from northern Ireland. His mother, Jessie Woodrow, had been born in Carlisle, on the Cumbrian border of England. The future President identified strongly with what he called “the stern covenanter tradition that is behind me” (Arthur Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton, 1947).
Harry S. Truman’s parents were of English and Scots backcountry stock; genealogists later found a thin link to the Tylers of tidewater Virginia, which was unknown to the President.
Lyndon Johnson was the great-great-grandson of John Johnson, an English borderer who was in Georgia by 1795. The Johnsons intermarried with eminent backcountry families including the Polks and Buntons. His mother, Rebekah Baines, was of lowland Scots descent on her father’s side and German on her mother’s side.
Gerald Ford was originally named Leslie Lynch King. His natural father was of mixed English and Scots-Irish stock. The future President was an adopted child, raised by Gerald R. Ford, Sr., a businessman in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Jimmy Carter was mostly of border and backcountry stock; his Carter forbears had lived in the interior of Georgia for eight generations; the future President’s mother also came from border Scots who had lived in the backcountry since the 18th century.
Ronald Reagan’s Irish Catholic forbear Michael O’Regan entered the United States without papers in the 1840s. The future President’s mother was of mixed Anglo-Scottish Protestant border and backcountry descent; her culture was dominant in his upbringing.