6 The evidence supports the McDonalds’ conclusions that comparatively few Germans migrated more than 300 miles from Philadelphia. See McDonald and McDonald, “Commentary,” 134. Other scholars have replicated these results. John Campbell (The Southern Highlander, 63) concluded from surnames in pension lists, muster rolls and census tracts that in North Carolina and Tennessee, the English and Scots-Irish were each about one-third of the population; in Kentucky, the English were 40% and the Scots-Irish 30%; in Georgia, English and Scots-Irish were each about 40% of all names. He reckoned that Germans accounted for one-fifth of names in North Carolina, one-seventh in Tennessee and one-twelfth in Kentucky. Even this estimate overcounts the number of Germans. H. Roy Merrens (Colonial North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century (Chapel Hill, 1964), 53-81) reckons that Germans were between 2.8 and 4.7% of the population of North Carolina as a whole, but 22.5% of two counties near the Moravian Tract.
7 Bridenbaugh, who thought of them as Scotch-Irish, wrote, “Of all the national groups the Scotch Irish were the most numerous, and it is not surprising that in the long run they came to dominate” the backcountry. McDonald and McWhiney thought of them as Celts and concluded that they were dominant in North Carolina, South Carolina, and other settlements to the south and west. See Bridenbaugh, Myths and Realities, 132; McDonald and McDonald, “Ethnic Origins,” 199; idem, “Commentary,” 133; Schaper, Sectionalism in South Carolina, 43; Mitchell, “Upper Shenandoan Valley,” 218.