How important is the Declaration of Arbroath..

[ThistleDown]

Anyhow, my point in all this is to echo Todd's point (& that which you later acknowledged) is to let the 'uninitiated' know that not all Ulster Scots were from the Lowlands, which seems to be one of those "myths" that continues to live on to this day (like so much else that has been oft told about the Scots & the Irish ). Apologies for any hijack of the threads topic.

There definitely were Highland Scots in the "settlement" of Ulster, but they were largely west Highland folk who had traditionally been passing back and forth between their part of Scotland and the northern part of Ireland and decided to take up James' offer of the lands of the locals. In the Williamite period of the 1690s, the second planatation wave, most of the new people were Presbyterian Lowland and Border Scots.

That makes me wonder whether your ancestor, Terry, might have been an educated officer serving in Ulster and deciding to stay on, rather than an incoming settler? Do you know why he was in Ireland? And whether he married an Ulster woman? And did she bring land into the marriage, or did he acquire that himself? The key, I think, is the fact that he was an educated man. Most settlers in that second wave were common folk without formal education, although many could read and write, of course.

Rex