The population was not homogeneous, as a considerable part of the immigration came by way of Pennsylvania and included Germans, the Protestant Scotch-Irish and settlers from the states farther.
The trouble was again revived by the repeal in 1790 of the confirming act 2 Several Scotch-Irish families from Lancaster (disambiguation)|Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, accepted Connecticut titles and settled at Hanover under Captain Lazarus Stewart.
The general strictness of the church in its requirements for ministerial education occasioned it great loss in this period when the territory beyond the Appalachians was being settled so largely by Scotch-Irish and Presbyterians.
Presbyterians of different churches in the United States in 1906 numbered 1,830,555; of this total 322,542 were in Pennsylvania, where there were 248,335 members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (the Northern Church), being more than one-fifth of its total membership; 56,587 members of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, being more than two-fifths of its total membership; 2709 members of the Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, three-tenths of its total membership; the entire membership of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States and Canada (440), 3150 members of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church, nearly one-fourth of its total membership; and 2065 members of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, general synod, about five-ninths of its total membership. The strength of the Church in Pennsylvania is largely due to the Scotch-Irish settlements in that state.
His father was an Irishman and his mother of Scotch-Irish and Huguenot descent.