“”Shanty Irish” were looked down upon by earlier Irish immigrants who had achieved a measure of economic success...”
That is the origin of the term “scots-irish” or “scotch-irish” as some say.
Before the arrival of the famine settlers (shanty irish)from Ireland in the 1840s, the earlier immigrants and their descendants called themselves “Irish.”
But the famine folks were a motley bunch, hence a new term had to go into use to name the older, established respectable ones: “scots-irish.”
The first big significant immigration of “scots-irish” was five ships, in 1718 landing at Boston. From there they spread out.
Later and bigger immigrations settled Pennsylvania and mainly southward after migrating and so forth.
I come from a line of the 1718 bunch, who moved a few times.
A great book for those of us who decended from Scots-Irish and those interested in early American history.
BORN FIGHTING: HOW THE SCOTS-IRISH SHAPED AMERICA
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-Shaped-America/dp/0767916883
Former navy secretary James Webb (Fields of Fire; etc.) wants not only to offer a history of the Scots-Irish but to redeem them from their redneck, hillbilly stereotype and place them at the center of American history and culture. As Webb relates, the Scots-Irish first emigrated to the U.S., 200,000 to 400,000 strong, in four waves during the 18th century, settling primarily in Appalachia before spreading west and south. Webb’s thesis is that the Scots-Irish, with their rugged individualism, warrior culture built on extended familial groups (the “kind of people who would die in place rather than retreat”) and an instinctive mistrust of authority, created an American culture that mirrors these traits. Webb has a genuine flair for describing the battles the Scots-Irish fought during their history, but his analysis of their role in America’s social and political history is, ironically for someone trying to crush stereotypes, fixated on what he sees, in almost Manichaean terms, as a class conflict between the Scots-Irish and America’s “paternalistic Ivy League-centered, media-connected, politically correct power centers.”
Scots Irish were Scots that had been resettled in northern Ireland plantations by one of the Kings James (I, I think). They had been living on the border with England & they were meddlesome Presbyterians.