The Kirkpatrick story

I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, a descendant of Palatine Germans (my Moser side) and Scots-descended Ulster immigrants (my Kirkpatrick side) who migrated to America via Philadelphia in the early 1700s and spread throughout the colonial frontiers together. Like so many of my friends, I knew my heritage was partly “Scotch-Irish.” But I knew more about it than most of my peers because of a Kirkpatrick cousin who had traced our genealogy back to 860 A.D. in Southwestern Scotland. I grew up looking in wonder at an old black-and-white photo of our ancestral castle keep near Dumfries (which I’ve since visited several times). Our family is the archetype of the Scotch-Irish (Scots-Irish) diaspora.

My career as a public television documentary filmmaker led to my selection to join a “Scots-Irish Tour of Northern Ireland” sponsored by the British Council in 1994. There, I fell in love with the land and the people, and I was saddened that the aftermath of the Troubles prevented them from sharing in the prosperity enjoyed by their neighbors in the Republic. I resolved to develop a media project that would encourage Americans descended from Ulster folk to greater appreciate their heritage, which I hoped would lead to increased tourism and investment.

To that end I formed a partnership with a remarkable man, the legendary BBC Ulster broadcaster/filmmaker and folk musician/promoter Tony McAuley. Though a fervent Irish Republican, Tony was a peacemaker revered by many on both sides of the sectarian divide. We planned a documentary on the history of the American Scots-Irish, with generous attention to their ancestors in Scotland and Ireland to provide context. The content of that portion of the film would develop one theme above all else – that the people of Ulster and Lowland Scotland had been essentially one people in the centuries before the Ulster Plantation, and their descendants deserve to live in the same peace and harmony that they had known.

Through the years, we struggled to raise production funding for the project, and Tony died of cancer in 2003. But I never gave up on the venture, and after all these years it’s finally coming together. The current iteration is THE SCOTS-IRISH – A MUSICAL JOURNEY, a planned two-hour documentary for PBS and Irish and U.K. television with abundant ancillary online digital content. The film will combine historical narrative and music performance to explore how the Scots-Irish have influenced America’s democratic traditions, conflicts, and values in ways that remain relevant today, with the same spirit reflected in their traditional music. True to our original vision, about a third of the historical content and production will focus on the north of Ireland to provide context.

True to Tony’s vision, the project is dedicated to Presbyterians, Catholics, and others of faith working for peace and reconciliation in Ireland and throughout the world. Since I can’t make the film with Tony, I am determined to complete it for him and dedicate it to his memory.

To find out more information about this project please visit: https://www.thefilmcollaborative.org/fiscalsponsorship/projects/scotsirish