Patterns of Emigration to the Americas

Emigration and the growth of Britain’s colonies

Between c.1688 and c.1730, people left the British Isles to settle in the Americas. This movement was emigration from the perspective of the country they left, and immigration from the perspective of the country they entered. The Americas included both the North American mainland and the Caribbean islands, often called the West Indies.

Migration helped England, and then Britain, expand its overseas colonies. Colonies needed people to farm, build settlements and work in trades. Migrants hoped to gain land, employment or greater religious freedom. However, overseas expansion also involved forced emigration: some people were sent across the Atlantic against their will.

The important pattern was therefore not simply that people moved westwards. Different groups travelled for different reasons, went to different destinations and arrived with very different degrees of freedom.

Why people chose to leave

Economic difficulties encouraged departure. Poverty, unemployment and insecurity made the prospect of a new life attractive. In Ulster, sharp rent increases, food shortages and difficulties in the linen industry could put farmers and workers under pressure. These were pressures pushing people away from home.

The colonies offered attractions pulling people towards them. Labour shortages created opportunities for relatively high wages, while cheaper land offered some migrants the prospect of becoming independent farmers. Skilled workers could hope to establish businesses. Farming, fishing, shipbuilding and other trades all needed labour, although opportunities varied between colonies.

Existing connections made migration easier to imagine and organise. Letters from America described opportunities, while relatives, neighbours and religious communities helped others follow established routes. Emigration could therefore become self-perpetuating: one group’s departure encouraged further departures.

These attractions were hopes, not guarantees. A migrant who expected prosperity could instead face hardship, restricted freedom or an unwelcoming reception.

Religious pressure and the Ulster Scots

A significant movement came from Ulster, in northern Ireland. Many migrants were Presbyterians descended from Scottish families who had settled there during the seventeenth century. Their journey to America was sometimes a further stage in a family history of migration from Scotland to Ireland.

Presbyterians were Protestants, but they did not belong to Ireland’s established Anglican church, the Church of Ireland. Being Protestant did not therefore mean enjoying equal rights. The Irish Test Act of 1704 required people seeking public office to have taken communion in the Church of Ireland, effectively excluding Presbyterians. Presbyterian marriages also lacked legal recognition.

Religious grievances combined with economic pressures. Ministers could help whole congregations organise a move, allowing families to travel within a familiar community rather than as isolated individuals. For these migrants, the attraction of America included the hope of worshipping according to their beliefs as well as improving their livelihoods.

The organised migration of 1718

In early 1718, a petition signed by 319 Ulstermen, including nine Presbyterian ministers, was addressed to Samuel Shute, Governor of Massachusetts. It expressed their wish to settle in his colony. The Reverend William Boyd carried it to New England. Colonial authorities wanted settlers experienced in farming and frontier life, whom they hoped to place on the colony’s outer edges.

During the summer, around five ships, carrying up to 1,000 people, left Ulster for New England. Families sailed from Coleraine and Londonderry, and ministers travelled with their congregations. The Reverend James McGregor, minister at Aghadowey, was one of the leaders. His farewell sermon presented departure as an escape from oppression and an opportunity for religious freedom.

Arrival did not immediately fulfil those hopes. The newcomers were not enthusiastically welcomed by Massachusetts Puritans, and the migrants split into different groups. Some went to Casco Bay in Maine, where they endured a freezing winter. A group subsequently settled at Nutfield in 1719, joined by McGregor. Nutfield was renamed Londonderry in 1722, preserving a connection with Ulster.

This example shows how economic and religious motives, community leadership and colonial demand for settlers worked together. It also shows the difference between the attraction of emigration and the difficulties of settlement.

Routes and destinations changed

New England was not the only destination. In the 1680s and 1690s, Ulster Presbyterians were already migrating to the Chesapeake region, around Virginia and Maryland. Irish Quakers and Baptists also travelled to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The movement continued in waves rather than as one single departure. During 1725–1729, an estimated 8,000 Scots-Irish migrants arrived at or near Philadelphia, with smaller numbers arriving at Charleston. This contrasts with the organised congregational migration to New England in 1718.

Caribbean colonies also received migrants, including bound labourers. The wider seventeenth-century pattern included Irish Catholics sent to the British West Indies as servants, rebels or people labelled ‘vagabonds’. Moving to the Americas did not necessarily mean settling freely on the North American mainland.

Indentured service: passage in exchange for labour

An Atlantic crossing was expensive. People who could not afford it sometimes became indentured servants. Someone paid their passage, and in return they agreed to work for a master for a fixed term. For Irish migrants, terms commonly lasted three to five years.

This arrangement made emigration possible for poorer people and supplied colonial employers with workers. For example, a member of the McKeen family later recalled that 16 people who could not afford to emigrate had indentured themselves to her father for the 1718 journey.

Indentured service was not ordinary paid employment. Servants’ movement and choice of work were restricted, and their remaining service could be sold or transferred to another master. Harsh treatment and family separation were possible. Recruitment could also involve deception or kidnapping, so an apparent agreement did not always represent a genuinely free choice.

Nevertheless, a fixed term distinguished indentured service from the lifetime, hereditary slavery imposed on enslaved Africans. Both involved coercive labour, but they were not identical systems.

Forced emigration and the Transportation Act

Convict transportation was a clearer form of compulsory movement. It had expanded in the later seventeenth century, and the Transportation Act of 1718 established terms of seven years’ service for lesser crimes and fourteen years for offences punishable by death.

Transported convicts supplied bound labour to colonies including Maryland and Virginia, as well as the West Indies. Contractors organised their shipment, and colonial employers could purchase their labour. Britain’s penal system and the colonies’ demand for workers therefore became connected: transportation punished people while providing labour overseas.

Unlike families petitioning for permission to settle in New England, convicts did not choose emigration as an opportunity. Their removal demonstrates why forced emigration must be included in any account of Britain’s expansion.

Assessing the overall pattern

Emigration was shaped by a combination of opportunity and coercion. Some families could finance their own departure; poorer migrants might exchange years of labour for passage; others were forcibly transported. Religious grievances mattered particularly for Ulster Presbyterians, but economic prospects helped explain why America was attractive.

There was also no single destination or route. New England, the middle colonies, the Chesapeake and the Caribbean received different groups, and the balance changed over time. Overall, migration extended British settlement and supplied colonial labour, but the growth of empire offered freedom and opportunity to some while restricting the freedom of others.