Old family; or, The Setons of Scotland and America

PREFACE. vii
The following extract from an article by the late General
E. P. Scammon on " The South Before, During, and After
the War," which appeared in the Catholic World for March,
1892, is quoted because it speaks the truth about a matter on
which there has been a certain confusion of ideas : "That
there was little difference of social rank or condition between
the colonists of North and South is proved beyond question
by colonial records. There is no escape from their evidence;
and thev tell us not only who but what the colonists were.
Generally they were people who sought to improve their
worldly fortunes; thev were neither the rich nor the power-
ful. The more numerous exceptions to this rule would nat-
urally be expected, where, in fact, they were, among those
who came to the New World to secure that religious liberty
for themselves which was denied them in the Old. They
were notably among the Puritans of New England, the Friends,
or Quakers, of Pennsylvania, and the Catholics of Maryland.
Doubtless there were many others — adventurous younger sons
with little fortune or prospect of preferment at home, and
some whom adversity had so reduced in fortune that they
were unable to maintain their accustomed stations in the Old
World, but yet were left with what was comparative wealth
for a new country where poverty was the rule. To this class
some of the leading colonists of Maryland, Virginia, Carolina,
and Georgia belonged. But their numbers were relatively
small. The pretence of gentle birth, as a characteristic dif-
ference between colonists of different States, is alike silly and
unfounded. There were Washingtons, Fairfaxes, Masons,
Lees, and johnstones in the array of old names in Virginia;
Tudors, Vaughans, Waldrons, Wentworths, and Dudleys in
New England ; as later there were Van Cortlandts, Van Rens-
selaers, Livingstons, and Setons in New York, and in these
and other colonies a list of less familiar names which might
challenge their claims to precedence."