“Isaac Anderson and Irish-American Memory in the History of Maryville College” is the topic of the college’s Spring Faculty Showcase, which is scheduled for 1 p.m., April 4 in the Samuel Tyndale Wilson Center for Campus Ministry.
The presentation, sponsored by the College’s Society of 1819 and given by Maryville College President Dr. Gerald W. Gibson and Maryville Symposium Director Dr. Ronald Wells, is free and open to the public.
Wells and Gibson have been researching the Irish ancestry of the Rev. Isaac Anderson, who founded the Southern and Western Seminary (later renamed Maryville College) in 1819.
Because of the College’s long association with the Presbyterian Church (USA), the college is often believed to have primarily Scottish roots. (The College’s athletic teams are even called “The Scots.”)
But according to Wells, East Tennessee was widely settled by immigrants from Northern Ireland, as is the case with Isaac Anderson, whose family journeyed to the U.S. from County Down.
“When asked about their ethnicity, settlers from that time period would have said ‘Irish,’” Wells explained. “The term ‘Scotch-Irish’ developed later, and only in America, when these Protestant (mostly Presbyterian) Irish wanted to distinguish themselves in the public mind from the Catholic Irish, then streaming into the United States following the Great Famine.”
    For more information     on the Faculty Showcase, contact Diana Canacaris at 865.981.8198 or diana.canacaris@maryvillecollege.edu.

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