Recounts the long trek of the Scotch-irish from their adoptive Irish homeland to the mountains of southwestern North Carolina. Focuses on the Scotch-Irish who settled in the present-day North Carolina counties of buncome, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Madison, Mitchell, Swain, Transylvania, and Yancey. Graphically describes the religion, occupations, living conditions, social life, and customs of those migrants.