The Scotch-Irish Society of the United States of America was founded in 1889 under the leadership of Colonel A. K. McClure and the Reverend John S. MacIntosh. Originally known as the Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish Society, its first Constitution and Bylaws stated that its purposes were: the preservation of Scotch-Irish history; keeping alive the esprit de corps of the Scotch-Irish as a people; and the promotion of social intercourse and fraternal feeling among its members.

The Society has numbered among its members leaders and builders in the nation's civic, business, and professional life. The Scotch-Irish, blessed with energy, courage, enterprise, goodness of heart, and devotion to duty, have left an indelible mark upon the communities where they have dwelt, upon the churches where so many have zealously served, and upon the government in all its branches, where they have supported efforts to bring to reality for all the promise of a way of life the nation's founders envisioned.

The Society is first and foremost American. It believes that it can broaden, deepen, and enlarge the principles from which the nation has drawn the sustaining power for its development by recalling past achievements, remembrances, and associations. The loyalty of the Scotch-Irish to our national ideals has been no better stated than by the first president of the Society, Dr. MacIntosh, when, in 1890, he said:

"Born and naturalized citizens, we give ourselves anew in this organization to the land for which our fathers and friends gave their blood and lives. We are not a band of aliens, living here perforce and loving the other land across the sea. We belong to this land, and only recall the old that we may better serve the new, which is our own."