The Story of the Carolina
Tartan
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The idea for a special tartan to honor the
Scottish heritage of the Carolinas was the brain child of Dr. Micheil
MacDonald and James T. Kerr. Dr. MacDonald, of Scotland, is an
anthropologist, editor of Scots Kith and Kin, and author of The Clans of Scotland: the History and Landscape of Scottish
Clans; Mr. Kerr, of Durham, NC, was vice-president of the North
Carolina St. Andrews Society, as well as president of the Kerr Family
Association of North America. The two met at the annual Grandfather
Mountain Highland Games held in Linville, NC, where the idea for a Carolina
tartan was formed.
Both North and South Carolina have benefited
from large
numbers of Scottish immigrants. The Cape Fear River Valley, in
particular, was home to a large settlement of Gaelic speaking Highland Scots,
among them the famous Flora MacDonald. Many Highlanders had taken oaths
of loyalty to the Crown after 1745 and so fought for the Royalists in the
American War for Independence. The piedmont and western mountain regions
of the Carolinas were settled heavily by Ulster Scots. These were
Lowland Scots who migrated to Ulster in the seventeenth century and then later
to North America. Many of these Scots-Irish (as they came to be known) would
fight for independence in the Revolutionary War. A special tartan for
the Carolinas would honor the contributions of these immigrants and their many
descendants.
Dr. MacDonald's son, Peter MacDonald, of
Crieff, Scotland, came up with the design for the Carolina tartan in 1981. Peter
MacDonald (pictured) is a renowned expert in tartan history, and is himself a
weaver and designer of tartan cloth. He wanted the tartan to be
significant to the history of the Carolina colonies.
The Carolinas were created by a grant from
King Charles II in 1663, but were actually named for his father, Charles I
(1600-1649). "Carol" is the Latin form of the name Charles; hence
"Carolina" as the name of the colony. Charles II was the last King of
Scotland to be crowned at Scone. At that ceremony, held on January 1,
1651, he is said to have worn a jacket with ribbons in the "auld Royale
tartan." It is not known what that tartan may have been, but it is
theorized that it was a form of what would later be called the Royal Stewart
tartan.
Peter MacDonald took as the basis for the
Carolina tartan an early fragment of a forerunner to the Royal Stewart tartan,
commonly called "Prince Charles Edward Stewart." MacDonald used a
pre-1800 sample of hard tartan from the John Telfer Dunbar collection of the
Scottish Tartans Society. The shape of the sample suggests that it was
cut from a larger piece of clothing, possibly a jacket, such as the tartan
jackets worn by the
Royal Company of Archers. You can see a similar Royal Stewart tartan in this
letter of 1821 and in this
boy's dress from the same period, both in the collection of the National
Museum of Scotland. To that basic sett he added a thin red line for
variance while preserving the overall theme. Thus was created the
Carolina tartan.
The tartan received the approval of the St.
Andrews Society of North Carolina, and was later presented to and approved by
the St. Andrews Society of Charleston, South Carolina. The idea of a
special tartan for the Carolinas was a success. In the early 1980s the
tartan was selected for the kilts worn by the Cross Creek Pipes and Drums of
Fayetteville, NC. It was later also adopted by the
NC State Pipes and Drums. Both bands still wear the Carolina tartan
today. It has also been adopted and used by other Scottish groups in the
region, including the
Catawba Valley Scottish Society.
The NC State Pipes & Drums warming up at a
Highland Games before a performance.
The tartan was worn for many years without
the official recognition of either state. That changed on May 9, 1991,
when the North Carolina Legislature adopted the Carolina tartan as the official
tartan of the State of North Carolina. Another decade would pass until
South Carolina would do the same, passing legislation on June
3, 2002, declaring the Carolina tartan to be the official tartan of the State
of South Carolina. When a state passes this type of legislation
declaring a tartan to be an official state symbol, it is tantamount to a
Scottish Highland Chief giving approval to the tartan of his clan. With
this official recognition, the Carolina tartan has found a solid place in the
history and culture of these two states.
