It's National Tartan Day, the annual celebration of Scottish heritage. Many states have registered district tartans that residents can wear, including both the state in which I was born and the state in which I currently reside.
The Carolina District Tartan
Georgia District Tartan
4 comments:
The Marine Corps also has a (unofficial) Tartan.
https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails?ref=4187
Oh, yes, all the services do. I was thinking of doing a follow-up post on that.
I'm not seeing much association of tartan with Scots-Irish so far. It wasn't on the radar at home. One rather amusing line: "The true clan system was welcoming and inclusive," ... something about "no true Scotsman" ?
As you'll read in the second post on the topic, the 'clan tartan' is really a 19th century invention. The military tartan is older. Scots-Irish Americans (usually: Scots who participated in the plantationing of Ulster) had left Scotland and come to America before the 19th century, before the attempt to systematize the society in order to bring it under central control.
Nevertheless there were tartans associated with families or regions because, as I noted, a pattern was popular and how to weave it was well-known. The Georgia district tartan is based on the McIntosh 'clan tartan' because of the importance of Jacobites from that clan who were resettled in south Georgia below Savannah to protect it from the Spanish in Florida. A woodcut of Georgia founder Sir James Edward Oglethorpe's visit shows them in tartan cloth, and himself in Highland dress. But my guess is that the "clan tartan" came later, and the Georgia district tartan was even later than that since it was modeled on it.
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