RickPa,
Thank you for the info/links and that even more so for referring to the Scottish people correctly as Scots and not Scotch (which, although a fine product of the Scots is whiskey and not the people themselves!!).
I winced the other day while reading the Sons of the Trackless Forest when Baker referred to frontier folk of Welsh and Scotch descent...
I wonder if we have the history of that usage just right. I have a lot of items collected from 18th and early 19th century writings which use 'Scotch' to refer to the people and also to describe many other things. They seemed to have no problem using it that way, although the more modern usage is also occasionally found. That's true throughout the whole period.
1734 scotch cloth
1735 Scotch lass
1735 Irishmen Servants, both talking broad Scotch
1739 EXCEEDING good Scotch snuff
1751 Robert Crocket, a Scotch man
1751 Alexander Selkirk , a Scotsman
1763 speaks a good deal on the Scotch Dialect
1765 the SCOTCH STONE
1766 a Scotch Servant Woman
1770 Scotch convict servant
1773 Scotch leather inkpots
1774 Scotch snuff
1775 speaks some words in the Scottish idiom
1775 low cunning, and Scots revenge
1776 Scots and Nuns thread
1776 Alexander McCraw a Scotchman
1776 scotch bonnet
1776 Scotch flannel jacket
1782 says he is a Scotchman
1840 nothing like Scotch woolen stuffs
1841 “Scottish Dictionary and Supplement: In Four Volumes. A-Kut, Volume 1”
What seems a significant one to me is by Wm. Blane, a well-educated world traveling Englishman who spent a couple of years in this country, along the Ohio Valley, and got to know the people very well. I would think he would know if the use of 'Scotch' to describe the people was frowned upon.
Wm. Blane, 1822 : [White River, in Indiana] "Upon inquiring of the ferrymen, if there were any house in the neighbourhood at which I could stop, they informed me that there was only one, which belonged to a Scotch gentleman who had lately settled in this part of the country..…"
Spence