Forgetting and Remembering: Scots and Ulster Scots Memorials in Eighteenth-century Ulster, Pennsylvania and Nineteenth-century New South Wales
Mortuary monuments were used by Scots and Ulster Scots as they selectively chose to forget or remember their origins once they settled in new lands around the world. Those who moved to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century and New South Wales in the nineteenth century employed different strategies regarding how they would create their identities and promote or discard aspects of their origins. Burial monument texts look back over the deceased’s life, but they are also selected by the living to create publicly visible family history and affiliation. Through both text and symbol on the memorials, families create visible, meaningful, biographies. Using survey data from Pennsylvania and New South Wales collected to investigate diasporic remembering and forgetting, this analysis recognises a widespread prevalence of forgetting and an increasing interest in creating new identities in the colonial context. However, some saw their origins as part of their identity and this formed part of the visible family biography.