Wiki on 'Appalachia':

"An estimated 90% of Appalachia's earliest European settlers originated from the Anglo-Scottish border country— namely the English counties of Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, and the Lowland Scottish counties of Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Roxburghshire, Berwickshire, and Wigtownshire. Most of these were from families who had been resettled in the Ulster Plantation in northern Ireland in the 17th century."

Wiki's source is D. Newhall, Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), pp. 253-255.

You might want to dispute that 90% figure, but what interests me is that the term 'Scotch-Irish' clearly includes many migrants with English ancestry, from 'Border' counties as far South as lancashire and Yorkshire.

Sharp's Appalachian collection is full of singers' names of apparently English origin, although - at first glance at least - many of the common ballads in it (Earl Brand, Young Hunting, House Carpenter etc.) seem to be ones with a more vigorous history in Scotland.

Talking of Earl Brand (and realising that some knowledgable people are participating here) can anyone expalin to me why the English versions of The Lady and the Dragoon are catalogued under that title (Roud 23, Child 7), whereas the American ones are not (Round 321)? I only noticed that a minute ago.