Scotsmen of the Carolinas was hatched in 2018 from an idea between Kyle Kissmann and a Stewart Clan organizer, Greg Houck, at the Stone Mountain Highland Games outside of Atlanta, GA. After being a member of the St Andrews Society, locally, for several years, and then having it disappear from the Fletcher, NC area, Kyle longed to gather to break bread over good conversation, with other people of Scottish Ancestry. So after a bit of conversation about the importance of a group like this, and helping others learn about their history, a facebook group was created on Nov. 24, 2018. Unfortunately, work got in the way and the project lay dormant until COVID reared it's ugly head, creating an opportunity for more free time. At the time our previous website creation (2.28.21), we had 370 members in our group and over 1300 likes on our page. We rebuilt our website on 10.07.2022 and we now have over 700 members and over 1500 followers.
Membership is free and members can find out about our events through this website and facebook. Membership is based on attending physical events. As of 11.09.24 we will start using Eventbrite for all of our official events, especially in Upstate SC and Western NC. If you'd like to receive notifications of events you can sign by clicking HERE. The email list is managed by Eventbrite. Most events will require a small non-refundable registration fee to attend.
Scotsmen of the Carolinas is open to both men and women. Our membership remains at about 50/50. A member must reside in either NC or SC, be of Scot/Irish decent (Scots orginally migrated from Ireland, so if you have one, you most likely have the other, whether or not you are willing to admit it). Members are expected to actively participate in events in their area. If there are no current events, members are expected to host events. Everyone participating in an event is expected to pay for their own meal/ticket/drink/etc., so the event host should incur no additional cost in hosting said event. Want to host but aren't sure how to get started? Ask.