Ethnic Identification and the Project of Individual Identity: The Life of Mary Ann Wodrow Archbald (1768-1840) of Little Cumbrae Island, Scotland and Auriesville, New York

A totalizing and privileging of ethnicity, to the exclusion of other sources of identification, in American historiography has created a tendency to conflate group identity and individual identity in historical subjects. While ethnic group identities are ultimately rooted in cultural representations and ideologies, individual (or personal) identity is the ongoing effort to maintain a sense of continuity. Personal identity assures us we remain the same person that we have been previously. The letters of a Scottish immigrant to the United States are examined to suggest the role of ethnicity in personal identity.