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Old 03-19-2011, 11:19 AM
 
399 posts, read 814,465 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by memberX View Post
My father's side came from Germany and France. My last name is very German and apparently my German ancestors where the among the first settlers in York County, PA. They worked their down the Appalachians and mingled with the Scots-Irish of southern Appalachia.

My mother's side are the classic Scots-Irish Appalachians that came down from the Virginia mountains and mingled with the Cherokees. My great grandmother was full-blood Cherokee. You can see the Cherokee in my mother...she has dark hair and high cheek bones.

So what would I mark as my ancestry?
Well, you mark that you are of German, French, Scots-Irish and Native American ancestry

It's too bad that the term "American ancestry" is an easy solution for most people and not just in the south.
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Old 03-19-2011, 04:23 PM
 
Location: Ohio, USA
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I would put down "human"
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Old 03-19-2011, 10:36 PM
 
Location: Franklin, TN
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If German, English, French, etc. are ancestries, why isn't American? If your family has been here for generations, what else would you be?
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Old 03-20-2011, 03:12 AM
 
Location: Oroville, California
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Poor record keeping by a populace who've been in that region since before the Revolution. That's why they say "American". My family is of Southern background. All four of my grandparent's surnames are English and most of them claimed to be "Irish" which is kind of funny. After reading a bit of history they're "Irish" by virtue of a couple generations in Ulster but are really of the Scottish/English/Huguenot blend that makes up the Protestants in that Irish province. Add a dash of German (1/8) and Cherokee (also 1/8) and I don't know how we could be classified as anything else but "American". We're primarily of British Isles extraction, but after two to three centuries in North America its time to stop clinging to Europe.
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Old 03-20-2011, 06:48 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nashvols View Post
If German, English, French, etc. are ancestries, why isn't American? If your family has been here for generations, what else would you be?
probably because there are so many different groups here with large populations, so people wouldn't know what american is exactly.

i think it's weird how they have American and Native American. everytime i saw a city's ancestry chart i assumed native americans were the ones that checked American, until i heard otherwise.
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Old 03-21-2011, 10:21 AM
 
399 posts, read 814,465 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nashvols View Post
If German, English, French, etc. are ancestries, why isn't American? If your family has been here for generations, what else would you be?
Your question is interesting. Maybe in 100 years we can say that American is an ancestry but it's too early now.

Quote:
All four of my grandparent's surnames are English and most of them claimed to be "Irish" which is kind of funny.
Yeah, many people thinking they're Irish when actually they're Scots-Irish. That's why I think the number of Scots-Irish/Scottish is underestimated and the number of Irish is a little bit overestimated.
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Old 03-21-2011, 11:19 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Smash XY View Post
Your question is interesting. Maybe in 100 years we can say that American is an ancestry but it's too early now.



Yeah, many people thinking they're Irish when actually they're Scots-Irish. That's why I think the number of Scots-Irish/Scottish is underestimated and the number of Irish is a little bit overestimated.
I agree, and often religion can be the factor which separates one from the other; when I think of "Irish", I think of those of the Irish-Catholic persuasion ( Boston, NYC, Chicago, Catholic schools w/nuns, etc), while the South has a large population of Protestant Scots-Irish background..
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Old 03-21-2011, 12:30 PM
 
Location: Franklin, TN
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Smash XY View Post
Your question is interesting. Maybe in 100 years we can say that American is an ancestry but it's too early now.
Perhaps so...

My family has been in Tennessee for 7 generations (now 8 w/my brother's kids). We have ancestors from England, Wales, Scotland, France, Germany, and Italy. Most of which were from before my family came to America...I have no idea what the actual breakdown is.

There is probably more of an English and Scottish influence on my mother's side, but there aren't really any "traditions" or "culture" passed down from those ancestors. If anything, I would say it's English...but nothing in our family resembles that culture...it's Southern American. All of our cooking and traditions are American, and although some of those have early "roots" in English culture, it barely, if at all, resembles that today.

I have no problem thinking that my "ancestors" are American. If we really want to get picky and draw our ancestors back to their earliest times, we should all label "African" on the census form.
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Old 03-22-2011, 02:36 AM
 
Location: Atlanta
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nashvols View Post
Perhaps so...

My family has been in Tennessee for 7 generations (now 8 w/my brother's kids). We have ancestors from England, Wales, Scotland, France, Germany, and Italy. Most of which were from before my family came to America...I have no idea what the actual breakdown is.

There is probably more of an English and Scottish influence on my mother's side, but there aren't really any "traditions" or "culture" passed down from those ancestors. If anything, I would say it's English...but nothing in our family resembles that culture...it's Southern American. All of our cooking and traditions are American, and although some of those have early "roots" in English culture, it barely, if at all, resembles that today.

I have no problem thinking that my "ancestors" are American. If we really want to get picky and draw our ancestors back to their earliest times, we should all label "African" on the census form.
I was about to the say something very similar. I've been able to trace some lines of my family tree back further than 7 generations.

Alot of Southerners are the descendents of the original large group of settlers that first landed in Virginia and slowly moved South as large blocks of land were taken up for farming.

The South didn't have the draw at attracting large numbers immigrants as much as NYC did during the late 1800s. As a byproduct of the large amount of people who immigrated to the northeast and the later Germany wave that grew into the Midwest in the 1800s and early 1900s, more people in the South have had ancestors in the country much longer than other parts of the country. I would say a higher percentage of people in large portions of the South are more likely to have ancestors that came over in the 1600s rather than the 1800s.

Truthfully, I can't track back most of my ancestors enough generations to really know. Part of that is because large parts of my family tree have been in America for a long time. Several of my family lines I can track back to the mid 1600s and one since 1627 (English via Virginia Commonwealth).

Mix that with the fact that one of my relatives was an early French Settler from the Gulf Coast, one was a Cherokee Indian, one was an Irish immigrant to Savannah in the early 1800s, I lose the trail of alot of my family tree, and I have traced back several branches of my family tree to early English settlers in the 1600s in Virginia things get confusing on picking a dominant ethnicity.

For a person from Georgia this is a veeery common genealogy (perhaps with some earlier settlers of 1600s/1700s Scotts-Irish thrown in that was very common of the Scotts-Irish).

So I have a few points to make.... and a question

For many of us we....
-don't know our whole family tree... alot of it gets lost in America, not from over seas.
-It is often very confusing and hard to pick one dominant ethnic culture I am originally from. That is what the census asks. I would guess English, but truth is... I can't know for sure. There is easily more of Scotts-Irish in me from the earlier wave in Appalachia and that could also explain why some of my family history is lost as they didn't always meticulously keep records as well as the early English did in the 1600s and 1700s.

Now my question is this... since someone said... maybe in 100 years...this made me think... perhaps a better approach to answering that question...

How long should someone's genealogy be in America to become American?
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Old 01-24-2012, 10:25 AM
 
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Most of those who put "American" as their ancestry are of mixed British ancestry, English, Scots-Irish and Scottish ancestry.

Here's an example of Alabama(I took this from a reply I made in another thread)

1980 census

English ancestry: 1,139,976
German ancestry: 308,242

http://www.census.gov/population/www...1-10/tab03.pdf

2000 census

English ancestry: 344,735
German ancestry: 254,166
American ancestry: 756,375

http://censtats.census.gov/data/AL/04001.pdf

In conclusion, English ancestry outnumbered German ancestry by about 800,000 people in 1980. In 2000 English ancestry still outnumbered German ancestry but only by about 100,000 people. But meanwhile "American" ancestry rocketed to roughly 750,000 people.

And heres for the whole South.

1980 census, The South.

English ancestry: 19,618,370(19,6 million)
Irish ancestry: 12,709,872(12,7 million)
German ancestry: 10,742,903(10,7 million)
Scottish ancestry: 3,492252(3,4 million)

http://www.census.gov/population/www...1-10/tab03.pdf

2000 census, The South.

English ancestry: 8,415,897(8,4 million)
Irish ancestry: 8,805,992(8,8 million)
German ancestry: 10,056,698(10 million)
Scottish ancestry: 1,663,241(1,6 million)

American ancestry: 11,390,834(11,3 million)

http://censtats.census.gov/data/US/020R3.pdf

The English went down 11,2 million.
The Irish went down 3,9 million.
The Scottish went down 1,8 million.

The Germans only went down 700k....

It's common sense that those who checked "American" in the 2000 census are of mainly English/Scots-Irish/Scottish descent and NOT German.

In reality the ONLY reason German ancestry outnumbered English ancestry in the 2000 census is because so many people in the South of English descent put "American" on that census. If the "American" option wasn't introduced, English ancestry would be ALOT higher. Probably even higher than German.

The 1980 census for the whole nation.

English ancestry: 26,3%
German ancestry: 26,1%

http://www.census.gov/population/www...1-10/tab02.pdf
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