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It's hard to say since American culture is debatably more German than English. Asking if Des Moines is more German than Omaha is like asking if Edmonton is more British than Winnipeg.
It's not because German is the largest reported ancestry that American culture is more German than English. American culture is largely based on the first British settlers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawn.Davenport
Also, during and after WWII, a lot of German Americans lied about their ancestry. And, since for most American families, ancestry doesn't really affect day-to-day life, those lies keep on getting passed down. There are millions of Americans who think they "are" Swedish, Danish, or Dutch but are actually the decedents of Germans. Similarly the census reports first ancestry. So due to the whole WWII stigma thing, millions of other partial German Americans may choose to identify with other braches of their family tree first, further skewing statistics.
First time I hear German ancestry is underreported. If there's one ethnic group we can be sure it's not underestimated, it's German Americans. Their number has been fairly stable over the last thirty years if you look at the census.
1980: 49 million
1990: 58 million
2000: 42 million
2010: 48 million
Also the number of Swedish, Danish and Dutch ancestry isn't even high so I don't know why you said that.
First time I hear German ancestry is underreported. If there's one ethnic group we can be sure it's not underestimated, it's German Americans. Their number has been fairly stable over the last thirty years if you look at the census.
1980: 49 million
1990: 58 million
2000: 42 million
2010: 48 million
Also the number of Swedish, Danish and Dutch ancestry isn't even high so I don't know why you said that.
That doesn't mean German ancestry hasn't been underreported since the end of WWII though. I think the idea is that a lot of Americans who identified as German in the years following the war ceased doing so.
It's not because German is the largest reported ancestry that American culture is more German than English. American culture is largely based on the first British settlers.
First time I hear German ancestry is underreported. If there's one ethnic group we can be sure it's not underestimated, it's German Americans. Their number has been fairly stable over the last thirty years if you look at the census.
1980: 49 million
1990: 58 million
2000: 42 million
2010: 48 million
Also the number of Swedish, Danish and Dutch ancestry isn't even high so I don't know why you said that.
This is why I said it:
Quote:
Originally Posted by bluecarebear
I think there is even a town in WV that is all Swiss.
Having lived in the Upper Midwest for a decade, I know of several towns--Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin comes to mind first--that are full of German Americans but adapted another ethnic identity during WWII. Mt. Horeb, for instance, pretends to be Norwegian and the town is decorated with trolls. I'm not saying Bluecarebear is incorrect, but I'm skeptical of just how Swiss that West Virginia town really is.
Also the word German in German is Deutsche, which sounds very similar to Dutch. This is why the "Pennsylvania Dutch" are not Dutch at all. I have an ex who thought he was Dutch until he looked into his family history after his grandmother passed to find that he was, in fact, German.
Personally, my dad's side of the family is from Canada (mostly Arcadian), yet I have one ancestor who immigrated from Hamburg, Germany to Moncton, New Brunswick in the 19th Century and changed his surname from Schmidt to Smith. While this means my family's background is 1/64th German--so small it's not worth mentioning--I had no idea I was of any German extraction at all until a couple years ago.
I'm sure we could debate whether American culture more influenced by Germany or Britain to no end, and frankly that conversation doesn't really excite me. But the dominance of German culture in the US is one of many reasons why rural New England feels nothing like rural Pennsylvania, or why rural Arkansas is so different from rural Missouri, or why there's such a cultural contrast between Louisville and the rest of Kentucky.
Last edited by Dawn.Davenport; 01-04-2016 at 03:47 PM..
That doesn't mean German ancestry hasn't been underreported since the end of WWII though. I think the idea is that a lot of Americans who identified as German in the years following the war ceased doing so.
Maybe at the end of the war but now I think Americans are well aware of their German ancestry (I even thought it was exaggerated when I first saw the number) and if it's underreported it's not by million of people. I don't think their number is higher than 55 million.
It seems pretty clear to me that German ancestry has a plurality in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, while English ancestry has a plurality in the South, northern New England and Mormon country.
It's also clear that "American" ancestry is mostly people white Protestants whose ancestors came from the British Isles.
I'm not at all convinced that German ancestry is "really" more common than English ancestry in the US.
German is more commonly reported because 1) English is the boring plain vanilla response and 2) most English-descended Americans can trace their ancestry back to colonial times and are more likely to report their most "recent" ancestors.
It seems pretty clear to me that German ancestry has a plurality in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, while English ancestry has a plurality in the South, northern New England and Mormon country.
It's also clear that "American" ancestry is mostly people white Protestants whose ancestors came from the British Isles.
I'm not at all convinced that German ancestry is "really" more common than English ancestry in the US.
German is more commonly reported because 1) English is the boring plain vanilla response and 2) most English-descended Americans can trace their ancestry back to colonial times and are more likely to report their most "recent" ancestors.
"English" ancestry is nowhere near as numerous as German. "British", maybe. The colonial white population was only 60% english, with an additional 25% welsh, Scottish, scots-irish. Germans were 10% of the colonial people.
In the 1800s the German community exploded. America processed twice as many immigrants in the 1800s from Germany than it did from "the United Kingdom". Those british were no doubt a huge chunk welsh, Scottish, ulster-scot.
Along with the massive immigration, Germans brought with them higher birth rates. To this day German Americans probably have more kids than British Americans. I'm thinking of the Amish and Hutterite communities, which are 98% German/Swiss, and have 7 kids a piece. And then I think of far north New England, which has the lowest feetility rate in the country. The Mormons are mostly British, but there is a huge Danish contribution to Mormons, and a minor German one as well.
"English" ancestry is nowhere near as numerous as German. "British", maybe. The colonial white population was only 60% english, with an additional 25% welsh, Scottish, scots-irish. Germans were 10% of the colonial people.
In the 1800s the German community exploded. America processed twice as many immigrants in the 1800s from Germany than it did from "the United Kingdom". Those british were no doubt a huge chunk welsh, Scottish, ulster-scot.
Along with the massive immigration, Germans brought with them higher birth rates. To this day German Americans probably have more kids than British Americans. I'm thinking of the Amish and Hutterite communities, which are 98% German/Swiss, and have 7 kids a piece. And then I think of far north New England, which has the lowest feetility rate in the country. The Mormons are mostly British, but there is a huge Danish contribution to Mormons, and a minor German one as well.
You're forgetting that the English had a massive head start.
In 1900, about half of white Americans were of colonial stock and the other half were of post-1800 immigrant stock. 8 million were of German birth or parentage, if we add in the third generation, Volga Germans and those of colonial German descent it couldn't have been higher than 15 million.
Considering that there were more than 30 million Americans who could trace their roots to colonial times, that's 15 million right there. Plus the descendants of Canadians, English immigrants etc.
There were 50 million Americans reporting English ancestry in 1980 - and today it's only 30 million or so? How can that be?
Amish/Hutterites represent about 1% of German Americans. They represent a much smaller percentage of the German ancestry population than Hasidic Jews represent of the Jewish population.
At best English alone and German may be about the same, but it's not true that there German ancestry is "far more numerous" than English ancestry.
Anyway OP has asked which cities have the most German ancestry. Here are some Midwestern metros:
Chicago 1,476,979 15.5%
Minneapolis-St. Paul 1,111,065 32.4%
St. Louis 819,894 29.3%
Detroit 710,893 17.7%
Cincinnati 633,015 29.7%
Milwaukee 561,481 35.9%
Cleveland 420,723 20.4%
Indianapolis 399,478 20.7%
Last edited by King of Kensington; 01-04-2016 at 06:40 PM..
There were 50 million Americans reporting English ancestry in 1980 - and today it's only 30 million or so? How can that be?
They croaked.
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