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I'd say the Canadian Maritimes, the music is basically Celtic folk music(even more so than the Applachians which shows other influences) and the accents range from the Irish-influence of Newfie and Martime accents to the Scottish Gaelic of Cape Breton. Food also is very influenced by the British Isles. I'd say the Celtic influences of the Martime Provinces is stronger than New England and Applachia where you've had a more diverse range of cultural influences over time.
New England seems to have this more Puritan English imprint in the country and the cities had other ethnic groups that mixed in(Italians, Portugese, and so on). Appalachia was Scots-Irish but had influences from Southern blacks in the south and other groups over time. The Martimes are mostly all Irish or Scottish(and the rest are English-descent or French in some areas closer to Quebec) until recently.
Last edited by CanuckInPortland; 02-22-2016 at 01:33 PM..
I'm inclined to agree. Pretty hard to think of anywhere more Celtic influenced than Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
I would say the ranking of the three goes: 1) Maritimes, 2) New England, 3) Appalachia.
Yes, I agree. There's a lot of Irish in Boston and parts of New England. But there's a lot of Irish and Scottish-descended people in the Maritimes and Newfoundland(about half the population probably). Even a lot of the English immigrants to Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island were from more Celtic areas of England like Cornwall and the West Country. And I doubt there's few places outside the British Isles that look and feel so much like Ireland and Scotland as parts of Atlantic Canada. I mean some towns in Newfoundland or Cape Breton or Nova Scotia can easily pass for a coastal village in Great Britain.
Should have made it "Atlantic Canada" to include Newfoundland also.
The St. John's area/Avalon Peninsula is probably the most Irish-descended place on the continent. Rest of the island of Newfoundland is mostly of English ancestry and Protestant, but as you say their ancestors are from the most Celtic part of England.
Hard to top Newfoundland (Irish/West Country English) and eastern Nova Scotia/PEI (Scottish Highlander) for Celtic influence IMO.
Others can comment on Appalachia and the US South, but I'm pretty certain the Scots-Irish influence is overstated.
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People were pretty Americanized by the time they reached the Southern Appalachians. Scots Irish and Scottish is a dominant part of the ethnic makeup but so is Tidewater English, German, Welsh, Dutch, French etc. Few people moved right from Ulster to South Carolina, most spent 1 or 2 generations in Pennsylvania first.
There's definitely a perception that white Southerners in general and in Appalachia in particular are mostly "Scotch-Irish" (and therefore distinctive from Anglo Saxon Yankees) but I haven't seen any real evidence for it.
There's definitely a perception that white Southerners in general and in Appalachia in particular are mostly "Scotch-Irish" (and therefore distinctive from Anglo Saxon Yankees) but I haven't seen any real evidence for it.
As of the 1980s the only counties in the United States where over half of the population cited "English" as their only ancestry group were all in the hills of eastern Kentucky (and made up virtually every county in this region)
But I thought English ancestry was limited to old money types, Yankee New Englanders and Mormons.
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