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As I travel through the country by car I notice that White People from the southern states have a distinct look. It must have to do with the mix of Countries they came from when their Grandparents came from Europe.
I read somewhere that many of the White People who live in the South came from a Scotch/Irish background. Maybe that is it.
Anyone else notice a certain type of look (physical features) of many White Men who live in the Southeastern USA? (Distinct from rural white folks who live in the Northern States)
I am not talking about their dress or style but their physical features!
Last edited by Refugee56; 09-02-2008 at 12:27 PM..
As I travel through the country by car I notice that White People from the southern states have a distinct look. It must have to do with the mix of Countries they came from when their Grandparents came from Europe.
I read somewhere that many of the White People who live in the South came from a Scotch/Irish background. Maybe that is it.
Anyone else notice a certain type of look (physical features) of many White Men who live in the Southeastern USA? (Distinct from rural white folks who live in the Northern States)
A vast majority of Southern whites are of Scots-Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English descent. Most of those ones are Scots-Irish (descents of Scottish tenant farmers in Ireland who came to the US and later Canada to become small farmers).
Exceptions would be Louisiana, parts of Mississippi and parts of Texas, those people are mostly French.
You also need to remember that Southern whites are more inbred than other whites in the country. I do not mean inbred as in the direct sleeping with close blood relatives, but rather since far fewer families settled the South than the rest of the country and since the South was never popular with immigrants until just recently (exceptions would be Miami and New Orleans), there were far fewer families and in a few generations people were more closely related in the South than the rest of country. So with a similar ethnicity and indirect inbreeding, it is not unlikely that certain facial features and a certain type of "look" are more common in the South and that there would be a "Southern look".
Just to add...I don't think I'd pin any distinctive look on Scots-Irish ancestry though since that's also quite prevalent across central and western PA as well as western NY. In fact...if your family has been here since around the revolution, you probably have some bit of Scots-Irish ancestry, even if you're African-American.
The more I study genealogy, the more convinced I am there are lots of us who are related!
I have from time to time heard that whites that inhabited the Appalachians had a distinctive look...high cheekbones, narrow eyes, long noses, thin lips.
I have from time to time heard that whites that inhabited the Appalachians had a distinctive look...high cheekbones, narrow eyes, long noses, thin lips.
These are pretty distinctive features in my family and most people I've talked to claim the high cheekbones and eyes are evidence of Cherokee heritage. I'm currently of the opinion this is bunk but I can neither prove nor disprove it.
They are mostly descendants of Ulster Scots - they have a totally different look than Irish Americans or native Irish - and I should know, being from the north of Ireland.
I'm from Southern Kentucky and decended from Scots-Irish and Cherokee on my maternal grandmothers side. In our region this seems to be fairly common. I can't say that everyone in the south has a distinctive look but in my family we tend to be tall people, narrow noses, and many with light colored eyes (blues & greys).
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