How would you describe the Pittsburgh character? (Washington, California: houses, neighborhoods)

[ferrarisnowday]

Originally Posted by highway29south

Coming in as an outsider, you can find Pittsburghers friendly but not knowing people here all your life and having that history marks you as an outsider no matter how long you live here.

Tell me about it! I'm in my 5th year here and even people who know I've been here that long still treat me as if I have no knowledge of the city. Suggesting I visit Kennywood or go on the incline is a little patronizing.

[CortlandGirl79]

^Cleveland and Youngstown are very similar. There are a lot of Jews and Poles in Cleveland, in addition to every other kind of ethnicity. Where i am in the Youngstown metro we have a lot of greeks, italians, and even a good number of puerto ricans. I also read somewhere that we have the highest concentration of slovaks and croatians in the U.S., but i'm not sure that's true. The first wave of immigrants to Youngstown were mostly english, welsh, and german from what i've read.

[BrianTH]

I find the Eastern European influences the most interesting and distinctive, but you can't deny the Germans, Italians, Irish, and African-Americans their various roles in shaping the city.

By the way, Germans were HUGE in Pittsburgh around the turn of the last century, but as in many communities went underground during the World Wars and never really came back with the same sort of visible presence.

Edit: By the way, I am half Swede, half British Isles mutt, and my wife is half French, half Norwegian, and around here I feel like we are exotic.

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

Maps of American ancestries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It does seem that the E. European element would be one of the things that distinguishes Pittsburgh, as there is no shortage of Germans, Irish, and Italians anywhere in this country!

According to the Italian map, there are very few Italians throughout the middle of the US, from north to south. OTOH, I know there is a fair sized Italian community in Omaha. Henry Fonda is from there, BTW. Maybe the map isn't detailed enough to show that. Italian ancestry picks up out west with little pockets in Colorado and other western states, and lots of Italians in Cali. Irish, yes, everywhere.

Brian, yes, you and your wife are very exotic for Pittsburgh. My DH has a Swedish last name that I had never heard of before I met him, yet is fairly common in the Swedish-American community. I just got a directory of all Pitt graduates (well, all they know about anyway) and there is one other person with my last name, and it's her married name too. We have the same first name, too!

[Fiddlehead]

Originally Posted by Katiana

According to the Italian map, there are very few Italians throughout the middle of the US, from north to south. OTOH, I know there is a fair sized Italian community in Omaha. Henry Fonda is from there, BTW. Maybe the map isn't detailed enough to show that. Italian ancestry picks up out west with little pockets in Colorado and other western states, and lots of Italians in Cali. Irish, yes, everywhere.

Brian, yes, you and your wife are very exotic for Pittsburgh. My DH has a Swedish last name that I had never heard of before I met him, yet is fairly common in the Swedish-American community. I just got a directory of all Pitt graduates (well, all they know about anyway) and there is one other person with my last name, and it's her married name too. We have the same first name, too!

Interesting! I am an American mutt, more German than anything else, I think, but I was fascinated with Scandinavia in college, and spent a couple years in Uppsala. Naturally, I was interested in the Swedish, Norwegian, and even Finnish areas of Minnesota, N. Dakota, and N. Michigan. Now that Scandinavian source area has lost many of its children to other regions, and most went west. There is a sizable population in Puget Sound of Washington. I know plenty of people in Oregon with Swedish or Norwegian last names. It is interesting that that folk stream did not go east to Pittsburgh.

I would guess the Italians, like the Irish, headed west to work in the cities of SF, LA, Seattle, Portland, but perhaps there were few nonfarming jobs in the intervening states? Fascinating thinking about all our people and the forces that caused them to move or stay put.

BTW, I did not mean to minimize the importance of the German, Irish, English, African-American or other common groups in Pittsburgh,just figured those groups might be less distinctive than in many other cities of the general region. At some level, all those groups just say American to me.

[Katiana]

Lots of Scandinavians went to the midwest to farm after the passage of the Homestead Act, which allowed them to get free land. (Just saw a show about this on the History Channel today). That was 1862, and following. Then others came over and joined their friends and relatives. DH's father is from a town in Nebraska that still has "Swedish Days" in the summer. DH's grandmother never learned English as she had enough people to talk Swedish with. But I digress. I kid DH that the Swedes didn't want to work in the mines and the mills, but really, I don't know why they weren't interested in the Pgh area. There is also a sizable Swedish community in Connecticut.

[Hopes]

Lots of Scandinavians are in Minnesota and the Dekotas too.

[Fiddlehead]

Originally Posted by Katiana

Lots of Scandinavians went to the midwest to farm after the passage of the Homestead Act, which allowed them to get free land. (Just saw a show about this on the History Channel today). That was 1862, and following. Then others came over and joined their friends and relatives. DH's father is from a town in Nebraska that still has "Swedish Days" in the summer. DH's grandmother never learned English as she had enough people to talk Swedish with. But I digress. I kid DH that the Swedes didn't want to work in the mines and the mills, but really, I don't know why they weren't interested in the Pgh area. There is also a sizable Swedish community in Connecticut.

Didn't know about the Swedes in Connecticut. Must be an interesting story there. Nebraska seems to be part of the northern Midwest epicenter.

To veer back to Pittsburgh, I am going to boldly predict that it will indeed be rediscovered over the next couple decades. There is really no "last best place" in the West. It is a great place to live, and has plenty of appeal, but for value starting out, I think places like Pittsburgh will get a look and once people do, they will decide to "pioneer" the East, at least in some places where amenities persist and blight is not too severe. So, the untouched may eventually share allure with the forgotten and overlooked.

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

Fascinating thinking about all our people and the forces that caused them to move or stay put.

So true! I was getting on ancestry.com for awhile last week or so.

The Irish side (patrilineal and re-inforced) is strong...but I also have French, German, Dutch and English. Apparently my Dutch & English (both from my mom's mom's side) go way back to the founding of the country.

My French, German and Irish are all from the 1800s. The Irish, while I don't know very well, I just associate with 'Potato Famine' and haven't thought much more about it.

The French & German are complete mysteries to me. In both case, they went directly to Michigan and all of their descendants for the most part are still in Michigan. WHY MICHIGAN? I don't know. It appears solely for farmland. But what was the motivation, how did they feel about leaving, who went with him? Who did they know in Michigan beforehand? Funny how once here, they also just settled and seemingly didn't pass anything else down about 'the old country', at least it never reached my generation anyways!

(None of this really applies to Pittsburgh, except that Detroit drew in a ton of industrial and employment back in the day - which seemed to pull my Irish roots, but the others were pulled to the soil more than the factory jobs).

[Fiddlehead]

Hi TB,

Yea, I really need to check that site out too. Your story seems quite relevant. Many people immigrated for jobs or land,and I would suspect that would be as true in W. Pennsylvania as Michigan. Lots of jobs in the factories or coal mines, and also plenty of farmers. It is also fascinating who stayed and who moved on from those American beachheads. Like you, my German side is lost in the mists, but the other branches keep pretty good records. But largely farmers coming over from the Midwest and Oakies coming in from the Southwest. Neither branch had any money to speak of, nor much education. Looking back in time gives me compassion for the many immigrant groups of today, who seem so foreign, but their kids are just as American as us.