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I never understood this argument. It's not because there was more immigrants from Germany and Ireland that the number of English people should go down. Moreover, during the 19th century and the early 20th century the immigration from Great Britain is the third largest with 3.5 million, it's not as if they stopped coming after the American Revolution.
^ 3.5 Million only represents English immigrants. The number of Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Northern Irish & Canadian families of British heritage, would increase this number considerably.
True but the highest proportion of people who consider themselves of American ancestry is in the south and in the last census this was the area where we found the largest percentage of English ancestry and precisely their number has declined, it isn't a coincidence.
Also if we look at the history of migration and settlement in the southern colonies we can assume most people are of English, Scotch-Irish and Scottish background.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kiehl
I think that many of the south are black americans who voted for being Americans since they have African country they can refer to.
Nope, you are very wrong.
"In previous censuses, the largest ancestry group identified by Southerners was English or mostly English, with 19,618,370 self-reporting "English" as an ancestry on the 1980 census, followed by 12,709,872 listing Irish and 11,054,127 Afro-American
I think that many of the south are black americans who voted for being Americans since they have African country they can refer to. The Americans of European origin have a better awareness of their country of origin.
I think if you read my mail 05. June 2014 it explains everything about the historical background. For many Americans of English origin it feels that all Americans which are white and speak English or American English in this case ,are automatically from the British Isles. The vast number of German Americans are of not anymore Germans, they are fully assimilated Americans and speak American English as their mother tongue and look like the majority of other white Americans if Irish, English, Dutch , Polish, Danish or whatever similar background. Still this does not change the fact that the majority of white Americans are descendants of so called Americans of German origin.
The census report is the only indication which can prove this. There is no other statistic and you can dream about any other results as long as you wish if it makes you happy. If you talk about DNA, you should read in the British Journals that about 40 % of the English have the DNA of the Germanic tribes and they came mainly from what is nowaday's Germany, the DNA in countries like Germany, Holland, Denmark , England etc is more or less the same, at least until about 50 year's ago. If you go today to England you will see that the English start looking more and more like a mix of Europeans with descendants of their previous colonies, especially a large population of white and black mixtures, steadily increasing. This trend is as well seen in other European countries, even in Germany with immigrants from other countries.
How exactly is this information about ancestry being collected? If it's self-reported, then I question its validity. Many, if not most, people have absolutely no clue about their ancestry, relying mostly on the derivation of their surname and family lore. But one's surname is not a good indicator of one's entire ancestral make-up. As I wrote earlier, I grew up with a definitively German last name, but the vast majority of my known ancestors were English and Scottish. So how exactly am I to be characterized? My hyphenated American identity finds its source all over the British Isles and Western Europe, and those are just the family lines I know. There is much left to discover.
It might be because I grew up in the Northeast, but virtually everyone I knew growing up had a pretty to very good idea of their ethnic background, because essentially their entire ancestry traced to immigrants within the living memory of their grandparents (e.g, grandparents grandparents or sooner). While I realize this isn't the case in the South, my understanding is the Midwest and West are closer to the Northeast, with the majority of people knowing pretty well what immigrant stock they come from.
How exactly is this information about ancestry being collected? If it's self-reported, then I question its validity. Many, if not most, people have absolutely no clue about their ancestry, relying mostly on the derivation of their surname and family lore.
I find that hard to believe that most people have no clue, maybe not exactly. Grandparents know the family immigration history.
Most people I've met know their background rather clearly.
But you've also lived in the Northeast for most of your life, correct?
all. My dad was born outside the country (and isn't white), so that takes care of one half. On my mom's, her grandparents either immigrated from Germany or were the children of German immigrants except for one, which it's fairly safe to assume was of English (probably colonial-era) ancestry.
all. My dad was born outside the country (and isn't white), so that takes care of one half. On my mom's, her grandparents either immigrated from Germany or were the children of German immigrants except for one, which it's fairly safe to assume was of English (probably colonial-era) ancestry.
I think it's a lot easier for many white people in the Northeast to pinpoint their origins because their ancestors likely came through Ellis Island (or some other port) at the turn of the last century. It's a lot more difficult, however, for people whose roots go back farther than that. And for a lot of people, they may have one parent who's Irish/Jewish/Italian/Polish, etc. with roots that can be easily traced back to New York City, but then have another parent from New Mexico or Colorado who's really not clear on his/her ethnic makeup. Most people are likely a combination of different things even if they claim "German" or "English" on the Census form.
Even African Americans have a hard time figuring out what exactly they are. Don Cheadle, for example, believed that he was part Native American (as many Black Americans do). It turned out that his family was enslaved by Native Americans and his DNA test revealed that he had no Native American ancestry whatsoever.
I think there's also a lot of oversimplification in these threads regarding the ethnic makeup of different regions of the country, particularly the South. There was quite a bit of German migration to the South before the Civil War. That's how you get towns named New Bern, North Carolina. Many white southerners are probably a combination of Scottish, Irish, English, Welsh, Scotch-Irish and German ancestry.
I always though I was basically half colonial era German and half colonial era British dating back generations in the South. I took a DNA test and came back only about 17% German and the rest British, French and Scandinavian with a little bit of Southern European and SSA. My biggest percentage was British at 41%. I don't look very British at all and would probably be pinned as a South German or Austrian if I was in Europe.
It might be because I grew up in the Northeast, but virtually everyone I knew growing up had a pretty to very good idea of their ethnic background, because essentially their entire ancestry traced to immigrants within the living memory of their grandparents (e.g, grandparents grandparents or sooner). While I realize this isn't the case in the South, my understanding is the Midwest and West are closer to the Northeast, with the majority of people knowing pretty well what immigrant stock they come from.
A lot of people are so mixed from a lot of different family bloodlines that it's hard to know every ancestor even if you have an idea of a lot of them. For example my mom is 100 percent Polish, her great grandparents and some grandparents came over from Poland roughly 1880 to 1920 and settled in the Midwest or Northeast--her family all lived in the Polish neighborhoods of Milwaukee before moving away. Maybe some of them had Ukrainian or Lithuanian or German or Jewish blood at some point, but all we know about most of them is that they were all from Poland(or what would've been Poland at various point in history, when most of them immigrated it was occupied by Austria-Hungary or Russia or Prussia).
My dad's side of the family, detailed through efforts of my great aunt's genological research, is a lot of different odds and ends. The family namesake immigrated from England to Virginia in the late 1700s, the earliest immigration date of any ancestor was a German who immigrated in about 1700 and had children with a Native American woman, there's a significant Swiss ancestry group, my grandfather's mother side of the family is mostly Black Irish who immigrated in the mid-1800s and Scots-Irish along with some Cherokee blood---and then there's my paternal grandmother who was adopted by Mormons, but had a German Jewish surname(yet we don't know truly who her ancestors were). My dad just called his background "Heinz 57"...
Last edited by Deezus; 01-06-2014 at 12:18 PM..
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English or German Americans
