The Midwest - The Great Lakes, The Great Plains, and The Midlands
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You had a pretty detailed and cogent summary OP. There is one thing you got wrong however - the Midlands was settled before the Great Lakes. The earliest settlement areas were all along the Ohio river by southerners and Pennsylvanians, which started decades prior to the Erie Canal opening. This can be seen in that Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were all made states prior to Michigan and Wisconsin. Further, the southern counties in these states were all founded much earlier. This can even be seen in the cities, with Cincinnati and Saint Louis developing into major U.S. cities decades before any Great Lakes cities.
The United States is, by no means, a "nation of immigrants," and it never has been, either. Like I stated in my previous post, that hogwash has been sold to the American people by Democrats and the liberal news media for decades now, and the American people have fallen hook, line and sinker for it.
At no point since the inception of the United States as we know it today (i.e., the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776) has the population of the country been comprised of a foreign-born majority.
As of 2010, at least half of the US population is able to trace their ancestry back to the white and black residents (both slaves and freed man) who were living in the US in 1790.
Prior to 1776, new arrivals in America weren't considered immigrants; they were colonists or settlers, whichever term you prefer. You can't immigrate to a country that doesn't formally exist - LOL.
I'm a sixth-generation American on one side of my family tree and a fourth-generation American on the other side. My father's grandparents, all of whom were all born in Italy, had died before I was born. None of my grandparents or their siblings were born in another country.
Not one person I went to primary school with was born in a different country, and all but three classmates of mine had one parent, respectively, who was born in a different country. All three of those classmates in particular had foreign-born mothers and American fathers. In high school, I'm willing to be 95-98% of my classmates were American-born.
Believe it or not, in 2016, that's still pretty still standard in most suburban and rural areas of the US outside of California.
When people say we are a "nation of immigrants" they are not just referring to present day 1st generation immigrants, but the fact that the vast majority of Americans are descended of immigrant stock, which varies by state or city.. Italians, Germans, Irish, Poles, Mexicans, Chinese.. all contributed to the American fabric.
Most Americans are not descended of colonists. Not in 2016. You'll have to go to a remote town in New Hampshire to really find such a population. The Midwest itself was heavily settled by GERMANS, SWEDES, POLES and IRISH immigrants. Not by Mayflower Pilgrims or Jamestown colonists lol. You know 1776 was a long time since the original colonists. There had been plenty of actual non-colonial immigration by then. The Pilgrims arrived in 1620 for example, well over 100 years before the Revolutionary war, and yes, the pilgrims were in every extent of the world; immigrants.
It's not like Europeans really cared for whatever system the native tribes had. They came and settled in the land they lived in without a care. Y'all are descended from immigrants even if you're of colonial stock.
The United States is, by no means, a "nation of immigrants," and it never has been, either. Like I stated in my previous post, that hogwash has been sold to the American people by Democrats and the liberal news media for decades now, and the American people have fallen hook, line and sinker for it.
At no point since the inception of the United States as we know it today (i.e., the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776) has the population of the country been comprised of a foreign-born majority.
As of 2010, at least half of the US population is able to trace their ancestry back to the white and black residents (both slaves and freed man) who were living in the US in 1790.
Prior to 1776, new arrivals in America weren't considered immigrants; they were colonists or settlers, whichever term you prefer. You can't immigrate to a country that doesn't formally exist - LOL.
I'm a sixth-generation American on one side of my family tree and a fourth-generation American on the other side. My father's grandparents, all of whom were all born in Italy, had died before I was born. None of my grandparents or their siblings were born in another country.
Not one person I went to primary school with was born in a different country, and all but three classmates of mine had one parent, respectively, who was born in a different country. All three of those classmates in particular had foreign-born mothers and American fathers. In high school, I'm willing to be 95-98% of my classmates were American-born.
Believe it or not, in 2016, that's still pretty still standard in most suburban and rural areas of the US outside of California.
Wow. This was really thought provoking and you made some really excellent points. I never knew the "trace ancestry back to 1790" statistic- that's pretty mind blowing considering the common ideas of America.
I'm the same, my family goes back to pre revolutionary war on all sides. I always thought that made me some kind of freak, but it seems it's not all that uncommon.
When people say we are a "nation of immigrants" they are not just referring to present day 1st generation immigrants, but the fact that the vast majority of Americans are descended of immigrant stock, which varies by state or city.. Italians, Germans, Irish, Poles, Mexicans, Chinese.. all contributed to the American fabric.
Most Americans are not descended of colonists. Not in 2016. You'll have to go to a remote town in New Hampshire to really find such a population. The Midwest itself was heavily settled by GERMANS, SWEDES, POLES and IRISH immigrants. Not by Mayflower Pilgrims or Jamestown colonists lol. You know 1776 was a long time since the original colonists. There had been plenty of actual non-colonial immigration by then. The Pilgrims arrived in 1620 for example, well over 100 years before the Revolutionary war, and yes, the pilgrims were in every extent of the world; immigrants.
It's not like Europeans really cared for whatever system the native tribes had. They came and settled in the land they lived in without a care. Y'all are descended from immigrants even if you're of colonial stock.
With regarded to the boldface statement, you couldn't be more incorrect.
It was Yankees from Upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania - by way of New England a generation earlier - who initially pioneered the present-day American Midwest after The Battle of Lake Erie in 1813 during the War of 1812, one of the biggest naval battles in American history.
In this battle, the United States Navy defeated the British Royal Navy and commanded access of Lake Erie for the remainder of the war. This, in turn, allowed the Americans to recover Fort Detroit.
Because of this cession by the British, the Great Lakes region became frontier territory for American settlers moving westward, and along the northern tier of the country, that settlement was primarily driven by Yankee folk.
Farther south in the Midlands, however, settlement was primarily driven by Scottish, Scotch-Irish and Germans who had heavily settled Pennsylvania and the South Atlantic colonies/states.
However, it's important to note that sometime around the War of 1812, the United States' foreign-born population hit an all-time low of around 4-5%.
It wasn't until the 1820's when Germans and, to a lesser extent, Scandinavians began arriving in larger numbers. The Irish didn't really begin arriving en masse until the 1840's. By that point, the Midwest was already fairly established as a region.
However, it's important to note that Yankee influences were most significant to the development of communities in the present-day American Midwest from northeastern Ohio (AKA the "Connecticut Western Reserve") all the way out to eastern Dakota.
Together with New England, Upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania, this collective region was later dubbed "Yankeedom," characterized by strong Puritanical influences (i.e., a strong emphasis on education, hard work, ingenuity, prudence, frugality, civic engagement, the common good, regulation, property, etc.).
The Yankee influence was as much cultural as genetics. E.g., Henry Ford was the descendant of Irish and Belgian immigrants. John D. Rockefeller, a key figure in the history of Cleveland, also was the descendant of immigrants.
Yet the Midwest was heavily influenced by European migration, from Scandinavia in the upper Midwest, from Poland in Chicago and Cleveland, from Ireland and Germany in the lower Great Lakes, and from Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia in Cleveland.
The lower Great Lakes also were the endpoints of the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the North.
These migrations after the founding decades certainly shaped the Midwest in profound ways distinguishable from much of New England, with perhaps the exception of Boston in comparison to Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. The cultural values of the Midwest seem shaped by Boston much more than any other city in the East.
You had a pretty detailed and cogent summary OP. There is one thing you got wrong however - the Midlands was settled before the Great Lakes.
I agree with you on this. Cincinnati and St. Louis were well establish towns, if not cities well before the War of 1812. I think I was trying to argue the Great Lakes "culturally" became distinct before the Midlands as all the canal building of the 1820-40s really caused the inland coastal areas to boom. This is of course a subjective argument and it'd take a lot of new paper clippings to prove one before the other.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bert_from_back_East
It was Yankees from Upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania - by way of New England a generation earlier - who initially pioneered the present-day American Midwest...
I think this is a bit of an oversimplification, as many nuances of the Midwest are. People of the Midwest don't even make a note if someone has a French family name, many of whom have roots to the region before the United States was a country. Upstate New York and Pennsylania at the time of initial Midwestern settlement were for the most part per-revolutionary German and Dutch communities. There were classic "Yankee" land speculators who founded the initial towns, but the people who moved there from the Northeast weren't necessarily Yankees. The border with Canada at this time was fluid, and it wasn't unheard of to have families move from Upstate New York, to Southern Ontario, to Michigan, to Wisconsin.
I think that it is corrected to suppose that the Midwest has/had a churn to it which grinds most people into general American. The distance from the Old World, and its relative isolation, and the land's sprawling nature forced immigrates to become America, but there were some aspects to the Midwest unique to itself. The large amount of German immigrates and the political clashes in Central Europe at the time definitively brought populism and socialism to the collective conscience of Midwesterners, much to the chagrin of the WASP class of the coast, and the native Prairie Schools and the American Arts and Crafts movements which flourished in the Midwest were a reaction to the industrialization and less than ideal living conditions in the East.
It is harder to recognize these things now, with New York and LA controlling most of the consumer based mass media and drowning out all the other cultures unique to the country.
I'm 30 and have lived in six different states since 2010 (two Midwest, three South, Massachusetts) and I would say the Midwest is the most quintessentially "generic American." That doesn't mean it's the best or the most enjoyable, but it's the most generic. I'm from a place with a strong regional identity. I saw the same in Boston. In Indianapolis and Des Moines, there is much less of a regional flavor.
What you are describing as "generic" is actually an expression of a very "strong regional identity" and a lot of "regional flavor".
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