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There's also red around Kansas City. Turns out that was also originally a French-speaking community in the early days of settlement. In general, French settlement seems to follow a pattern of being extremely common in the regions directly bordering Canada (especially but not only Quebec) as well as Louisiana with secondary hot spots around French settlements that took off in colonial days elsewhere.
The regional distribution of the North American settlement by 'smaller' European ethnic groups is quite fascinating. See also the Dutch in Western Michigan, the strong Portuguese community around Boston, the Finnish on Michigan's U.P.
There's also red around Kansas City. Turns out that was also originally a French-speaking community in the early days of settlement. In general, French settlement seems to follow a pattern of being extremely common in the regions directly bordering Canada (especially but not only Quebec) as well as Louisiana with secondary hot spots around French settlements that took off in colonial days elsewhere.
The regional distribution of the North American settlement by 'smaller' European ethnic groups is quite fascinating. See also the Dutch in Western Michigan, the strong Portuguese community around Boston, the Finnish on Michigan's U.P.
Another example is there is a lot of Belgium ancestry in Green Bay WI.
Interesting from that map it looks like Eastern Missouri around Cape Girardeau (which sounds like a French name) has a high French %. St Louis could be in that speck of red too.
That area of Missouri is St. Francois County and Washington County, Missouri. It's actually near the town of St. Genevieve, Missouri, which is the oldest town in Missouri. It was founded by Frenchmen nearly 300 years ago. (It's 50 years older than St. Louis.) In fact, the people from that area moved northward more than 250 years ago and founded St. Louis. But in the late 19th century a lot of St Louis' French culture was erased by German and Irish immigrants. There's nothing very French about St. Louis anymore, except the name.
My grandmother was from that area of Missouri below St. Louis (Washington County). Her family, which was "Missouri French" settled in that area nearly 300 years ago via Quebec, Canada. That area is so rural and isolated that there are still a handful of people who speak "Paw Paw French," a 300-year-old French dialect that the early French settlers brought with them from Quebec.
A few years ago NPR ran a story about Paw Paw French in Washington County, Missouri:
The National Parks system has also recently placed areas of St Genevieve on the National Historic Register because it has the largest collection of authentic French colonial architecture in the U.S. --It has more than New Orleans, which destroyed a lot of its earliest buildings in a move to modernize.
Another example is there is a lot of Belgium ancestry in Green Bay WI.
And a lot of those Belgians were French-speaking. I believe Curly Lambeau, for whom Lambeau Field is named, was a descendant of those French-speaking Belgians.
There are a lot of Americanized French surnames scattered around east-central Missouri and probably some just across the Mississippi River in Illinois. People can trace their family back to the original French settlers. The lead mines were active by 1700. Fort de Chartres still exists on the Illinois Side.
Michigan is full of French place names or French and Indian influenced place names. Wisconsin has a fair amount as well. No doubt some of the oldest families in the upper Midwest, those who predate the southerners, Germans and even the British have French blood in them. The French were the first to settle so far inland. In the 1600s the French were using the Great Lakes to access the heart of Notth America while the British were still clinging to the Atlantic coast.
No doubt the answer is Michigan and Wisconsin. Honorable mention goes to Missouri where the French settlements on the Mississippi were.
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