American ancestry map

[Loki]

Saw this on a Skadi thread:

http://theelectoralmap.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/07-08-ancestry.jpg

Does anyone have a map that has legible writing? This one is a bit small and hard to make out.

Edit: I've replaced it with the link Lenny has kindly provided.

[Lenny]

I don't think that map is very useful. The "single largest reported ancestry by county" is almost trivial. We should care about overall ancestral stock.

Looking at that map, one would have no idea that Scandinavian blood is more prevalent in Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and north Iowa than is German blood. (The Scandinavians split four ways though). And one would think that the only people in the Southern states are of "American ancestry" (whatever that means) and black people.

Anyway here is a large version: http://theelectoralmap.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/07-08-ancestry.jpg

[Gooding]

Normally, those who report "American" as their ancestry in the South are descendents of British colonists who've not been able to research their ancestry.

[Æmeric]

My remarks from last night on this map:


"That map only shows the largest ancestry claimed by county, not the majority. And people can claim more then one. So persons claiming German may also claim Irish or Swedish. Someone claiming German or Irish may actually be more English then anything else. And remember again.... English ancestry is under reported because ethnic to many means something else then English. And a sizable portion of Euro-Americans do not even claim an ancestry because of that. And those claiming American are mostly of English-Scots descent from the colonial era."

[Psychonaut]

Normally, those who report "American" as their ancestry in the South are descendents of British colonists who've not been able to research their ancestry.

From the same Wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_State s) that the map came from:


Many citizens (7.2%) listed themselves simply as "American" on the census. A county by county map of plurality ethnic groups reveals that the areas with the largest "American" ancestry populations were mostly settled by Scots-Irish, Scottish, English, and Welsh people.

The Appalachians especially are clearly a Scots-Irish and Scottish region with hardly any other "white" influences in the rural areas.

[Gooding]

I went to school in Southwestern Virginia and not only is the majority population Scottish/Scotch-Irish, but there are smaller numbers of English,Welsh and Germans.Also, there's a somewhat mysterious race of people known as the Melungeons who are said to be a "tri-racial isolate", in that they descend from Europeans (opinions vary,some mention Spanish, some Portuguese, some say that they are descended from Turks), African-Americans and Native Americans.They are almost exclusively found in Southwestern Virginia and Northeastern Tennessee.There are also minor groups of Chickahominy and Cherokee people.In my Appalachian Culture Class, we had to study works by Henry Caudill,"Night Comes to the Cumberlands", Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor.Certain classmates claimed Melungeon descent, although their surnames were indistinguishable from those of the other Appalachian locals who attended.
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melungeons

[Æmeric]

Did those claiming Melungeon descend look different?

[Jägerstaffel]

I'm surprised I've never heard of these Melungeons, being from the Shenandoah Valley.

And Psycho you're right, it's very Scottish in this area but Gooding is correct as well - there are many Germans, Welsh, and Irish here in this Western Euro melting pot. I believe the Shenandoah Valley was originally settled by Pennsylvania Germans; which would explain my grandfather always saying "Gott im Himmel!"

[Gooding]

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melungeons I hadn't heard of them either until I went down to Bristol for college.

[Gooding]

This site might be a little better than wikipedia:www.melungeons.com .These people fascinated me in school due to their reticence.I think you need to know these people for years before they get familiar with you and I do know that they were treated rather badly by the British (English, Scottish, Irish Protestant and Welsh)settlers in the region, so that might be why people like me aren't really able to actually befriend them.They are interesting from a historical perspective, though.

[Lenny]

[To elaborate on the original point,] For a variety of reasons, those Census self-reportings are not accurate. At least not for those who are interested in serious studies of white-American "ancestral origins". (Aemeric wrote about this above). For one thing, most people only reported one ancestry, and that's in the year 2000.... The number of people with genuinely only one country of ancestry in the year 2000 has got to have been quite low. Something like one-seventh of whites didn't even bother reporting any at all.

I have been very interested in these stats since they first came out 8 years ago, but these problems always bugged me. They weren't serious ancestral reportings, but sort of trivia(l) with lots of methodological holes. I have looked in depth at the results of all the censuses going back a hundred years (the 'ancestry' question only began with the 1980 census; before that the relevant question was the place-of-birth and place-of-both-of-one's-parents questions). There was also a private statistical agency some years back that conducted random in-depth scientific polls to try to also get a handle on this. Anyway, in my years off and on of looking at this, my conclusion as far as to the overall ancestral stock of the white population of the USA is below.


Aemeric is of course right that it is almost comical to think that England really only contributed 12% of genes to the white population of the USA, as the census would have us believe (based on self-reportings). The most realistic estimate would have it that England contributes about one-fourth of genetic material to the white-American stock.

A reasonable estimate of the genetic origins by country or grouping-of-countries of the white-European stock of the USA [minus 'white Hispanics' (a very tricky matter) and minus non-European Caucasoids],

England 25%
Scotland/Scotch-Irish 12%,
Irish-Catholic 14%,
Continental Germanic 25%,
Scandinavian 6%,
Italian 6%,
Slavs 6%,
French 5%,
other European 2%

Notes
-These are localized very heavily in some places still today, despite the large mobility of Americans.
---In parts of the Upper Midwest, Scandinavian genetic input forms a majority [of the white stock] (esp. Minnesota) and Scandinavian+ContinentalGermanic+English forms nearly all of it.
---ContinentalGermanic + English constitutes a majority of the white stock in most states;
---The old CSA states (and Kentucky) have a high Scotch/Scotch-Irish input, but this is relatively low elsewhere;
---Italians are mostly in the northeast corridor (A region in rural Kansas would probably have about 0.7% Italian genetic input instead of the national average 7%)
---French genetic input is a near majority in southern Louisiana; etc.

-The genuine totally-European "Hispanics" would form maybe 3 or 4%, but they are culturally not part of the white grouping so it is reckless to do so.

-Jews, Arabs, Turks, and other non-European Caucasoids can't be reasonably counted for the same reason as the Hispanic, but they too would make up maybe up to 4%. It is true that some Lebanese who came over a hundred years ago have assimilated into the white stock.


Compare the above to the 1790 white ancestral stock of the newly-born USA. In 1790, the ancestral origin of U.S. whites was roughly:
60% England [predominating everywhere except the wild frontier]
17% Scotch and Scotch-Irish [the latter being the frontier-pushers]
15% Continental-Germanic [mostly PA-German and Dutch remnants of 'NewNetherlands'],
2% Scandinavian [mostly via long-gone 'New Sweden'; the first president of the Continental Congress was a Swede by ancestry, Jon Hanson],
5% French [mostly old Huguenot, the Cajuns were 'acquired' later when Napoleon sold Louisiana].

[SwordoftheVistula]

I don't think it is possible for English to equal the number of continental Germanics, also I think you have undercounted slavs-based on the size & population of the states where they live.

Continental Germanics dominate:
The rust belt states, which have large populations, and are still mostly white. These states also have a sizable amount of slavs.

Western/Prairie states, which are not large in population, but nearly all white.

The English are mainly in:
The South, where they intermixed heavily with celts from the British Isles, and whites in general only make up about 60% of the population

New England, which are still mostly white, but small in population, and the English have become outnumbered by successive waves of catholic immigrants.

Also, I think a lot of older 'actual Irish'-people whose ancestors arrived from Ireland as Catholic immigrants in the 1800s, and then integrated into 'American' society-end up getting counted as 'Scots-Irish' simply because they are protestant and don't live in an area with more recent Irish immigrants. Ronald Reagan for example, was raised in a protestant family in the rural midwest, but his ancestors arrived as Irish Catholics.

[Treffie]

According to the Welsh Mormon History website, almost 20% of the population of Utah is of Welsh descent.


The Church had great missionary success in Wales during the 1840's and 1850's, and many thousands of Welsh converts immigrated to America, heading West with Brigham Young as a part of the great Mormon Migration, which began in 1847. Today it is estimated that approximately twenty percent of the population of Utah is of Welsh descent.

http://welshmormonhistory.org/

I'm wondering why this information didn't appear on the map, is it perhaps that not many Americans realise that Welsh is an ethnicity also?

[Gooding]

I think you hit the nail on the head.To many Americans, I think that they'd regard the Welsh as English, unless they were of Welsh ancestry themselves.

[Æmeric]

Many of the earlier Anglo-Americans went West & help settle the Midwest, Mountain & Pacific States. They just didn't stay in New England. And in the South, Whites make up more then 60% of the populace. Kentucky & Arkansas actually have above the US average for Whites, Kentucky is about 90%. And they tend to be of English and Scottish/Scots-Irish descend. (Remember we are discussing the ethnic makeup of the White populace.)The Midwest was settled by Anglo-Americans from the East Coast decades before the Continental Germans started arriving in mass in the mid 19th-century. For example the Lincoln family who left Kentucky for Indiana & then Illinois. Or the members of my family who were in Northwest Missouri by 1840 just before the great migration out of the Rhineland began.


I think a lot of older 'actual Irish'-people whose ancestors arrived from Ireland as Catholic immigrants in the 1800s, and then integrated into 'American' society-end up getting counted as 'Scots-Irish' simply because they are protestant and don't live in an area with more recent Irish immigrants. Ronald Reagan for example, was raised in a protestant family in the rural midwest, but his ancestors arrived as Irish Catholics.


Reagan was raised in a Protestant family because his mother Nelle Wilson Reagan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelle_Wilson_Reagan) was from a family of English & Scottish background. This illustrates a perfect example of the misunderstanding of the ethnic makeup of White Americans. You think of Reagan as Irish, while ignoring his maternal ancestry.

People tend to notice ethnics because they are different, even Germans, Irish & Scandinavians. Their names are different. There are plenty of German festivals, usually in the fall, there are no English festivals. Saint Patrick's Day is the ethnic Irish day. When is St. George Day? The closest thing we have to ethnic Anglo-American observances are the Civil War reenactments. Because people of non-English descent standout we remember & notice them more then those of English ancestry.

[Æmeric]

According to the Welsh Mormon History website, almost 20% of the population of Utah is of Welsh descent.

Almost 20% is of Welsh descent. That doesn't mean nearly 20% of Utah's population is Welsh. Mormons probably do more research on their family trees then any other group of people, aside from European aristocrats. What the above statistic means is nearly 20% of Utah's people have a Welsh ancestor... at some point.:rolleyes: My surname is from Wales but my Welsh ancestry is very, very tiny.


I think you hit the nail on the head.To many Americans, I think that they'd regard the Welsh as English, unless they were of Welsh ancestry themselves.
The Welsh hardly ever stood out as a distinct group in America. The main evidence of Welsh migration is certain names that tend to be more common in the South & lower Midwest. Jones, Evans, Morgan, Davis etc....

[Treffie]

The Welsh hardly ever stood out as a distinct group in America. The main evidence of Welsh migration is certain names that tend to be more common in the South & lower Midwest. Jones, Evans, Morgan, Davis etc....

Yup, you're right, I've calculated that there are approximately 10 million people in the States with surnames of Welsh origin. Why do you think this is Æmeric?

[Æmeric]

I think one reason is that Welsh surnames are very common in the West Country (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Country) which was the source of many settlers to the South & in the West Midlands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_(region)) which was the source of many settlers to the Delaware Valley (Pennsylvania, Delaware & New Jersey). There were also some settlers directly from Wales to colonies. There are several areas around Philadelphia that reflect this, e.g. Montgomery County, Bryn Mawr, Merioneth Township. And as part of the founding population they took part in the great demographic expansion (by high native fertility) that took place after independence & continued until the onset of the Great Atlantic Migration that started in the mid 19th-century.

Something to remember: some persons with Welsh surnames are Negroes who are carrying the surnames of the owners of their ancestors. I've discovered that in some Southern counties my surname is thought of as a "black name".

[Loyalist]

It seems customary in Colonial nations to identify with one's direct paternal line, even if it's only a miniscule component of their ancestry. For example, my grandmother and her family vehemently identified as Welsh, as they still retained their surname originating from said land (Griffin). This is despite the fact that, by the time she was born, her family was of ultimately English and German blood, and her last Welsh ancestor was more than a century prior. That's why proper genealogical research is essential in determining a nation's ethnic map, as opposed to archaic systems which see an individual categorizing themselves in one group, excluding other more significant components of their ancestry, simply because they still bear the name.

[Treffie]

It seems customary in Colonial nations to identify with one's direct paternal line, even if it's only a miniscule component of their ancestry.

Yup, I've noticed this.

[Gooding]

That's an excellent point,Loyalist and quite true.