U.S. race groups and haplogroups

[Tomenable]

What are you trying to discover or prove?

I want to discover what ancestries do people report in these areas:

Vermont
South Dakota
Ohio
Virginia
North Carolina
Connecticut
Phoenix, Arizona
Mesa, Arizona
New York City
Florida

Hammer's sample is from these places, but ancestries differ significantly from state to state.

And also from census to census - how could "English ancestry" decline from 49,6 million in 1980 to just 24,5 million in 2000?

Of course the U.S. population as a whole vastly increased in that period...

 

[Angela]

^^Sorry, I've given out all my thumbs up for the day already.

You might be interested in a television series on American TV called: Who Do You Think You Are? There's another one hosted by Dr. Gates called: Finding Your Roots. The episodes are available on youtube.com. (Finding your roots includes dna test results.)

I'm a faithful watcher of both series, although obviously some episodes are better than others. You would be amazed how little many Americans know of their genealogy in even the broadest terms.

This is the link to the episode on Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. She had no idea that a big portion of her ancestry was English and had been in America since the time of the Mayflower. He had no idea, if I remember correctly, that he had German ancestry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8aDFQy8_TQ

 

[Tomenable]

given admixture rates and how inaccurate people are in giving such information.

Indeed, but people seem to be much more accurate in reporting race than in reporting ethnic ancestry (another thing is that ethnicity is mostly cultural rather than biological, while race is mostly biological - ethnic groups exist both within and across races). Self-reported race in the USA almost always corresponds to the majority of genetic ancestry of an individual, as this study shows:

http://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297%2814%2900476-5

Some people with less than 50% of Negroid ancestry identify as Black Americans, but almost always they have at least 30% of it.

 

[Angela]

Indeed, but people seem to be much more accurate in reporting race than in reporting ethnic ancestry (another thing is that ethnicity is mostly cultural rather than biological, while race is mostly biological - ethnic groups exist both within and across races). Self-reported race in the USA almost always corresponds to the majority of genetic ancestry of an individual, as this study shows:

http://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297%2814%2900476-5

Some people with less than 50% of Negroid ancestry identify as Black Americans, but almost always they have at least 30% of it.

That's generally true. Take a look at the Hammer results again, though. Some bizarre things in there in terms of self-identification, don't you think?

Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention about that nice link you provided to the 2000 census...the few times I've gone on anthrofora sites, I've been amazed how Americans in large north eastern cities claim to run into people from these exotic corners of the world all the time, and so are able to "classify" these people or pontificate on their phenotypes. I now come to find out there is a huge sum total of a few thousand Greek Cypriots in the entire U.S., and as for people from Crete and the Cyclades, well we don't seem to have nary a one although I'm sure there must be some somewhere! The numbers of people from countries like Spain and some countries in the Balkans are also incredibly small. I guess I wasn't crazy after all to be a little skeptical.

 

[Angela]

I want to discover what ancestries do people report in these areas:

Vermont
South Dakota
Ohio
Virginia
North Carolina
Connecticut
Phoenix, Arizona
Mesa, Arizona
New York City
Florida

Hammer's sample is from these places, but ancestries differ significantly from state to state.

And also from census to census - how could "English ancestry" decline from 49,6 million in 1980 to just 24,5 million in 2000?

Of course the U.S. population as a whole vastly increased in that period...

It's not all down to an increase in population. Some of it has to do with the fact that it's more "in vogue" now to claim some "ethnic" ancestry.

I've never looked for statistics for many of those places. I can tell you what I know from having been there, but it's only anecdotal. Also, it's based on what it's like now...what cut off did you have in mind? "Natives" of the state since 1940? 1950? In some cases, in states like California or Florida, that's going to be a very small part of the population.

I know Florida very well. You have to go almost county by county. It used to be all "old colonial stock". The Panhandle is still mainly "old American"...places like Pensacola...Jacksonville too, in the northeast, although that's changing. Florida became a retirement destination, especially the coasts, with lots of northerners. Often, their children eventually followed. Living is much more affordable there. It's part of a whole phenomenon where people from the "frost belt" and the "rust belt" so called have moved south. It used to be midwest people, often of German extraction, went to the west coast, and north easterners, including Jewish and Italian Americans, went to the east coast and Miami. Now the west coast is changing too since they started providing more direct flights from New York to those areas. Still, some east coast counties are still heavily Jewish, or at least northeastern. The latest phenomenon over the last twenty or so years is the movement of large numbers of Hispanics, including Puerto Ricans from New York, to the Orlando area to work at Disney World and all of the other tourist venues. So, Florida is often "purple" now politically instead of reliably "red".

North Carolina: lots of colonial ancestry, lots of African Americans, but increasingly businesses have moved there, and it's also becoming a mecca for retirement for people from the northern part of the country, so it's also becoming a mishmash. I know two families who moved there from New York. That's why it's increasingly "purple" in terms of politics instead of reliably "red" as well.

Vermont used to be old colonial, with some newer people at the western or southern border. It's also got French Canadians who have moved down. Then, increasingly, lots of "hippy dippy" types from everywhere have shown up...you know, the Birkenstock, hand loom in the corner type.

Connecticut: some "old stock" people, well mixed with newcomers, African Americans, lots of Italians, lots of Irish, a good sized Polish population. My first cousin's in laws are descended from Polish families who farmed there. If you're interested in Polish immigration to the U.S. you might also want to look into their presence in Long Island. Lot of farms in Suffolk, on the east end, are still run by Polish Americans.

Phoenix has got to be half Hispanic (Mexican American). Colonial stock too, but it's also a retirement mecca and some business moved there, so it's going to be a mix. Mesa? I don't know. Is there something particularly interesting about Mesa?

South Dakota? A lot of old stock, lots of Germans but this is a very mobile country. One of my cousins did his residency there. It depends what kind of cut off you do.

Ohio has everybody because of all the factories.

Virginia is going to have lots of colonial types, lots of blacks, but it's also been the bedroom community of Washington DC for a long time, so you're going to have people from everywhere in the country, of all kinds of backgrounds. Then there's the fact that it's got huge military bases, with service people from every part of the country and every background, and some of these people stayed around after their period of service. Again, what's the date which will be the cut off?

I saved New York for last. The flip answer is that if you're of non minority descent you're either Jewish, Italian or Irish in ancestry. Maybe throw in some German as well. Then shake well. You should be able to find statistics for this last one.

It's been fun and informative, Tomenable, but now life calls. A domani, perhaps

 

[Degredado]

It's not all down to an increase in population. Some of it has to do with the fact that it's more "in vogue" now to claim some "ethnic" ancestry.

I've never looked for statistics for many of those places. I can tell you what I know from having been there, but it's only anecdotal. Also, it's based on what it's like now...what cut off did you have in mind? "Natives" of the state since 1940? 1950? In some cases, in states like California or Florida, that's going to be a very small part of the population.

I know Florida very well. You have to go almost county by county. It used to be all "old colonial stock". The Panhandle is still mainly "old American"...places like Pensacola...Jacksonville too, in the northeast, although that's changing. Florida became a retirement destination, especially the coasts, with lots of northerners. Often, their children eventually followed. Living is much more affordable there. It's part of a whole phenomenon where people from the "frost belt" and the "rust belt" so called have moved south. It used to be midwest people, often of German extraction, went to the west coast, and north easterners, including Jewish and Italian Americans, went to the east coast and Miami. Now the west coast is changing too since they started providing more direct flights from New York to those areas. Still, some east coast counties are still heavily Jewish, or at least northeastern. The latest phenomenon over the last twenty or so years is the movement of large numbers of Hispanics, including Puerto Ricans from New York, to the Orlando area to work at Disney World and all of the other tourist venues. So, Florida is often "purple" now politically instead of reliably "red".

North Carolina: lots of colonial ancestry, lots of African Americans, but increasingly businesses have moved there, and it's also becoming a mecca for retirement for people from the northern part of the country, so it's also becoming a mishmash. I know two families who moved there from New York. That's why it's increasingly "purple" in terms of politics instead of reliably "red" as well.

Vermont used to be old colonial, with some newer people at the western or southern border. It's also got French Canadians who have moved down. Then, increasingly, lots of "hippy dippy" types from everywhere have shown up...you know, the Birkenstock, hand loom in the corner type.

Connecticut: some "old stock" people, well mixed with newcomers, African Americans, lots of Italians, lots of Irish, a good sized Polish population. My first cousin's in laws are descended from Polish families who farmed there. If you're interested in Polish immigration to the U.S. you might also want to look into their presence in Long Island. Lot of farms in Suffolk, on the east end, are still run by Polish Americans.

Phoenix has got to be half Hispanic (Mexican American). Colonial stock too, but it's also a retirement mecca and some business moved there, so it's going to be a mix. Mesa? I don't know. Is there something particularly interesting about Mesa?

South Dakota? A lot of old stock, lots of Germans but this is a very mobile country. One of my cousins did his residency there. It depends what kind of cut off you do.

Ohio has everybody because of all the factories.

Virginia is going to have lots of colonial types, lots of blacks, but it's also been the bedroom community of Washington DC for a long time, so you're going to have people from everywhere in the country, of all kinds of backgrounds. Then there's the fact that it's got huge military bases, with service people from every part of the country and every background, and some of these people stayed around after their period of service. Again, what's the date which will be the cut off?

I saved New York for last. The flip answer is that if you're of non minority descent you're either Jewish, Italian or Irish in ancestry. Maybe throw in some German as well. Then shake well. You should be able to find statistics for this last one.

It's been fun and informative, Tomenable, but now life calls. A domani, perhaps

How technical is the notion of "old colonial stock" to Americans? Is it a strict reference to descent from pre-Revolution British settlers or is it just some umbrella term for any American of mostly British descent whose ancestors have been in the U.S. for more than 3-5 generations?

I'm asking because I've always assumed that the population of the U.S. was quite small in the colonial period, and that it only went on to experience a real boom with the massive immigration of the 19th and 20th centuries (when the U.S. was obviously no longer a colony). From the way you put it, it sounds as if the genealogical legacy of those pre-1776 settlers is still overwhelming, when, in all likelihood, it has mostly been washed out by the tidal waves of immigrants from the past 150 years (especially outside of New England).

 

[Tomenable]

I'm asking because I've always assumed that the population of the U.S. was quite small in the colonial period, and that it only went on to experience a real boom with the massive immigration of the 19th and 20th centuries (when the U.S. was obviously no longer a colony). From the way you put it, it sounds as if the genealogical legacy of those pre-1776 settlers is still overwhelming, when, in all likelihood, it has mostly been washed out by the tidal waves of immigrants from the past 150 years (especially outside of New England).

We need to remember that U.S. population was increasing not only thanks to immigration, but also thanks to its high natural growth. I've just made a calculation trying to establish how big share of U.S. population in 1980 was descended from the "old stock" of 1790.

I've found data on Rate of Natural Increase (livebirths minus deaths) per 1000 population per year in this publication:

http://www.nber.org/papers/h0056

Here is the data (if I counted it correctly, avg. RNI per 1000 pop. per year in period 1790-1980 was 17,05 - so 1,705 %):

http://www.nber.org/papers/h0056.pdf

The population of the USA by the time of the 1st census - in 1790 - was 3,929,625 including 3,172,444 White people.

So let's apply annual natural growth of 1,705 % to 3,172,444 people in period 1790 - 1980, using this calculator:

http://www.metamorphosisalpha.com/ias/population.php

The result is 78,782,861:

So had there been absolutely no immigration in period 1790 - 1980, White people in the USA would have numbered ca. 79 million in 1980. Assuming, of course, that the RNI rate of 1,705% for 1790-1980 was typical also for people of the "1790 stock".

Now acccording to the same study (wikipedia also confirms), in 1980 the USA had 226,545,805 inhabitants.

Of them only 180,256,103 were "Non-Hispanic Whites" (and 669,799 were "Others", probably including mixed-race Whites):

http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_race.html

Another source says that Non-Hispanic Whites numbered in total 180,603,000 people in 1980 (see Table 1 on page 11):

http://www.prb.org/Source/54.3AmerRacialEthnicMinor.pdf?q=543-minorities

Let's round this number up to 181 million and we can say, that some 78 million of them (ca. 43%) were descendants - mostly (because of course all of them were probably mixed with later immigrants) - of White population of the "original 1790 stock".

But who were those people of the "original 1790 stock"?

I've found two different estimates of 1790 ethnic groups:

I. First estimate is from:

"A Century of Population Growth: From the 1st Census of the U.S. to the 12th 1790-1900", 1909:

Black African - 19,27%

Whites - 80,73% - including:

English & Welsh - 66,31%
Scottish - 5,64%
Irish - 1,57%
============
British-Irish total - 73,52%
============
German - 4,47%
Dutch - 2,01%
French - 0,45%
all other whites - 0,29%

Almost identical data in: S. P. Orth, "Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the Making".

II. Second estimate is from:

"United States Ethnic Groups in 1790: Given Names as Suggestions of Ethnic Identity", 1989:

Black African - 19,0%

Whites - 81,00% - including:

English - 48,00%
Welsh - 3,50%
Scottish & Scotch-Irish - 12,80%
Irish - 4,70%
============
British-Irish total - 69,00%
============
German - 7,20%
Dutch - 2,50%
French - 1,70%
Jewish - 0,25%
Swedish - 0,20%
other whites - 0,15%

 

[Degredado]

It's not all down to an increase in population. Some of it has to do with the fact that it's more "in vogue" now to claim some "ethnic" ancestry.

I've never looked for statistics for many of those places. I can tell you what I know from having been there, but it's only anecdotal. Also, it's based on what it's like now...what cut off did you have in mind? "Natives" of the state since 1940? 1950? In some cases, in states like California or Florida, that's going to be a very small part of the population.

I know Florida very well. You have to go almost county by county. It used to be all "old colonial stock". The Panhandle is still mainly "old American"...places like Pensacola...Jacksonville too, in the northeast, although that's changing. Florida became a retirement destination, especially the coasts, with lots of northerners. Often, their children eventually followed. Living is much more affordable there. It's part of a whole phenomenon where people from the "frost belt" and the "rust belt" so called have moved south. It used to be midwest people, often of German extraction, went to the west coast, and north easterners, including Jewish and Italian Americans, went to the east coast and Miami. Now the west coast is changing too since they started providing more direct flights from New York to those areas. Still, some east coast counties are still heavily Jewish, or at least northeastern. The latest phenomenon over the last twenty or so years is the movement of large numbers of Hispanics, including Puerto Ricans from New York, to the Orlando area to work at Disney World and all of the other tourist venues. So, Florida is often "purple" now politically instead of reliably "red".

North Carolina: lots of colonial ancestry, lots of African Americans, but increasingly businesses have moved there, and it's also becoming a mecca for retirement for people from the northern part of the country, so it's also becoming a mishmash. I know two families who moved there from New York. That's why it's increasingly "purple" in terms of politics instead of reliably "red" as well.

Vermont used to be old colonial, with some newer people at the western or southern border. It's also got French Canadians who have moved down. Then, increasingly, lots of "hippy dippy" types from everywhere have shown up...you know, the Birkenstock, hand loom in the corner type.

Connecticut: some "old stock" people, well mixed with newcomers, African Americans, lots of Italians, lots of Irish, a good sized Polish population. My first cousin's in laws are descended from Polish families who farmed there. If you're interested in Polish immigration to the U.S. you might also want to look into their presence in Long Island. Lot of farms in Suffolk, on the east end, are still run by Polish Americans.

Phoenix has got to be half Hispanic (Mexican American). Colonial stock too, but it's also a retirement mecca and some business moved there, so it's going to be a mix. Mesa? I don't know. Is there something particularly interesting about Mesa?

South Dakota? A lot of old stock, lots of Germans but this is a very mobile country. One of my cousins did his residency there. It depends what kind of cut off you do.

Ohio has everybody because of all the factories.

Virginia is going to have lots of colonial types, lots of blacks, but it's also been the bedroom community of Washington DC for a long time, so you're going to have people from everywhere in the country, of all kinds of backgrounds. Then there's the fact that it's got huge military bases, with service people from every part of the country and every background, and some of these people stayed around after their period of service. Again, what's the date which will be the cut off?

I saved New York for last. The flip answer is that if you're of non minority descent you're either Jewish, Italian or Irish in ancestry. Maybe throw in some German as well. Then shake well. You should be able to find statistics for this last one.

It's been fun and informative, Tomenable, but now life calls. A domani, perhaps

Well, we need to remember that American population was increasing not only thanks to immigration, but also thanks to its high natural growth.

I have just made a calculation trying to establish how big share of U.S. population in 1980 was descended from the original population of 1790.

I have found data on Rate of Natural Increase (livebirths minus deaths) per 1000 population per year in this publication:

http://www.nber.org/papers/h0056

Here is the data (if I counted it correctly, avg. RNI per 1000 pop. per year in period 1790-1980 was 17.05):

http://www.nber.org/papers/h0056.pdf

The population of the USA on 1st census - in 1790 - was 3,929,625 including 3,172,444 White people.

So let's apply annual population growth of 1,705 % (17,05 per 1000) to 3,172,444 people in period since 1790 until 1980, using this tool:

http://www.metamorphosisalpha.com/ias/population.php

The result is 85,690,635:

So had there been absolutely no immigration between 1790 and 1980, White people in the USA would have numbered almost 86 million in 1980. Assuming, of course, that the RNI rate of 1,705% for 1790-1980 was typical also for people of "original 1790 stock".

Now acccording to the same study, in 1980 the USA had 226,545,805 inhabitants.

However, of them only 180,256,103 were "Non-Hispanic Whites" (and 669,799 were "Others", probably including mixed-race Whites):

http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_race.html

Another source says that Non-Hispanic Whites numbered in total 180,603,000 people in 1980 (see data in Table 1 on page 11):

http://www.prb.org/Source/54.3AmerRacialEthnicMinor.pdf?q=543-minorities

Let's round this number up to 181 million and we can say, that at least 85 million of them (ca. 47%) were descendants - mostly (because of course all of them were probably mixed with later immigrants) - of White population of the "original 1790 stock".

Thanks. Pretty interesting. I really wasn't aware that the U.S. population was of nearly 4 million people as early as 1790. I had seen this map below a while ago and figured the U.S. population wouldn't have been that much larger by the Revolution period, certainly not 16 times larger.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/p...1SfYwmCdhzqDbyz1xradr6rNjxtoV4W_=w323-h430-nc

 

[Tomenable]

Of course this is all under the assumption, that those of the "original 1790 stock" had avg. RNI rate of 1,705% annually in period 1790-1980. This assumption doesn't necessarily has to be correct. They could have a slightly different avg. RNI rate just as well.

 

[Tomenable]

Sorry, I missed one zero in the calculator.

The correct result is almost 79 million, not over 85 million (previous post edited too):

Applying a separate count in the calculator for each decade, with RNI for each decade separately, takes much more time but gives a very similar (slightly lower) final result - 78,5 million in 1980. Descendants of the "1790 stock" (increase by natural growth in each decade):

1790 - 3,172,444
1800 - 4,120,417
1810 - 5,370,457
1820 - 6,854,544
1830 - 8,941,018
1840 - 11,297,613
1850 - 14,165,554
1860 - 17,327,074
1870 - 20,637,967
1880 - 24,547,716
1890 - 28,682,886
1900 - 32,566,719
1910 - 36,994,705
1920 - 41,455,652
1930 - 46,855,645
1940 - 50,345,679
1950 - 56,774,529
1960 - 66,110,204
1970 - 73,541,777
1980 - 78,456,469

 

[Angela]

How technical is the notion of "old colonial stock" to Americans? Is it a strict reference to descent from pre-Revolution British settlers or is it just some umbrella term for any American of mostly British descent whose ancestors have been in the U.S. for more than 3-5 generations?

I'm asking because I've always assumed that the population of the U.S. was quite small in the colonial period, and that it only went on to experience a real boom with the massive immigration of the 19th and 20th centuries (when the U.S. was obviously no longer a colony). From the way you put it, it sounds as if the genealogical legacy of those pre-1776 settlers is still overwhelming, when, in all likelihood, it has mostly been washed out by the tidal waves of immigrants from the past 150 years (especially outside of New England).

As Tomenable has pointed out, the population was substantial even in 1790, driven, from what analyses of the period I've seen, by good health, relative prosperity based on people owning their own land or running their own businesses, and very high birthrates. I would also take the position that one could use 1830 as a starting point for calculations. If you take a look at the analysis on the site below you'll find that the foreign born population in 1830 was only 1.6% of the total. In 1830 the population of the U.S. was 13 million. Or you could use the population total from 1820 when virtually everyone was native born. You can see the dramatic rise in population that would result either way. It was only in the 1830s and 40s and the rush of Irish migration to escape British persecution and the potato famine, and the failed revolutions of 1848 that you really have the beginnings of a new type of "immigration", with a heavy Irish and German component added to the "Pennsylvania Dutch" who had been here from the colonial area. Not that the "old stock" people were necessarily happy with all the new migrants. This was the time when "nativist" political parties became popular, including the one known, interestingly enough as the "Know Nothings".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States

That's actually a good site for a lot of information on the make-up of the American people. I could have saved myself a lot of typing if I'd hunted for it earlier.

The original, post Revolutionary War U.S. was not just New England. It extended from Maine to the border of Florida.

I've seen analyses that trace the settlers to different parts of England, Scotland and northern Ireland. My rough rendering would be that many of the settlers of New England were from places like East Anglia, the lowland south was settled from the southwest, the American Border states from the Border area between England and Scotland, and then, in the 1700's the Scots-Irish and the Scots moving into all the original states, with a high number settling into the highland Piedmont areas of the south. This is in very gross terms, however. There are whole books that explain the complexity of it. Just anecdotally, my father bought country property after he retired. It was on Scottish Highlands Road. We were told it was first farmed by the original Dutch settlers, then by some German farmers, but was pretty soon abandoned because they couldn't make a go of the mountainous terrain. It was then farmed by Scots who knew how to make it produce.

None of the original settlers, whether from New England, New York and Connecticut, or the south, "stayed put". People from New England and the Middle Atlantic States moved up the Hudson River and across the Erie Canal to settle the Midwest. The southern settlers were constantly expanding westward, which provoked the Indians and was the cause of the many Indian Wars. They poured through the Cumberland Gap into the Border states and then into the Midwest, like the family of Abraham Lincoln, which moved from Virginia, to Kentucky, to Illinois. They went into Florida as well, which is why once you get past the coast and the Orlando area and I-4, you find yourself in southern Georgia and Alabama both "ethnically" and culturally. This push west was continuous, and was in some sense one of the causes of the Civil War. Southern planters who had depleted a lot of the soil back home were bringing their slaves and slavery to places like the "Old Northwest Territory" and to Missouri and Texas and even California. They encountered resistance from the small farmers and tradesmen from the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states and border states.

When the floodgates started to open in the late 1830's, the Irish and the Germans and eventually the Scandinavians joined the migration, first by Conestoga Wagon and then by railroad. This was believed to be the "Manifest Destiny" of the U.S., to wit to settle the entire expanse of land from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

These maps show it pretty well, I think, although the first one misses the English and Scots-Irish settlement along the Hudson and the Mohawk in New York State.

You would know better than I, but perhaps there is some correlation with Brazil?


Also, in looking at the plurality map by county of the U.S. posted upthread its important to keep in mind the actual density of population in the U.S. Much of the Midwest and most of the West except for the coast is very lightly populated.

That's why for a certain segment of the population, the area between the east coast and the west coast is called, unfortunately, "fly over country". For New Yorkers, by which I always mean residents of the greater New York metropolitan area, not people from New York State, it's even more extreme. That's why this New Yorker cover is so iconic...

 

[Angela]

@Tomenable,
From what I hear there's a very large Polish population in the Chicago area. As far as New York is concerned, most of our "ethnic" neighborhoods are shadows of their former selves. I don't think "Little Italy" on Mott Street has a single Italian-American living there...it's all Chinese now, hence "Chinatown".

The Polish emigrant area around Greenpoint Brooklyn has fared better, although that is changing too, with some minority pockets and some gentrification, i.e. professionals from Manhattan, "the city" moving in...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpoint,_Brooklyn

You can see a lot of pictures here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=gre...q=polish+greenpoint+brooklyn&revid=1517226152

A friend of mine brings me kielbasa and pierogi from there...

You'd find additional traces of that immigration in Maspeth and on Long Island.

The Polish Community Parades are usually called Pulaski Day parades.

The costumes are just gorgeous.

 

[Degredado]

It's not all down to an increase in population. Some of it has to do with the fact that it's more "in vogue" now to claim some "ethnic" ancestry.

I've never looked for statistics for many of those places. I can tell you what I know from having been there, but it's only anecdotal. Also, it's based on what it's like now...what cut off did you have in mind? "Natives" of the state since 1940? 1950? In some cases, in states like California or Florida, that's going to be a very small part of the population.

I know Florida very well. You have to go almost county by county. It used to be all "old colonial stock". The Panhandle is still mainly "old American"...places like Pensacola...Jacksonville too, in the northeast, although that's changing. Florida became a retirement destination, especially the coasts, with lots of northerners. Often, their children eventually followed. Living is much more affordable there. It's part of a whole phenomenon where people from the "frost belt" and the "rust belt" so called have moved south. It used to be midwest people, often of German extraction, went to the west coast, and north easterners, including Jewish and Italian Americans, went to the east coast and Miami. Now the west coast is changing too since they started providing more direct flights from New York to those areas. Still, some east coast counties are still heavily Jewish, or at least northeastern. The latest phenomenon over the last twenty or so years is the movement of large numbers of Hispanics, including Puerto Ricans from New York, to the Orlando area to work at Disney World and all of the other tourist venues. So, Florida is often "purple" now politically instead of reliably "red".

North Carolina: lots of colonial ancestry, lots of African Americans, but increasingly businesses have moved there, and it's also becoming a mecca for retirement for people from the northern part of the country, so it's also becoming a mishmash. I know two families who moved there from New York. That's why it's increasingly "purple" in terms of politics instead of reliably "red" as well.

Vermont used to be old colonial, with some newer people at the western or southern border. It's also got French Canadians who have moved down. Then, increasingly, lots of "hippy dippy" types from everywhere have shown up...you know, the Birkenstock, hand loom in the corner type.

Connecticut: some "old stock" people, well mixed with newcomers, African Americans, lots of Italians, lots of Irish, a good sized Polish population. My first cousin's in laws are descended from Polish families who farmed there. If you're interested in Polish immigration to the U.S. you might also want to look into their presence in Long Island. Lot of farms in Suffolk, on the east end, are still run by Polish Americans.

Phoenix has got to be half Hispanic (Mexican American). Colonial stock too, but it's also a retirement mecca and some business moved there, so it's going to be a mix. Mesa? I don't know. Is there something particularly interesting about Mesa?

South Dakota? A lot of old stock, lots of Germans but this is a very mobile country. One of my cousins did his residency there. It depends what kind of cut off you do.

Ohio has everybody because of all the factories.

Virginia is going to have lots of colonial types, lots of blacks, but it's also been the bedroom community of Washington DC for a long time, so you're going to have people from everywhere in the country, of all kinds of backgrounds. Then there's the fact that it's got huge military bases, with service people from every part of the country and every background, and some of these people stayed around after their period of service. Again, what's the date which will be the cut off?

I saved New York for last. The flip answer is that if you're of non minority descent you're either Jewish, Italian or Irish in ancestry. Maybe throw in some German as well. Then shake well. You should be able to find statistics for this last one.

It's been fun and informative, Tomenable, but now life calls. A domani, perhaps

As Tomenable has pointed out, the population was substantial even in 1790, driven, from what analyses of the period I've seen, by good health, relative prosperity based on people owning their own land or running their own businesses, and very high birthrates. I would also take the position that one could use 1830 as a starting point for calculations. If you take a look at the analysis on the site below you'll find that the foreign born population in 1830 was only 1.6% of the total. In 1830 the population of the U.S. was 13 million. Or you could use the population total from 1820 when virtually everyone was native born. You can see the dramatic rise in population that would result either way. It was only in the 1830s and 40s and the rush of Irish migration to escape British persecution and the potato famine, and the failed revolutions of 1848 that you really have the beginnings of a new type of "immigration", with a heavy Irish and German component added to the "Pennsylvania Dutch" who had been here from the colonial area. Not that the "old stock" people were necessarily happy with all the new migrants. This was the time when "nativist" political parties became popular, including the one known, interestingly enough as the "Know Nothings".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States

That's actually a good site for a lot of information on the make-up of the American people. I could have saved myself a lot of typing if I'd hunted for it earlier.

The original, post Revolutionary War U.S. was not just New England. It extended from Maine to the border of Florida.

I've seen analyses that trace the settlers to different parts of England, Scotland and northern Ireland. My rough rendering would be that many of the settlers of New England were from places like East Anglia, the lowland south was settled from the southwest, the American Border states from the Border area between England and Scotland, and then, in the 1700's the Scots-Irish and the Scots moving into all the original states, with a high number settling into the highland Piedmont areas of the south. This is in very gross terms, however. There are whole books that explain the complexity of it. Just anecdotally, my father bought country property after he retired. It was on Scottish Highlands Road. We were told it was first farmed by the original Dutch settlers, then by some German farmers, but was pretty soon abandoned because they couldn't make a go of the mountainous terrain. It was then farmed by Scots who knew how to make it produce.

None of the original settlers, whether from New England, New York and Connecticut, or the south, "stayed put". People from New England and the Middle Atlantic States moved up the Hudson River and across the Erie Canal to settle the Midwest. The southern settlers were constantly expanding westward, which provoked the Indians and was the cause of the many Indian Wars. They poured through the Cumberland Gap into the Border states and then into the Midwest, like the family of Abraham Lincoln, which moved from Virginia, to Kentucky, to Illinois. They went into Florida as well, which is why once you get past the coast and the Orlando area and I-4, you find yourself in southern Georgia and Alabama both "ethnically" and culturally. This push west was continuous, and was in some sense one of the causes of the Civil War. Southern planters who had depleted a lot of the soil back home were bringing their slaves and slavery to places like the "Old Northwest Territory" and to Missouri and Texas and even California. They encountered resistance from the small farmers and tradesmen from the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states and border states.

When the floodgates started to open in the late 1830's, the Irish and the Germans and eventually the Scandinavians joined the migration, first by Conestoga Wagon and then by railroad. This was believed to be the "Manifest Destiny" of the U.S., to wit to settle the entire expanse of land from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

These maps show it pretty well, I think, although the first one misses the English and Scots-Irish settlement along the Hudson and the Mohawk in New York State.

You would know better than I, but perhaps there is some correlation with Brazil?


Also, in looking at the plurality map by county of the U.S. posted upthread its important to keep in mind the actual density of population in the U.S. Much of the Midwest and most of the West except for the coast is very lightly populated.

That's why for a certain segment of the population, the area between the east coast and the west coast is called, unfortunately, "fly over country". For New Yorkers, by which I always mean residents of the greater New York metropolitan area, not people from New York State, it's even more extreme. That's why this New Yorker cover is so iconic...

Insightful and enriching post as usual. You briefly touched on a subject that I've always been a little curious about: the regional origins of the English settlers in the US. I know, for instance, that Spaniards who settled Latin America in the colonial period tended to come from the north of Spain; as much as 3/4 or 4/5 of the Portuguese settlers in Brazil were also from the north; Italian immigrants in North America were largely from the Mezzogiorno, while those who came to South America were mostly northerners; most French settlers in Quebec were Bretons, and so on. On the other hand, I've never heard much about any particular region of England having contributed to the settlement of the U.S., or specifically any of its states/regions, in disproportionate numbers.

 

[sparkey]

Insightful and enriching post as usual. You briefly touched on a subject that I've always been a little curious about: the regional origins of the English settlers in the US. I know, for instance, that Spaniards who settled Latin America in the colonial period tended to come from the north of Spain; as much as 3/4 or 4/5 of the Portuguese settlers in Brazil were also from the north; Italian immigrants in North America were largely from the Mezzogiorno, while those who came to South America were mostly northerners; most French settlers in Quebec were Bretons, and so on. On the other hand, I've never heard much about any particular region of England having contributed to the settlement of the U.S., or specifically any of its states/regions, in disproportionate numbers.

The absolutely essential guide to this precise question: Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer. This is definitely not my first time recommending this book. He has large sections for each of the same British groups that Angela mentioned, except that he combines the Borderers and the Scots-Irish into the same section and adds a section on the Quakers. I've studied this book closely to attempt to fit my ancestry into the context of Fischer's 4 folkways, since 3/4 of my ancestry is colonial, and most of my colonial ancestry is British. I've found that I descend significantly from 3 of his 4 folkways, all but the New England Puritans.

Also good for a deep dive into how these different groups affected wars through the years, from the English Civil War to the American Revolutionary War to the American Civil War: The Cousin's Wars by Kevin Phillips.

 

[sparkey]

By the way Tomenable, excellent analysis. 1980 is an interesting choice, as that census included an "ancestry" question that disallowed the somewhat complicated "American" response. If we total all 1980 British ancestry responses (English+Scottish+Welsh), we get a result of about 61 million. If we assume that most of that is colonial, and that the non-colonial British included in that figure is balanced by colonial descendants picking non-British ethnicities (like Scots-Irish descendants picking Irish, colonial Palatine descendants picking German, etc.), then that result is pretty close to what we would expect if your result was correct.

 

[sparkey]

The Polish Community Parades are usually called Pulaski Day parades.

I've always found it fascinating that Polish-American communities choose a Revolutionary War figure like Casimir Pulaski to honor, rather than an individual more closely linked to a time period when there was Polish migration to America of any significance. I suppose I understand the sentiment. A Revolutionary War general from Poland offers them a chance to honor both what it means to be American and what it means to be Polish, and I can't say I have a better suggestion. But I have a particular research interest in Pulaski, because one of my ancestors (himself a Palatine German) served in Pulaski's Legion. And I have come to a pretty clear conclusion from my research: Pulaski was a really, really bad general.

 

[Tomenable]

Thank you Angela for those posts, great contribution and interesting reading!

If we total all 1980 British ancestry responses (English+Scottish+Welsh), we get a result of about 61 million.

But we need to remember that this is the number of responses, not the number of people.

If one reported triple ancestry (English, Scottish and Welsh), then he is counted as 3 responses within that total of 61 million.

There were surely many double and triple combinations within the English-Scottish-Welsh pool.

 

[Angela]

Thank you Angela for those posts, great contribution and interesting reading!



But we need to remember that this is the number of responses, not the number of people.

If one reported triple ancestry (English, Scottish and Welsh), then he is counted as 3 responses within that total of 61 million.

There were surely many double and triple combinations within the English-Scottish-Welsh pool.

I don't remember which Census Sparkey was using...prior to 2000 you could only choose one category.

Regardless, these figures are going to always be inherently unreliable. The only way you could get any sort of handle on it would be to ask when did your earliest ancestor arrive in the U.S., but even that wouldn't be accurate because many people with "Old Colonial Stock" don't even know they have it until they start doing some genealogy; some of them only know the more "recent" lineages. Even if they do know it, how can you apportion it if they also have German and Irish ancestors from the mid 1800's as just one example? What if they're half Ashkenazi or a quarter? Many of them also would just answer American.

So, personally, I'd go with the mathematically computed numbers based on the population in 1790 or even 1830.

Not that any of this matters to most Americans. It's sort of been superseded, at least in urban areas, by quasi "racial" categories.

 

[Tomenable]

Sparkey was using the 1980 census, I'm quite sure that in that census reporting more than one ancestry was allowed.

I've always found it fascinating that Polish-American communities choose a Revolutionary War figure like Casimir Pulaski to honor, rather than an individual more closely linked to a time period when there was Polish migration to America of any significance. I suppose I understand the sentiment. A Revolutionary War general from Poland offers them a chance to honor both what it means to be American and what it means to be Polish, and I can't say I have a better suggestion.

I have a better suggestion, though - Kosciuszko.

 

[Angela]

It was on the matter of race that the 2000 Census first allowed more than one answer, so I was incorrect.

As to ethnicity, the Census Bureau says it only codes for the first two ethnicities if more than two are provided:
http://www.census.gov/population/ancestry/about/faq.html

"We code up to two ancestries per person. If a person reports more than two ancestries, we generally take the first two. For example, if a person reports German, Italian, and Scottish, we would code German and Italian."

This is a picture of the ethnicity question on the 1980 census where Sparkey got those figures:
http://www.census.gov/population/ancestry/files/1980quest14.jpg

The "American" option wasn't available.

Bottom line, I think that for estimating "colonial old stock" ancestry in the U.S., the 1980 census is the best bet, but even that is going to seriously under-estimate it, for all the reasons enumerated in prior posts.

Just anecdotally, I heard two people speaking about this kind of thing last night. When asked if he was "German", because of his last name, he said something to the effect that he probably had some German in him, but other things as well, and what did it matter, because "we're all Americans now".
That kind of resistance on the part of some people makes it very difficult to get the kind of accurate information you're seeking.