Considering the over eighty percent of the population that is of European heritage, America is predominantly a nation of transplanted Englishmen. Particularly in the South, where the English had established themselves for over a century before large numbers of Germans or other nationalities started to arrive,
There, you see?
THAT is really what all the social network monitoring, phone call monitoring, and email surveillance was for!
And you thought it was nefarious. Silly, silly citizen...
My Palatine German ancestors Johann Georg Kast and Annas Margaretha Fag/Feck arrived in 1710
Queen Anne sent 3,000 of them to the Albany, NY area in1709-11 to cut down pine trees to make pitch and tar to seal Enlish navy wooden ships..
however it was too cold for that particular tree it grew in the carolinas...
My ancestor Johann fought in that war in 1711, Queen Anne’s War..against the French and indians...
with 3,000 arriving early like that and more later then yes they would have many descendants...
Kenyans went to DC, I hear
My Irish Scot ancestors arrived in the early 1700s and resided in the Carolinas, prior to making their way to Texas.
The third item down on the list states American. I don’t get it.
I guess I am one of those Englishmen that moved to the American category. In more recent years I have found that my origination was the area just south of Lancashire. Interestingly enough even after ten generations in the New World, my wife’s family originated only a few miles east of there. I looked up the origination of my Scot ancestry of my grandmother’s line and it is from a few miles north across the Scottish border. Small world.
Bet a lot of those “Germans” were Silesian Poles, like my ancestors.
American. ;-)
They’ve got “American” and they’ve got “American Indian”.
WTH?!?!
One of my ancestors was Charles Carroll of Carrollton (Maryland), a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the last signer to die.
They must have calculated this by last name. I don’t see how they can categorize people as “German.” Ok, I have Germans in my ancestry, but also have Scots-Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English, Bavarian. My grandkids have all that plus Portuguese, Algerian, Serbian and Czech.
I don’t think the European get how mixed we are. My granddaughter’s kindergarten has a large proportion of mixed race kids. That is why we are more “American” as a people than anything else.
In the first census that I saw back in the 1700's, Germans were the most listed race in America. Followed by English and Scottish. So the Germans have been here in strong numbers from day one.
Some of my English ancestors have been over here since the 1600s. It’s easier to put down “American” than to try and figure out the ratio of British, German, native American, etc. And besides, we’ve been over here so long we don’t have any affiliation with either England or Germany.
Question! Why no Russians or Swedes? Our household comes from a long line of these.
I have a German surname, and my mother’s maiden name was what I always thought of as Irish. So most of my life I thought of myself as German and Irish.
A few years ago though I started to dig into my family tree, and was shocked to learn that the vast majority of my lines go back to Tidewater Virginia. Turns out I’m of predominately English descent. Almost no real Irish. Those lines turned out to have been Scots, English, or French Huguenots who made a brief transition through Ireland.
I’ve found a lot of amazing things that I would have never dreamed of in the family history. I would recommend this exercise to anyone. It makes you realize how connected you really are to the past.
I’ve found grandfathers who fought in the Civil War, the War of 1812, and even learned which units they served in and what battles they helped fight. I’ve found a grandfather who fought all the way through the Revolution, including spending the winter at Valley Forge. Another one who fought, along with his father and four brothers, at the seige of Boonesborough and the rest of that vicious war in Kentucky. They went on to help open up the Louisiana Purchase. I’ve found forebears who were the earliest pioneers of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virgina, North Carolina, what become West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Oregon, to name a few.
One of the earliest female arrivals was Alice Proctor, who in 1622, in the absence of her husband John, who was in England on business, for nearly three weeks held off the vicious Indian attacks that slaughtered about a third of the Englishmen in Virginia. When the English officers finally showed up they threatened to burn down the plantation if she didn’t return to Jamestown where it was “safe.” Hah.
John Proctor, by the way, had come over in 1609 on the Sea Venture, which didn’t quite make it to Jamestown, being caught in a hurricane and wrecked on Bermuda. They spent the winter there, using the wreckage and native timber on the island to construct two boats which they then took to Jamestown, along with the good tobacco that later made the Virginia Colony economically viable. William Shakespeare wrote a famous play about this whole incident. It’s called, “The Tempest.”
An unprovable but highly credible connection to John Smith and Pocahontas, connections to British nobility, including the family that once controlled London, the man primarily charged with enforcing the Magna Carta, Charlemagne, Charles Martel, who saved Western Europe from the Muslims, the family of William the Conqueror, Viking conquerors of Normandy. I’ve found all of that and more. It’s quite amazing and fascinating.
Don’t you love how the northerners cry racism at the Southerners, who are the ones who actually live with the race tensions?