“Dutch wasn’t foreign in New York whereas English was.”
You’re right - I’d have been more accurate if I’d said ‘language other than English’ instead of ‘foreign language’.
The German spoken in Pennsylvania, and other places, for instance, is older than the United States of America, even if people have been lynched here for speaking German in modern times. Delaware still has the colors of Sweden in its state flag from the time they were their colony and Swedish was spoken in the area. And Washington commended the support he had in the Revolution from Americans of Irish origin whose first, and preferred, language was Gaelic, but you’d not get that impression here from some posters.
I read that during the Revolutionary War, when the Continental Army was staying in an area with a lot of German speakers, one of the officers got the idea he would like to hear German spoken, so he went to a German church for Sunday services. Afterwards he remarked that German wasn’t that much different from English after all—he had even been able to make out bits of what was said. Then he was told that the sermon had been in English.