The map that shows where America came from: ...the ancestry of EVERY county in the US

Daily Mail ^ | 09/01/2013 | Jessica Jerreat

[Rusty0604]

“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.”
“This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.”
“But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.”
“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian- Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.”
“The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Address to the Knights of Columbus
New York City- October 12th, 1915

[Sherman Logan]

Works for me.

[Albion Wilde]

"White Guilt liberals who call themselves merely "American" because they think they are being noble not to acknowledge the ethnic origin of their forebearers."

Then why would those areas be all over the deep South?

Because southerners are no more racist than any other group of Americans in my opinion, and because of the stereotyping of racism leveled against southerners daily in the media, I surmise that most southerners would be motivated to demonstrate that they are not racist. Also, it was a traditionally Democrat region until recently.

[EternalVigilance]

I LOVE this thread.

[ckilmer]

The section of the country they call American is mostly settled by scotch irish.

[Rusty0604]

Maybe they are ashamed to admit that some of their ancestors moved to the south from the north.

[Rusty0604]

I love history and especially genealogy. Lots of interesting stories from FReepers on this thread and it looks as though maybe a few long lost relatives.

[TigersEye]

Does that mean that Scots/Irish are more likely to identify themselves as American than by their ancestral heritage? I’m good with that being mostly Scots/Irish by blood and entirely American by birth. :-)

[seeker41]

I just love finding out about my ancestors. if it had not been for my grandmother and great grandmother keeping the old Bibles I would never have known 6 family names! That led me on quite a journey!

[seeker41]

See post 129. I want to see Scotland and Ireland one day...

[OldNewYork]

“Almost 20 million people claim to have ‘American’ ancestry for political reasons and because they are unsure of their family’s genealogy”

That seemed wrong to me, too. It presents a false dichotomy. I think lots of Americans claim to be ethnically American because that was the tradition they had received in their family from the founding of the country.

[Rusty0604]

Some people are adopted and/or have adopted parents so that would account for some.

[flaglady47]

I’m of German, French and Irish heritage. I figure I can drink German beer, French wine, and Irish whiskey. All bases covered.

[basil]

Well—there you have it—LOL! I’m a red head, two of my daughters are red heads, and it goes back through the generations for us.

[nanetteclaret]

It’s the English in us. You probably have a very fair complexion, lots of freckles, and burn horribly. LOL! I still have freckles, even after all these years of trying to stay out of the sun.

I’ll try to look through my family history to see if we have any of your kin named.

I have a very interesting book, published in the 1940s, which features many of the homes of Virginia, particularly the ones of patriots located on the James River. (Ours is now a ruin.) Do you know the name of your ancestor’s home/estate? If so, I will look for it. Unfortunately, the index does not list the original owners, but the description of the property usually does.

[Rannug]

I use to listen to the “old folks” talk about how we settled in Louisiana, by way of France, in the late 1500s. Now I am one of the old folks and I don’t know squat. I thought that maybe Jane Gallion could straighten out things.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Rusty0604.

By far the largest ancestral group, stretching from coast to coast across 21st century America is German, with 49,206,934 people. The peak immigration for Germans was in the mid-19th century as thousands were driven from their homes by unemployment and unrest.

By "unrest" is often meant the "kulturkampf", sandwiched between the Napoleonic Wars and the three quick wars Otto von Bismarck devised to reconstruct Germany and build his treaty system -- suffice to say, the transformation of the patchwork of German states into modern unified Germany was not all nice and neat.

Regardless, I resemble that remark -- some of my German ancestors arrived in the second half of the 19th century, the rest have been here over 300 years. I highly recommend genealogy as a hobby, and when it all shakes out, my guess is, about 20 percent of you are my cousins. :')

[seeker41]

Mine seem to be from Randolph County NC and Spartanburg around 1714 and 1720. Showed up in Texas around 1892 or therebouts in Montague County. I was born in Texas as was my mother, dad was born in Kansas.

[Salamander]

Western Maryland is lousy with Scots-Irish and Welsh immigrants yet that map shows nothing but Germans.

Feh.

[EternalVigilance]

You probably have a very fair complexion, lots of freckles, and burn horribly.

I resemble that remark! :-)