There was a graveyard everyone called the ‘Spanish graveyard’ in Illinois where I grew up .. so called because the Spanish were present along the Mississippi [they held St. Louis for a time.] There were farming families in Illinois where I grew up and in neighboring Missouri who acquired their land in the form of Spanish land grants; the Spanish did what they could to attract settlers from the east. Then there were French, of course. There’s a place in Missouri settled under French rule where people still speak a bastardized form of French.
The French were all over the place, too-from Canada to Louisiana and Mississippi. MrT5 was a 2nd generation American-from northern Washington, but most of his relatives still live in Quebec and Montreal...