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There have been three Presidents who are not at least partially descended from colonial northwest European ancestry: Wilson, whose Scottish and Scots Irish ancestors arrived in Ohio in the early 1800s, Kennedy, the descendant of Irish fleeing the potato famine, and Trump, whose German and Scottish ancestors arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s. With the exception of Martin Van Buren who was entirely of Dutch heritage, Presidents with non-British surnames but of colonial ancestry, like Hoover, the Roosevelts, and Eisenhower, had a British descended maternal line.

The term, WASP, was initially coined to describe the Northeastern upper classes who dominated industry, finance, and higher education before World War II. That upper class was predominantly, though not exclusively, of English colonial descent: the DuPonts, Roosevelts, and Vanderbilts, for example. Catholics, Jews, Southerners, and Westerners were outside this elite. Not that there were not wealthy and influential men who were not part of the WASP elite, e.g., the "Our Crowd" of German Jews, but they were not the leaders of finance or industry.