Immigration to the USA throughout history

The unspecified seems to reflect Scots-Irish and English for the most part (at least east of the Mississippi). It also tends to be in areas that are more rural. There are a lot of political reasons that could explain that - including that those areas are areas more likely to distrust the census. They may believe the census has no business doing anything but counting total population in order to determine representation in the House of Representatives. Certainly, the answer is complicated and requires greater understanding than what could be found on a map.

I would think that for many people in the United States whose heritage dates back at least a few generations, ethnic heritage has become so mixed that it's hard to truly give a definitive answer.

Well, I'm Irish, Italian, Scottish, Swedish, German, and Polish. If I were to give an answer, I'd usually say Irish-Italian or just Italian (due to my Italian last name).

Ceoladir said:

I would think that for many people in the United States whose heritage dates back at least a few generations, ethnic heritage has become so mixed that it's hard to truly give a definitive answer.

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As a matter of fact, I'm quite impressed how today's Americans perfectly know the countries of origins of their ancestors in the 19th century.

Here I have just no clue at all beyond my great grand parents generation... and even for that one I'm not sure. I can only tell my great grand parents were from Orleans, Paris, Algiers, Frankfurt, Sweden and Burgundy. Beyond that, it's just all dark.

I would say I'm French though. I wouldn't describe myself as French-German-Swedish-Algerian. I have no living family in Germany, Sweden and Algeria, that just doesn't make any sense. My brother has 2 kids in Australia and my sister 2 kids in London... so I feel actually much closer to these places which I visited regularly over the last 15 years.

It helps that it's seldom as simple as crossing a border (that may not have been the same border 200 years ago). Our ancestors are pretty easy to track because they probably came on a boat. The only exception is if there is American Indian heritage (which is notoriously made up), African American heritage (at least for white people, who often tried to deny any black ancestry because it would subject them to greater discrimination), or Mexican ancestry in the Southwest (where border crossing and border shifting was easier).

For me, I can trace each Great-Grandfather than arrived in this country and what country they arrived from. The only exception is my paternal Grandmother's family, which is a little older (but I believe to be a mix of Swedish and Scots-Irish).

Louis XXIV said:

The unspecified seems to reflect Scots-Irish and English for the most part (at least east of the Mississippi). It also tends to be in areas that are more rural. There are a lot of political reasons that could explain that - including that those areas are areas more likely to distrust the census. They may believe the census has no business doing anything but counting total population in order to determine representation in the House of Representatives. Certainly, the answer is complicated and requires greater understanding than what could be found on a map.

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I kinda doubt there is THAT many who distrust the census so much they leave the ancestry line blank. Keep in mind the map is percentage of population, so 10% of a heavily populated area could be more people than 40% of a lightly populated area.

If you can trace your family history to another country to less than 100 years ago you are far more likely to know and embrace it (I'm Norwegian/German/Polish/whatever") than if you need to trace it back 250 years to get your family tree outside the U.S., and it is harder to trace it back that far, to even know for sure where your family is from.

Louis XXIV said:

It helps that it's seldom as simple as crossing a border (that may not have been the same border 200 years ago).

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Yes. But once it gets foreign, then it's truely hard to find traces of the inheritance beyond. At least that's the case with me.

My grand-mother is from Frankfurt, her father is believed to have a Swedish father, but as he left the family and was not known. At least that's what my grand-mother who's still alive (she's 92 years old) tells me, but my mother seems to not fully trust the story and I have just no way to know as I don't have any other family in Germany. That's about all I know about my "German/Swedish" family. As for my other grand-mother who lived in Algiers, she's actually born in Paris, has grown in Algiers and then returned in Paris in 1962. Once she was alive, she was always talking about Algeria as "her country", even if she never came back after having been kicked out. What do I know about her parents, not much actually.

Then the rest of the family is in France, it's pretty easier this way: so we know they are from families based in Orleans and Burgundy. But well, I'm personnally born in Belgium, my brother and my sister are born in Switzerland, my nephews are born in Australia and the UK, my cousins live in Saint-Martin in the Caribbeans, and my brother in law is from Quebec.

So as you can see... we could also be pretty international in the Old Europe.
The good thing about that is that it makes us travel to see the family.

Ethnic groups in the USA in year 1790 according to calculations / estimations by Abraham D. Lavender:

English - 48%
Black African - 19%
Scottish & Scotch-Irish - 12,8%
German - 7,2%
Irish - 4,7%
Welsh - 3,5%
Dutch - 2,5%
French - 1,7%
Jewish - 0,25%
Swedish - 0,2%
others - rest

This is from "United States Ethnic Groups in 1790: Given Names as Suggestions of Ethnic Identity", A. D. Lavender, 1989.

So from the title of the work, he's taken some long lists of names, pinned an ethnic identity on each one, and counted?

Blacks in the US mostly have English and Scots-Irish surnames.

It's given names that are the question, though. Even then, quite how you'd tell 'John Smith' (the most common name in Scotland) from 'John Smith' (the most common name in England) is beyond me. I mean, by and large someone called Murphy probably identifies as Irish, but it's not that simple. I bet there's far more non-English-WASP Johns than there are non-African-American DeShawns.

he's taken some long lists of names, pinned an ethnic identity on each one, and counted?

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Rather no, because he admits that English names were also common among people from Non-English ethnic groups (including Black Africans).

So more like he pinned an ethnic origin, not an ethnic identity (by the way - how long did Americans of English origin identify as English?).

These proportions reflect rather what % immigrated from each ethnic group, not how next generations identified in the New World.

Anyway - check on your own, and judge:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.23...2858653&uid=2&uid=3&uid=60&sid=21105575075343

As a guest you can only read the first page. But if you register (it's free), you can add it to your shelf, and you can read all of it.

As a free user, you can have up to 3 items on your shelf at a time. If you have a premium account - then probably more.

Blacks in the US mostly have English and Scots-Irish surnames.

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It's given names that are the question, though.

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Yes - it's given names, not surnames. For example German-Americans had a high incidence rate of traditional German given names.

Even then, quite how you'd tell 'John Smith' (the most common name in Scotland) from 'John Smith' (the most common name in England) is beyond me.

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Well - studying ethnic structure is not a 0-1 thing. The author did not rely only on data on given names, also on various other records.

If I've read that right, he's not using the names to calculate the proportions of people - rather, he's taken those proportions as a given, and is then drawing conclusions about those people from how they named their children. So, although interesting, it doesn't really address the pertinent question we have here, namely how to get through the various problems with self-reported ancestry.

rather, he's taken those proportions as a given, and is then drawing conclusions about those people from how they named their children

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Well, not really, because he admits that Non-English people also often had English names:











Jews were very specific, as only 2,5% of them had English names, "by far the lowest of all groups studied".

Most of Catholic groups had below 20% rate of English names, IIRC. Among Jews Old Testament names prevailed.

The Scottish and Scotch-Irish Americans maintained strong identity, distinct from the English. According to the author.

Yes, so he's presupposed the identities - he's not interrogating how or why these people were 'English' or 'Scotch-Irish' or how we can know that.

he's not interrogating how or why these people were 'English' or 'Scotch-Irish' or how we can know that.

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Maybe he took the data for % of each ethnic group in year 1790 from data compiled (they made a map basing on it) by the Community Geography Project, Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies, Portland State University, November 2009. Or from some other study.

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Nope. He took or calculated it from other sources. His data is different than that of Portland State University - they used this data:

https://books.google.pl/books?id=Vx...uU9qUhOgK&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://books.google.pl/books?id=z8...page&q=1790 New Jersey 98,620 English&f=false

It was originally published in 1909 in "A Century of Population Growth, From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth, 1790-1900".

And what this book calculated for 1790 was: "distribution of the white population according to nationality as indicated by names of heads of families".

But for some States and regions the data for names of heads of families were estimated (based on samples):

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14825/14825-h/14825-h.htm

(...) The calculations for the entire country in 1790, based upon the census schedules of the States from which reports are still available and upon estimates for the others (...)

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This estimate from 1909 for "nationalities as indicated by names of heads of families" do not distinguish between English and Welsh.

It also has much different percentages (more English & Welsh than according to Lavender, who has 48% English + 3,5% Welsh = 51,5%).

Flying Pig, you were right:

The use of word "identity" in the title of Lavender's study is unfortunate. His study is about "objective" ethnic origin - not about "identity". Because - as you have noticed - the kind of data he used is not sufficient to determine how people identified themselves. He can determine their (or their ancestors') ethnic origin, but not their current (in 1790) identity - which very likely was simply "American", in many cases. After all, they had just won a war for independence.

He shouldn't have used the term "ethnic identity", but either "ethnic origin" or simply "ethnicity" or "ancestry", in the title of his study.

BTW - the continued use of traditional Non-English given names indicates preservation of pre-migration identity. That's for sure. Here Lavender is right.

But if descendants of Non-English immigrants were using English given names, then maybe they were already assimilated into English or American ethnos?

Of course using English names or having English ancestry in the USA in 1790 was also not implying English identity, given circumstances. In many cases those were people who had emigrated to America escaping religious persecution in England. And later they fought for independence from England.

They likely identified as Americans at that time, despite having ancestors from various European ethnic groups. Those with African ancestry who were free (which was of course a small percent among them) perhaps also identified as Americans. But slaves were alienated from American identity.

It's still an interesting idea, and I may have to find time to do more than just skim over it. There's a good chapter in Freakonomics about how the most popular upper-class names in one generation tend to fall out of favour and be taken up as the most popular working-class names in the next, because people, consciously or not, give their children names that they feel are 'successful'. I really like the idea that the names that people give to their children can reveal how they felt about their identity, especially their religious identities - if all of the Jewish mothers name their children 'John', that says something, and it says something different if those children then have babies called 'Solomon'. I'm just not convinced that it maps so clearly onto ethnic identity - though I think the point about people pointedly refusing to 'assimilate' through their names (which Freakonomics talks about at length with relation to the peculiar characteristics of black Americans' names) is a good one, though.

Y'know, I've studied migration and ethnic identity in colonial America, and I've never encountered this idea that you can infer ethnic identities from given names. It sounds very much like an idea that one historian played with a quarter-century ago, but was found to have very little mileage. It certainly can't bear the weight Domen wants it to.