What is the ancestry of Americans who live in the South?

Question

What is the ancestry of Americans who live in the South?

Answer 1

Come on now, y'all.  With any other region of the United States, some of the above posts would be considered politically incorrect!  Thanks, Shirley T. for an excellent reply.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestry_(U...

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According to self-reported Census records, most of those polled living in the American South consider themselves as descendants of various ethnic groups (as indicated by the majority group in various counties):

Upper to Mid South, North and Central Texas--American*

Delta States--African American, American*

Louisiana--American*, African American, French

Texas--Mexican, German,  African American, American*

Oklahoma--Native American, American*, African American, German

Of course, Southerners are not limited to the ethnic groups mentioned in the above map.  From the mid-19th century, Central Texas, for example, has also been home to communities of Poles, Czechs, Wends, Norwegians, and Swedes.  

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*Those who consider their ancestry American are predominantly a mixture of English, Scottish, and Welsh;  Scots-Irish (7.2%) is also an under reported category since many Scots-Irish consider their ancestry "American".

Answer 2

One more note - don't forget the Welsh!  My Welsh ancestors were coal miners.  They came to the US and followed the coal, from Pennsylvania, western Maryland, and western Virginia, down the Appalachian mountains to Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia and Alabama.  

It's truly amazing to learn where our ancestors came from, where they settled here and why, what they did, and where they went next.

Answer 3

Scottish, Irish, English, Cherokee, & African, at least in  Georgia and the Carolinas.

Answer 4

In colonial days, they had English, Scots, ScotchIrish(called Ulster Scots in Britain), French Huguenot and people from various German states.

The English that came South in early colonial days(Virginia settlers) were largely from titled families. They remained on the coastline for many years.  The more rugged Scots, ScotchIrish, German settlers went to the western part of the Southern colonies and they cleared the land, built the roads and once they made it habitable, the English started moving Westward. French Huguenots, because they came mostly from a merchant class of people, frequently made a good cotton agent for the English planter who often didn't want to be bothered with business and money transactions.

The 4 Southern colonies were established as Church of England colonies unlike those farther North who were Puritan and Quaker.

The Scots, Scotch Irish and French Huguenots had a tendency to be Presbyterian and there were German settlements whose faith was similar to Baptist.  

The established churches of the original colonist had difficulty furnishing clergy for all the little farm communities etc and since travel was difficult most people became associated with the one or two churches that sprung up in their community.  Methodism was still a movement within the Church of England at the time of the Revolution and they had their circuit rider preachers on horseback that went into the small communities.  The Baptist were very active starting store front churches and a Baptist minister was frequently a farmer during the week and the preacher on Sunday.  So the religion of the original colonist does not prevail in the South today.

These settlers made up the caucasian people and today what are called the Anglo Saxon people of the American South are really a blend of those early colonial settlers.

Now, Louisiana had been a French colonial possession until the U.S. bought the Louisiana territory from France in 1803.  The southern part of Louisiana has a lot of Cajun people.  A little farther north, people whose roots have been there for many generations are proud to call themselves redcoats.  After the Revolutionary War, France gave safe haven into the Louisiana territory for those who supported King George.  That is why the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 was really more important than some people think.  If England could have linked up with those redcoats of Northern Louisiana the war might have gone the other way or at least lasted a lot longer.  Believe me, there are some of those people who didn't celebrate the 4th of July until after WW2.

Texas (under 6 flags) had most of the time been Spanish but also France ruled part of Texas on occasions.  In old San Antonio, Spain established a colony there in 1731.  It was a small colony.  They already had a Presidio there where the soldiers and their families lived.  So if you are ever in San Antonio and you hear Spanish spoken understand that a lot of those people are descendants of colonials and they have more right to speak Spanish there than we Gringos have a right to speak English there.

In the central part of Texas, they have large German populations.  Also there are Czech and Poles. Actually, a good part of the English speaking natives of San Antonio are German or Czech.  The Czechs in Texas,unlike the Czechs frequently in the North, have a tendency to be Catholic. The Poles and Czechs get along together. The Germans are usually Catholic or Lutheran.

I live in Beaumont and we have always had a sizable Cajun and Italian population along with some Syrians and Greeks..  We do not have caucasian ethnic neighborhoods.  They have always lived as far back as I remember in the same neighborhoods as the rest of the caucasians.  

Edit: Texas was really under 7 flags.  People tend to forget and want to forget the flour sack flag of W. Lee O'Daniel.

Answer 5

People who live in the South have many ancestries: English, French, African, Haitian, Spanish, Mexican - among others.

Need to correct Piko Piko here.  The so-called Pilgrims did not settle in the South.  They settled in New England.

Answer 6

English. Probably. Pilgrims and all.

Answer 7

German Shepherd.

Answer 8

European make up:

20% English from people in Liverpool (from the 1600s to 1880')

60% Irish  (from the 1600s to the 1860s)

10% Italian(Sicilian), from 1890,after the Civil War to the present

10% French, from 1600 to 1880'.

African, non European make up:

75% from Togo and Benin (West African countries) from 1600s to 1780.---enslaved peoples

25% from other areas like Syria, Ethiopian, Somalia, Eritrea, and Dravidian Indian. from 1785 to the present. non -enslaved peoples. These peoples were collectively called free living people of color, Turks, or "Indians".