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What does it mean to be an American?

What does "American" ancestry mean on the Census?

  • On the Census there is a option to put a genealogy of "American". Only 7% put this as an option. This does not include African American, Asian American, etc, just American. Many people in Kentucky and West Virginia put it down as their ancestry. What exactly does it mean and how are they genealogically different than other whites?

  • Answer:

    It has a lot to do with what the person meant. A large part of my ancestry is southern American colonial. There were ancestors from Ireland that came later as well as from Prussian Poland. In the colonial South not everyone was English. Actually, my maternal grandmother goes back to the original Jamestown settlement but she also had other ancestry of people that came during the colonial period, Alsatian German, French Huguenot, Scotland, Northern Ireland. My father's ancestry was basically Irish, both orange and green. My maternal grandfather's father and paternal grandparents were Jews from Prussian Poland.His grandmother might have become a Jew only by conversion so her children would be considered Jewish. But he also had some Native American, German and English. So when I was asked a question about my ancestry, I went blank. The census taker, said,"American?" I said,"yes." Actually I would believe a lot of descendants of immigrants that came to this country in the late 19th century and 20th century knows more about their ancestral heritage than a lot of people of colonial ancestry. The colonials, particularly in the South, blended. The descendants of titled English families weren't snooty toward the Scots, Scotch Irish and Germans. They eventually intermarried with them. Anglo or Anglo Saxon specificaly means English. However, what is termed the "Anglo Saxon people of the American South" are really a blend of many people some came from English forebears who came from titled families inEngland and some Germans, some from indentured servants from Ireland. We are a mxied people. However, understand this, American is a nationality only, made up of many ethnicities. Nationality is not the same thing as race, ethnicity or ancestral heritage. It is not the country from which a person's ancestors immigrated. A citizen of Italy, their nationality is Italian. An American citizen whose ancestors came from Italy, their nationality is not Italian but American and American only, unless they have dual citizenship. Their ethnicity is Italian. One Brit on this board questioned that American is not an ethnicity. What people of other countries do not know our people are from various ancestral heritages and still celebrate their heritage as well as their American citizenship.

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you are not clear as to which census year you refer to. White is not genealogical definition. Genealogy is more about who your ancestors were, and where they are from. Historical census does ask for race (it was not politically incorrect), and place of birth for the person, as well as place of birth of the parents. For some persons, their ancestry (as far back as they know) was born IN America. Just due to settlement and migration patterns, Kentucky and WV TEND to have persons who settled in America before the Revolution. As for persons who are technically Asian American in terms of HERITAGE, they may feel that their own place of birth is more relevant, as what they see themselves. Nationality wise.. I am American since I was born here. My ancestry is Polish. Persons living in other areas, whose ancestry has been here longer than they can recall, sometimes feel slighted to include actual ancestry (ie where the immigrant ancestor comes from). I am just not clear on where any census asks to define one's "genealogy", which by it's nature, will mean different things to different persons.

wendy c

Either the respondents don't know their exact ancestry or else they come from a "Heinz 57" of multiple-ethnicities (to use my grandmother's term). The US Census assumes that most of these individuals are primarily of English, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh stock, or a mixture of the above, but they don't feel any ties to their place, or more likely places, of origin because they have lived on the North American continent for many generations. The area where citizens of "American" ancestry predominate, interspersed with pockets of African-American ancestry, corresponds roughly with the American South, including Appalachia. Writers, like Virginian Senator, Jim Webb, theorize that individuals of primarily Scots-Irish or Ulster ancestry populated much of Appalachian since they reached the American colonies later than their English counterparts (usually around 1750) and were thus pushed to the frontier because the most fertile land was already taken. Admittedly, the Scots-Irish immigrated to Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Pennsylvania as well as moving on to Missouri and Texas, "but in the mid-South and the Ohio Valley, it [Scots-Irish culture] was clearly dominant " (Webb 178). During this time, the Scots-Irish also assimilated any smaller groups on the frontier they ran across into the dominant "American" culture, intermarrying with lower and middle class English settlers, the Roman Catholic Irish, the Welsh, French Huguenots, Germans, Dutch, Swiss, and anyone else they ran across even Native Americans. About the only people left out of this mix were African-Americans, although most Scots-Irish settlers with a few exceptions, such as Andrew Jackson, rarely owned slaves. P. S. As Ted Pack notes, the Protestant Northern Irish adopted the label "Scots-Irish" to differentiate themselves from the Irish Roman Catholic immigrants who generally came to the United States starting in the 1840s because of the potato famine.

Ellie Evans-Thyme

All answers on the census are self-reported by the people being enumerated. The Census Bureau has taught their enumerators for years not to argue with people over questions about themselves. If you are one of those people who have a problem with "hyphenated Americans" (like African-American, Mexican-American, Polish-American, etc) you may very well answer that you are "American"". Nobody's going to argue about your heritage, they're taught to just writed down what you tell them.

GenevievesMom

I would think it means their family members, as far as they have traced their history, have all lived in the USA. Probably, if they had the records, they would find their ancestors farther back from England, Ireland, etc. If they don't know family members' names/dates any more generations back than--for instance--great grandparents, they might think that's all there is to their family.

jan51601

If you mean the column for parents' birthplace, it means that whoever was answering the question wasn't sure which state his/her parents (or his/her spouse's parents) were born in, but was sure they were native-born. I see "USA" more than "American", myself. People in Ky/Wv tend to have less German/Dutch in their lines than do people from farther north, and more of what they call Scots/Irish, to distinguish themselves (hard-working, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent - just ask) from the other Irish (lazy, spendthrift, cowardly, dirty, idol-worshiping papists - just ask, but only if you are ready to go home missing an ear and some teeth if one of them is on the stool next to you), who were Catholic, came over later and tended to spread out from New York and Boston.

Ted Pack

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