Are there really more Americans of German ancestry than English ancestry?

[Mr. Morden]

With the exception of some very insular Pennsylvania Dutch types, they're not discrete groups. And they haven't been for so long that any attempt at making a distinction is meaningless. The contents of the pot have long since melted together.

Right.  But if I'm understanding the OP's point correctly, if you were to somehow research the family tree of every person living in the USA, and tracked who all of their ancestors were in the 17th or 18th century or so, would you find more people who have at least some ancestors from what is currently England or Germany?  If you were to quantify each person's heritage by what fraction of their DNA comes from people who in 1700 lived in England or what is now Germany, for which would you find the higher average fraction, England or Germany?

I guess the idea is that the answers to both questions would be England, but that many people are either unaware of their English ancestry because it's so distant, or for whatever reason identify with other parts of their ancestry, and thus wouldn't answer "English" on a census form about their ethnicity.

[Mr. Morden]

English is 48%, which suggests to me that those of mixed ancestry that includes English, are more likely to omit "English" than those of other ancestries. While some who says they are Irish American or Italian American may be an affectation, someone who said they they were English American seems weird. The Census Bureau transformed Irish American and Italian American to Irish and Italian. While those who might be inclined to say English American, might report they were American.

Other single ancestry shares: Dutch 22%, French 24%, Swiss 24%, Irish 26%, Danish 28%, AIAN 29%, and Swedish 30%. Smaller groups or who immigrated long ago have a harder time maintaining a separate identity. More exotic ancestries can stick around longer, family might remember the gg-grandmother who was a Cherokee princess, and not be aware that a gg-grandmother came from Liverpool was part English.

I think you're right about English not sticking in people's minds because it's less exotic, and also people being more likely to go with ancestries from more recent immigrants.

But is there also an effect here that would see the average amount of English ancestry in Americans being higher than that of other ethnic groups, yet less likely to be the plurality contribution?  After all, if you're getting your European ancestry from a grandparent immigrant, then it's contributing either 25% or 0%, and there's no in between.  Whereas if you have ancestry from European immigrants from the 1600s or 1700s, then you're going enough generations back to get much smaller increments of contributions.

For example, in my own case, I'm a mix of different European ethnicities, but English would be the plurality, at probably something like 27%.  But 25% of that is from English immigration to Canada in the late 1800s.  With only the remaining ~2% from the Colonial period (and those folks mixed with Scots and Northern Irish and others to eventually produce my great great grandmother).  Few Americans are going to be in my boat of having English ancestry largely based on recent (if the late 1800s counts as "recent") English immigration to Canada.  Much more common, I would think, would be folks with distant English ancestry that might well be a significant fraction of their ancestry, but not a plurality.  I wonder for how many Americans would English actually represent the plurality contribution to their ethnic mix.

[Mr. Morden]

You know, this discussion also makes me wonder things like...

1) What percentage of white Americans today have at least one ancestor who lived in North America at the time of the Revolutionary War?

2) What is the average %age of ancestry for such people today that comes from the Revolutionary War era (and earlier)?

3) And then, out of curiosity, repeat the above questions for the Civil War.

Like I said, in my case, I did have some ancestors living in North America during the Colonial period, though the majority of my ancestors didn't come to North America until after the Civil War.  I think ~10% of my Mom's ancestry is from folks living here in the Colonial Era, while for my Dad it would be 0%.  But what's average?  Are there really many people left where it's >50%?  And where do they tend to live?  In the South?

[Mr. Morden]

You know, this discussion also makes me wonder things like...

1) What percentage of white Americans today have at least one ancestor who lived in North America at the time of the Revolutionary War?

2) What is the average %age of ancestry for such people today that comes from the Revolutionary War era (and earlier)?

3) And then, out of curiosity, repeat the above questions for the Civil War.

Like I said, in my case, I did have some ancestors living in North America during the Colonial period, though the majority of my ancestors didn't come to North America until after the Civil War.  I think ~10% of my Mom's ancestry is from folks living here in the Colonial Era, while for my Dad it would be 0%.  But what's average?  Are there really many people left where it's >50%?  And where do they tend to live?  In the South?

I get to be an oddball here as I have ancestors who lived in the future United States at the time of the so-called Revolution, but not during the so-called Second Revolution as the ones who'd been here fr the first had had to escape to Canada afterwards.

Same with me.  I have some ancestors who were living in NY, MA, and CT at the time of the Revolution, then fled to Canada at the end of the war.

I don't *think* I have any ancestors who were living in the US at the time of the Civil War, though I'm not 100% certain, because of one branch on the family tree that's kind of a mystery: I have a great grandmother who was born in Chicago in 1879 to Norwegian immigrants, and I don't really know when her parents immigrated, or even if they immigrated together as adults or separately when they were younger.  I suppose it's possible that one or both immigrated with their families as children, in which case they might have arrived before or during the Civil War.  But my recollection is that immigration from Norway ramped up a lot post-Civil War, so it's probably unlikely.