Ethnic composition of US cities in 1930
patrick1:
Great posts, thanks. A few random points- you may be under counting the Polish population in NY. Real tough target because of the various carving ups of the state.
Another interesting thing is that the immigrants from Quebec would not have been exclusively French. My grandmother was born in Quebec to newly arrived Irish who made their way to NYC after about 5 years or so.
King of Kensington:
Quote from: patrick1 on October 30, 2013, 08:20:50 PM
Great posts, thanks. A few random points- you may be under counting the Polish population in NY. Real tough target because of the various carving ups of the state.
Another interesting thing is that the immigrants from Quebec would not have been exclusively French. My grandmother was born in Quebec to newly arrived Irish who made their way to NYC after about 5 years or so.
Thanks Patrick. To reply to your points:
I'm pretty certain the majority of those born in Poland in NYC were Jewish. Glazer and Moynihan state that in Beyond the Melting Pot. If we split the Polish origin population 50/50 we get about 230,000 Polish Catholics in NYC or about 3% of the population. That seems too high to me.
As for Canadians, the census split Canada into "Canada - French" and "Canada - other." Not sure if this is based on mother tongue or Quebec vs. other provinces.
King of Kensington:
Detroit had a population of 1,569,000, with 902,000 "white foreign stock", 57% of the population and 538,000 NWNPs, 34%.
Detroit's population in 1890 was more than three quarters immigrants or the children of immigrants, and the largest immigrant groups were, in order of size, Germans, Canadians, British and Irish. I'm assuming about one third of NWNPs in 1930 were descended from the Yankees that dominated the "old stock" (though there were probably some Appalachian whites as well), the vast majority of English origin. Adding to that is 97,000 first- and second-generation British, and maybe 80% of the 148,000 "other Canadians", most of whom came from southwestern Ontario. Assuming that about a fifth of the NWNPs were third generation British or British-Canadian, we get 323,000 of English, Scottish or Welsh origin, 21% of the population.
There were 127,000 first- and second-generation Germans. Adding to that would be one-third of the NWNPs and perhaps 10% of the Canadians, for a total of 382,000, or 24%.
The Irish are a smaller group than in other cities so far. Adding to the 34,000 first- and second-generation Irish are perhaps 7.5% of the "old stock" and 10% of the Canadians are Irish-Catholic like the notorious Father Coughlin (the Irish Protestants are hard to separate out from the other "British Canadians"), getting a total of 89,000, or 6% of the population.
The largest "new" group to Detroit by far are the Poles, with 172,000 first- and second-generation. 200,000 seems a reasonable estimate for the Polish American community of Detroit, 13% of the population.
The Jewish community in Detroit was about 75,000, just under 5% of the population. There were 62,000 first- and second-generation Italians, maybe 65,000 in total, or 4%. Other groups included 22,000 Hungarians, 1.5%; 16,000 Yugoslavs, 1%; and 10,000 Greeks (0.6%). The third generation of these groups would have been minimal.
Detroit also had 15,000 Belgians, 1% and probably the largest Belgian population in the US. There were also 27,000 first- and second-generation French Canadians and 7,500 first- and second-generation from France - with the later generations included there were perhaps 45,000 f French/French Canadian origin, 3%.
Detroit had 120,000 Blacks in 1930, 7.6% of the population. The vast majority would have been from the South, but a small number would have come from the Windsor-Chatham area across the border in Ontario.
scotopino:
Quote from: patrick1 on October 30, 2013, 08:20:50 PM
Great posts, thanks. A few random points- you may be under counting the Polish population in NY. Real tough target because of the various carving ups of the state.
Another interesting thing is that the immigrants from Quebec would not have been exclusively French. My grandmother was born in Quebec to newly arrived Irish who made their way to NYC after about 5 years or so.
Same thing here...doing geneology on my paternal grandmothers side I discovered that my great great grandparents on that side came from Montreal...but before Montreal they all came from Ireland. So Ireland, Montreal and to Pennsylvania. I guess this might have been common?
TDAS04:
Quote from: TheDeadFlagBlues on October 30, 2013, 12:35:14 AM
Solid thread, keep posting.
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