Regions with significant populations | |
---|---|
United States and Canada [1] | |
Languages | |
American English, Pennsylvania German, historical minority Jersey Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and French. | |
Religion | |
Christianity (primarily Protestantism, with some Catholicism especially in Maryland) and minority Judaism | |
Related ethnic groups | |
British, English, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Ulster-Scots, Old Stock Canadians, Pennsylvania German, New Netherlander, Afrikaners, Huguenots, Anglo-Celtic Australians, European New Zealanders, Anglo-Indians, British diaspora in Africa |
The Old Stock (also called Pioneer Stock or Colonial Stock) is a colloquial name for Americans who are descended from the original settlers of the Thirteen Colonies, especially ones who have inherited last names from that era ("Old Stock families"). Historically, Old Stock Americans have been mainly White Protestants from Northern Europe whose ancestors emigrated to British America in the 17th and 18th centuries. [2] [3] [4] [5]
In the 19th and 20th centuries the Old Stock, especially English Protestants, gained a reputation for some of their members opposing or mistrusting Catholic immigrants to America, whom they saw as a threat to traditional American republican values due to their perceived allegiance to a foreign pope. [6] [7] [8] [9]
Between 1700 and 1775, the overwhelming majority of settlers to the colonies (up to 90%)[ citation needed ] were Britons of varying ethnic backgrounds such as English, Scottish (including Ulster-Scots), Welsh, and native Irish, with initial settlements focused on the colonial hearths of Virginia, New England and Bermuda under Elizabeth I, James VI and I and Charles I. By 1776 there were between 2 and 2.5 million colonists in the Thirteen Colonies.[ citation needed ]
Populations of French Huguenots, Dutch, Swedes, and Germans arrived before 1776, some as fellow royal subjects, other populations as legacies of earlier colonies such as New Netherland, which became the Middle Colonies of British America, and the Dutch colonial capital of New Amsterdam retained a distinct commercial cosmopolitan character as New York which became America's largest city. Ethnic Finns made up the majority of settlers of New Sweden colony which passed to Dutch and English rule. While small in number, Forest Finns left an outsized legacy, among European Americans uniquely accustomed to a pioneer life taming wilderness on frontiers of the Swedish Empire, bringing slash-and-burn agriculture and resourceful timber usage to the New World in the 17th century. From Tavastia, Savo and Karelia, Finnish log cabin architecture arrived early in colonial America, like the 1638 Nothnagle Cabin–adopted by later pioneer settlers like the Scotch-Irish to become symbols of American frontier culture advancing westward across North America. [10] As the Scotch-Irish first resettled Ulster from the violent Scottish borderlands before departing for America, Forest Finns lived on the rough frontier borderlands of eastern Finland until the Swedish king invited them to resettle and clear wooded central Sweden, before remigrating to America. [11] [12] In 1776, a descendent of Finnish New Sweden settlers, John Morton, joined Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson to cast the deciding vote of the Pennsylvania delegation in support of independence and became a signer of the Declaration of Independence two days later. [13]
While the majority of colonists were from Great Britain, these were not monolithic in ethnic, political, social, and cultural origins, but rather transplanted different Old World folkways to the New World. The two most significant colonies had been settled by opposing factions in the English Civil War and the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The founders of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colony in the North were mostly Puritans from East Anglia, who had been influenced by egalitarian Roundhead republican ideals of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth of England and the Protectorate; in New England they concentrated in towns where decisions were made by direct democracy, prizing communal conformity, social equality, and Puritan work ethic. Partially owing to the insularity of Puritan communities, colonial New England was far more homogeneously "English" than other regions, in contrast to the historically tolerant Dutch colonial parts of the Northeast, and more diverse colonies of the Mid-Atlantic and the South which from an early stage had strong elements of German and Scottish stock, from varying religious traditions. [14] [15] [16] [17]
Conversely, in Chesapeake Colonies to the south, the Colony of Virginia had been settled by their Cavalier royalist rivals—many younger sons of English gentry who fled Southern England when Cromwell took power, accompanied by indentured servants. Sir William Berkeley, colonial governor of Virginia, loyal to King Charles I, banished Puritans while offering refuge to the Virginia Cavaliers—many of whom became First Families of Virginia. For his colony's fidelity to the Crown, Charles II awarded Virginia its nickname "Old Dominion". [18] In contrast to egalitarian and collectivist New England Colonies to the north, settlers of the Southern Colonies in Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, and Georgia recreated a hierarchical social order governed by an aristocratic American gentry which would dominate the antebellum Old South for generations. Sons of British nobility established American plantations where the planter class employed indentured servants to farm cash crops; later replaced by African slaves, especially in Deep South states where a feudal West Indies-style slave plantation economy developed. Freed English American indentured servants, along with Scottish Americans, Scotch-Irish Americans, Palatines and other German Americans arrived as hearty pioneers, taming harsh frontier wilderness to settle their own homesteads amid streams and hilly terrain, becoming old stock of the mountainous backcountry. To contrast against Yankee "Anglo-Saxon" democratic radicalism of New England, at times even English Americans in Dixie (especially in decades leading up to the American Civil War) would not only identify with chivalrous Cavaliers, but even assert a distinct aristocratic racial heritage as knightly heirs to the Normans who conquered and civilized 'barbaric' and unruly Anglo-Saxons of medieval England. [15] [16] [19] [20] [17]
Until the second half of the 20th century, the Old Stock dominated American culture and politics. [21] [22]
Starting in the 1840s, millions of German and Irish Catholics immigrated to the rapidly industrializing United States during the 19th century. Anti-Catholic elements formed the Know Nothing movement that had brief success in the mid 1850s, then faded away. Its presidential candidate, former president Millard Fillmore, took 22% of the total national vote in the 1856 United States presidential election. [23]
American settlers arriving in the formerly Spanish or Mexican holdings of the Southwest were labelled as "Anglos". [24]
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The Thirteen Colonies were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. Grievances against the imperial government led the 13 colonies to begin uniting in 1774, and expelling British officials by 1775. Assembled at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, they appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army to fight the American Revolutionary War. In 1776, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence as the United States of America. Defeating British armies with French help, the Thirteen Colonies gained sovereignty with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
The British colonization of the Americas is the history of establishment of control, settlement, and colonization of the continents of the Americas by England, Scotland, and, after 1707, Great Britain. Colonization efforts began in the late 16th century with failed attempts by England to establish permanent colonies in the North. The first of the permanent English colonies in the Americas was established in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Colonies were established in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Though most British colonies in the Americas eventually gained independence, some colonies have remained under Britain's jurisdiction as British Overseas Territories.
The Colony of Virginia was a British, colonial settlement in North America between 1606 and 1776.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, one of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The lands of the settlement were in southern New England, with initial settlements on two natural harbors and surrounding land about 15.4 miles (24.8 km) apart—the areas around Salem and Boston, north of the previously established Plymouth Colony. The territory nominally administered by the Massachusetts Bay Colony covered much of central New England, including portions of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.
The institution of slavery in the European colonies in North America, which eventually became part of the United States of America, developed due to a combination of factors. Primarily, the labor demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period, and both Africans and indigenous peoples were targets of enslavement by European colonists during the era.
The colonial history of the United States covers the period of European colonization of North America from the early 16th century until the incorporation of the Thirteen Colonies into the United States in 1776 during the Revolutionary War. In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic launched major colonization expeditions in North America. The death rate was very high among early immigrants, and some early attempts disappeared altogether, such as the English Lost Colony of Roanoke. Nevertheless, successful colonies were established within several decades.
The Middle Colonies were a subset of the Thirteen Colonies in British America, located between the New England Colonies and the Southern Colonies. Along with the Chesapeake Colonies, this area now roughly makes up the Mid-Atlantic states.
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America from 1634 until 1776, when the province was one of the Thirteen Colonies that joined in supporting the American Revolution against Great Britain. In 1781, Maryland was the 13th signatory to the Articles of Confederation. The province's first settlement and capital was in St. Mary's City, located at the southern end of St. Mary's County, a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay bordered by four tidal rivers.
The Dominion of New England in America (1686–1689) was an administrative union of English colonies covering all of New England and the Mid-Atlantic Colonies, with the exception of the Delaware Colony and the Province of Pennsylvania. The region's political structure was one of centralized control similar to the model used by the Spanish monarchy under the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The dominion was unacceptable to most colonists because they deeply resented being stripped of their rights and having their colonial charters revoked. Governor Edmund Andros tried to make legal and structural changes, but most of these were undone and the Dominion was overthrown as soon as word was received that King James II had vacated the throne in England. One notable change was the forced introduction of the Church of England into Massachusetts, whose Puritan leaders had previously refused to allow it any foothold.
British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom. It is primarily a demographic or historical research category for people who have at least partial descent from peoples of Great Britain and the modern United Kingdom, i.e. English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Orcadian, Manx, Cornish Americans and those from the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.
Scotch-IrishAmericans are American descendants of primarily Ulster Scots people who emigrated from Ulster to the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. Their ancestors had originally migrated to Ulster, mainly from the Scottish Lowlands and Northern England in the 17th century. In the 2017 American Community Survey, 5.39 million reported Scottish ancestry, an additional 3 million identified more specifically with Scotch-Irish ancestry, and many people who claim "American ancestry" may actually be of Scotch-Irish ancestry.
The Saybrook Colony was an English colony established in New England in late 1635 at the mouth of the Connecticut River in what is today Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Saybrook was founded by John Winthrop the Younger, son of John Winthrop the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Winthrop the Younger was designated titular Governor by the original settlers, including Colonel George Fenwick and Captain Lion Gardiner. They claimed possession of the land via a deed of conveyance from Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, which granted the colony the land from the Narragansett River in modern Rhode Island to the Pacific Ocean. Winthrop named the colony in honor of William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele and Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, prominent Parliamentarians and the principal investors in the colony.
The Chesapeake Colonies were the Colony and Dominion of Virginia, later the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Province of Maryland, later Maryland, both colonies located in British America and centered on the Chesapeake Bay.
The Somers Isles Company was formed in 1615 to operate the English colony of the Somers Isles, also known as Bermuda, as a commercial venture. It held a royal charter for Bermuda until 1684, when it was dissolved, and the Crown assumed responsibility for the administration of Bermuda as a royal colony.
The history of immigration to the United States details the movement of people to the United States from the colonial era to the present day. Throughout U.S. history, the country experienced successive waves of immigration, particularly from Europe and later on from Asia and Latin America. Colonial-era immigrants often repaid the cost of transoceanic transportation by becoming indentured servants in which the new employer paid the ship's captain. In the late 19th century, immigration from China and Japan was restricted. In the 1920s, restrictive immigration quotas were imposed but political refugees had special status. Numerical restrictions ended in 1965. In recent years, the largest numbers of immigrants to the United States have come from Asia and Central America.
The New England Colonies of British America included Connecticut Colony, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, and the Province of New Hampshire, as well as a few smaller short-lived colonies. The New England colonies were part of the Thirteen Colonies and eventually became five of the six states in New England, with Plymouth Colony absorbed into Massachusetts and Maine separating from it.
English Americans are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England. In the 2020 United States census, English Americans were the largest group in the United States with 46.5 million Americans self-identifying as having some English origins representing (19.8%) of the White American population. This includes 25,536,410 (12.5%) who were "English alone". Despite them being the largest self-identified ancestral origin in the United States, demographers still regard the number of English Americans as an undercount. As most English Americans are the descendants of settlers who first arrived during the colonial period which began over 400 years ago, many Americans are either unaware of this heritage or choose to elect a more recent known ancestral group even if English is their primary ancestry.
Elizabeth Key Grinstead (or Greenstead) (1630 – January 20, 1665) was one of the first Black people in the Thirteen Colonies to sue for freedom from slavery and win. Key won her freedom and that of her infant son, John Grinstead, on July 21, 1656, in the Colony of Virginia.
The English overseas possessions comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the Kingdom of England before 1707.
The American gentry were landowning members of the American upper class during the early modern period. Historians generally use the term "gentry" to refer to the planter class who resided in the Southern Colonies prior to the American Revolutionary War. They derived their income primarily from the ownership of plantations which produced cash crops using the forced labor of Black slaves and white indentured servants. North of the Province of Maryland, there were few large comparable rural estates, except in the Province of New York.