ENGLISH AMERICANS BY STATE — THE NUMBERS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU

English Americans by state — the numbers might surprise you, because the most English state in America is not Massachusetts, not Virginia, and not any of the thirteen colonies. It is Utah, and it wins by five points. Meanwhile the ancestry that was roughly six in ten Americans at the founding is now claimed by under eight percent. Nobody left. They stopped writing it down. QUESTIONS THIS VIDEO ANSWERS • Which state has the most English ancestry? • Why is Utah the most English state in America? • Why did English ancestry disappear from the census? • What were the four English migrations to America? • Are English surnames still the most common in America? THE RANKING. By the most recent American Community Survey five-year estimates, Utah leads at 26.8%, then Maine 21.3%, Vermont 19.3%, Idaho 18.1%, New Hampshire 18.0%. By raw numbers the order changes completely: California first at about 2.48 million, Texas second at 2.38 million. TWO REASONS, NOT ONE. Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are English by subtraction — settled early, never overwritten by later immigration. Utah and Idaho are English because somebody went and recruited them. THE HEREFORDSHIRE POND. In March 1840 the missionary Wilford Woodruff arrived at John Benbow's farm in Herefordshire, where a group called the United Brethren had over 600 members and 45 preachers. Woodruff took almost the whole organization, baptizing hundreds in one pond. A constable sent to arrest him listened to the sermon and converted. The Latter-day Saint mission to Britain opened in 1837; by 1868 more than 31,000 converts had left the British Isles for Utah, and in the 1870 census nearly a quarter of everyone in Utah had been born in Britain. THE DISAPPEARANCE. In 1790 the best modern estimates put the English share of the white population at around six in ten. In the 1980 census, English was the single most reported ancestry in America at 49.6 million — larger than German. By 1990 it was 32.7 million. Today it sits near 25 million, about 7.7%. The largest ancestry group in the country lost half of itself in forty years without a single person emigrating. WHY PEOPLE STOPPED CLAIMING IT. English ancestry in America has nothing attached to it. No parade, no holiday, no neighborhood, no song, no grievance. Every other European ancestry arrived as an outsider, and that gives you a story worth keeping. The English were not the outsiders — they were what everybody else arrived into. WHERE THEY ACTUALLY ARE. West Virginia is sixth, Kentucky eighth, Tennessee eleventh, Arkansas fifteenth — Appalachia and the Upland South, the same states where huge numbers write "American" instead of naming a country. The oldest layer of English settlement did not stay on the coast. It went inland, into counties that filled before 1800 and then stopped changing. EVERY MAILBOX IN THE COUNTRY. The most common surname in America is Smith, then Johnson, Williams, Brown and Jones. Seven of the top ten are English or Welsh in origin. Fifty million people did not vanish — their names are still on the doors. FOUR ENGLANDS, NOT ONE. David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed (1989) describes four separate streams: East Anglian Puritans to Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s; southern and southwestern England to tidewater Virginia, where around three quarters were indentured servants; North Midlands Quakers to the Delaware Valley; and the northern border country, with Ulster, into the southern backcountry. The video covers the criticisms of that thesis too. CHAPTERS 0:00 A Pond in Herefordshire 0:56 It Is Utah, and It Isn't Close 1:28 Two Different Stories in One Top Five 1:58 Thirty-One Thousand Converts 3:15 Six in Ten, at the Founding 4:30 The Ancestry With Nothing Attached 5:30 Why Appalachia Is on the List 7:09 Every Mailbox in the Country 8:07 There Were Four Englands 12:59 Back to Herefordshire WATCH NEXT America's Most Irish State — The Numbers Might Surprise You Why Millions of White Americans Carry African DNA The Scots-Irish Trait Test 100 American Surnames and Where They Came From #EnglishAncestry #Genealogy #AmericanHistory #FamilyHistory #Ancestry #AmericanBloodlines #Surnames