English Americans (also known as Anglo-Americans) are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England. According to the 2020 United States census, English Americans are the largest ethnic demographic in the United States with 46.6 million Americans self-identifying as having some English origins (many combined with another heritage) representing (19.8%) of the White American population. This includes 25,536,410 (12.5% of whites) identified as predominantly or "English alone". Despite their status as the largest self-identified ancestral-origin group in the United States, demographers still regard the number of English Americans as an undercount. The term is distinct from British Americans, which includes not only English Americans but also others from the United Kingdom such as Scottish, Scotch-Irish (descendants of Ulster Scots from Ulster and Northern Ireland), Welsh, Cornish, Manx Americans and Channel Islanders. In 1980, 49.6 million Americans claimed English ancestry. At 26.34%, this was the largest group amongst the 188 million people who reported at least one ancestry. The population was 226 million which would have made the English ancestry group 22% of the total. English immigrants in the 19th century, as with other groups, sought economic prosperity. They began migrating in large numbers, without state support, in the 1840s and continued into the 1890s.
English American elites, known as "WASPs" (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), have dominated American society, culture, and politics for most of American history. The majority of presidents of the United States, as well as the majority of sitting U.S. congressmen and congresswomen, were born into families of English ancestry. The majority of the Founding Fathers of the United States were also of English ancestry. Ivy League universities such as Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University were established by and have been mostly composed of WASPs. pp. 179-180,. In states such as Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and California; former colonies of Spain and France, Anglo-American settlers developed a cohesive identity centered around their Protestantism, English language, and British colonial heritage. The term Anglo-American can be ambiguous and used in several different ways. While it is primarily intended to refer to people of English ancestry, it (along with terms like Anglo, Anglic, Anglophone, and Anglophonic) is also used to denote all people of British or Northwestern European ancestry.Oxford English Dictionary: "Anglo" North American A white English-speaking person of British or northern European origin, in particular (in the US) as distinct from a Hispanic American or (in Canada) as distinct from a French-speaker. Most broadly it is used to include all people of Northwestern European ethnic origin who currently speak English as a mother tongue and their descendants are in the New World, thus including a large assimilated group of mostly Protestant Europeans.Mish, Frederic C., Editor in Chief Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A.:1994--Merriam-Webster See original definition (definition #1) of Anglo in English: It is defined as a synonym for Anglo-American--Page 86
Sense of identity
Americans of English heritage are often seen, and identify, as simply "American" due to the many historic cultural ties between England and the U.S. and their influence on the country's population. Relative to ethnic groups of other European origins, this may be due to the early establishment of English settlements; as well as to non-English groups having emigrated in order to establish significant communities.
Since 1776, English Americans have been less likely to proclaim their heritage, unlike other British Americans, Latino Americans, African Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, Native Americans or other ethnic groups. This is a reason why numbers vary drastically between self-identification and estimates. A leading specialist, Charlotte Erickson, found them to be ethnically "invisible," dismissing the occasional St. George Societies as ephemeral elite clubs that were not in touch with a larger ethnic community.Charlotte Erickson, Invisible immigrants: the adaptation of English and Scottish immigrants in nineteenth-century America (1990) In Canada, by contrast, the English organized far more ethnic activism, as the English competed sharply with the well-organized French and Irish elements.Tanja Bueltmann, and Don MacRaild, "Globalizing St George: English associations in the Anglo-world to the 1930s" Journal of Global History (2012) 7#1 pp. 79–105 In the United States, the Scottish immigrants were much better organized than the English in the 19th century, as were their descendants in the late 20th century.Rowland Berthoff, "Under the Kilt: Variations on the Scottish-American Ground" Journal of American Ethnic History (1982) 1#2 pp. 5–34 online
Number of English Americans English origins response Year Single ancestry/ alone Totals / % 1980 23,748,772 49,598,035 21.9 1990 -32,651,78813.1 2000 -24,515,138 8.71 2010 -27,403,063 9.02 2020 25,536,41046,550,96814.0
As the primary founding group, the original 17th-century settlers were overwhelmingly English. Most of these early settlers came from what is referred to as Southern England.
The largest migration from the British Isles occurred in the 18th century, and consisted of around 250,000 settlers of mainly Northern English and Scottish origin. From the time of the first permanent English presence in the New World until the 1900s, these migrants and their descendants outnumbered all others firmly establishing the English cultural pattern as predominant for the American version.
1700–1775 According to studies and estimates, the ethnic populations in the British American Colonies from 1700 onwards were: (*Georgia not included) Ethnic composition of the American Colonies 1700 / % 1755 / % 1775 / % English / Welsh80.0 English / Welsh52.0 English 48.7 African11.0 African20.0 African20.0 Dutch4.0 German7.0 Scots-Irish 7.8 Scottish3.0 Scots-Irish7.0 German6.9 Other European2.0 Irish5.0 Scottish6.6 Scottish4.0 Dutch2.7 Dutch3.0 French 1.4 Other European2.0 Swedish 0.6 Other 5.3 Colonies* 100.0 Thirteen Colonies100.0 United Colonies100.0
Colonial English origin 1776 Colonies% of populationNew England70.5 Middle40.6 Southern 37.4
Data
National origins: 1790–1900
The ancestries of the population in 1790 (the first national population census) has been estimated by various sources, first in 1909, then again in 1932, 1980 and 1984 by sampling distinctive surnames in the census and assigning them a country of origin. There is debate over the accuracy between the studies with individual scholars and the Federal Government using different techniques and conclusion for the ethnic composition.
A study published in 1909 titled A Century of Population Growth. From the First to the Twelfth census of the United States: 1790–1900 by the Government Census Bureau estimated the English were 83.5%, 6.7% Scottish, 1.6% Irish, 2.0% Dutch, 0.5% French, 5.6% German and 0.1% all others of the white population for the 12 enumerated states. "Hebrews" (Jews) were less than one-tenth of 1 percent. When the Scotch and Irish are added, British origins would be more than 90% of the European ancestry.
The same 1909 data for each state (of the total European population only) of English ancestry were Connecticut 96.2%, Rhode Island 96.0%, Vermont 95.4%, Massachusetts 95.0%, New Hampshire 94.1%, Maine 93.1%, Virginia 85.0%, Maryland 84.0%, North Carolina 83.1%, South Carolina 82.4%, New York 78.2% and Pennsylvania 59.0%. CPG estimated that, of all European Americans in the Continental United States as of 1790, 82.1% were English, followed by 7.0% Scotch, 5.6% German, 2.5% Dutch, 1.9% Irish, and 0.6% French.
English American population estimates (1790) The 1909 Century of Population Growth report came under intense scrutiny in the 1920s; its methodology was subject to criticism over fundamental flaws that cast doubt on the accuracy of its conclusions. The catalyst for controversy had been passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, which imposed numerical quotas on each country of Europe limiting the number of immigrants to be admitted out of a finite total annual pool. The size of each national quota was determined by the National Origins Formula, in part computed by estimating the origins of the colonial stock population descended from White Americans enumerated in the 1790 Census.
The undercount of other colonial stocks like German Americans and Irish Americans would thus have contemporary policy consequences. When CPG was produced in 1909, the concept of independent Ireland did not even exist. CPG made no attempt to further classify its estimated 1.9% Irish population to distinguish Celtic Irish Catholics of Gaelic Ireland, who in 1922 formed the independent Irish Free State, from the Scotch-Irish descendants of Ulster Scots and Anglo-Irish of the Plantation of Ulster, which became Northern Ireland and remained part of the United Kingdom. In 1927, proposed immigration quotas based on CPG figures were rejected by the President's Committee chaired by the Secretaries of State, Commerce, and Labor, with the President reporting to Congress "the statistical and historical information available raises grave doubts as to the whole value of these computations as the basis for the purposes intended." Among the criticisms of A Century of Population Growth: CPG failed to account for Anglicization of names, assuming any surname that could be English was actually English CPG failed to consider first names even when obviously foreign, assuming anyone with a surname that could be English was actually English CPG started by classifying all names as Scotch, Irish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, or other. All remaining names which could not be classed with one of the 6 other listed nationalities, nor identified by the Census clerk as too exotic to be English, were assumed to be English CPG classification was an unscientific process by Census clerks with no training in history, genealogy, or linguistics, nor were scholars in those fields consulted CPG estimates were produced by a linear process with no checks on potential errors nor opportunity for peer review or scholarly revision once an individual clerk had assigned a name to a nationality
At the time of the first census in 1790, English was the majority ancestry in all U.S. states, ranging from a high of 96.2% in Connecticut to a low of 58.0% in New Jersey.
Ancestries of Each U.S. State in 1790 - StateEnglish %Scotch %Irish %Dutch %French %German %Other %93.14.31.40.30.10.50.394.14.71.00.10.10.00.095.43.00.70.50.20.00.295.03.61.00.10.20.00.196.03.10.70.00.10.10.096.22.80.70.10.20.00.078.23.20.816.10.80.40.558.07.77.112.72.19.23.286.37.53.91.00.50.40.459.011.72.00.60.626.10.084.06.52.40.10.75.90.485.07.12.00.20.64.90.283.111.22.30.20.32.80.183.111.22.30.20.32.80.183.111.22.30.20.32.80.182.411.72.60.11.31.70.2 Georgia83.111.22.30.20.32.80.1
Concluding that CPG "had not been accepted by scholars as better than a first approximation of the truth", the Census Bureau commissioned a study to produce new scientific estimates of the colonial American population, in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies, in time to be adopted as basis for legal immigration quotas in 1929, and later published in the journal of the American Historical Association, reproduced in the table below. Note: as in the original CPG report, the "English" category encompassed England and Wales, grouping together all names classified as either "Anglican" (from England) or "Cambrian" (from Wales).
Estimated English American population in the Continental United States as of the 1790 Census.