It’s an ironic thing in American history that the founding stock of the country is so routinely ignored. When it comes to the South this is typically the case as English Americans are said to be an influential bunch but never one that held the reins in the South. That is exactly how it was however. The South was an extension of the Anglosphere by more than just speaking English. Nobody debates whether the English were dominant in Colonial times; they were. The question arises on where they were a majority and if that regional majority continued after independence. It is clear however that Englishmen were present in all the regions of the South, to a large degree. This presence continues to this day, even in Appalachia, the region famed for being of Scots-Irish blood.

The Story of English involvement in this land of course begins at Jamestown where Englishmen from all backgrounds flocked to make a living. Virginia quickly flourished enough to spawn the colony of North Carolina which remained safely English until the second decade of the 1700s when Germans and Scotsmen began moving in. Still, the English remained a majority in both states, especially in the East. The other major founding colony, South Carolina, was settled by Englishmen that had moved from the Caribbean.

The demography of the South remains similar to how it was settled. In the coastal regions the people are overwhelmingly English (if Blacks are excluded) and that gets less so once we look further inland, right? Well, not so fast.

The data we have to look at is sparse but it is enough to come to a general conclusion.

In the 1980 census Anglo-Americans made up about a quarter of the nation as a whole, still the biggest group. Subtract non-Whites from the picture and most White Americans are of English extraction. That decreased sharply in 2000 when the “American” category was added, losing many numbers to the new category in the South especially. Since most of the English came here during the founding and went through the revolution, it is thought that most English people switched to “American” because they feel more drawn to America rather than the motherland.

If this is true, and there’s little reason to believe it isn’t, the English are still dominant in much of the South. Calculating the number of Englishmen in the South is impossible without updated census data but we can see how English culture influenced the South, even more than Celtic culture, though that certainly played a large role in Appalachia.

The music of Appalachia is typically thought to be derived from Celtic influences but English ballads certainly played a large part, bringing the storytelling feature of the music, as well as influencing the lyrical choice of many folk songs.

The language is also thought to be Celtic in origin when it comes to Appalachia but the English twang of many Englishmen influenced pronunciations in the east, especially in regard to Indian names. Why not in Appalachia as well? That twang can still be heard in Old England to this day, especially in the rural parts of the North.

According to census data Englishmen make up a large minority of Appalachia, especially if just half of the American category is to be added to the English. The region may be predominantly Scots-Irish/Irish, but the English make up a sizeable chunk of whatever is left.

The majority of the founding fathers were English and Englishmen continued to dominate politics for several decades after independence when their influence lessened but by no means went away.

Still history books ignore the English and parrot the idea that Germans and Irishmen took over the country sometime in the late 1800s. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Most regions have stayed the same demographically since they they were founded since largescale migrations (for Whites) have only really been happening since White flight became a phenomenon and even then they don’t move far. True, Northerners do move South now, thanks to air conditioning and job opportunities, but their population makeup isn’t terribly large and they aren’t much different demographically from Southerners, though the culture is different there.

To ignore the English in favor of ethnic minorities is simply disengenous however, especially when so many of us are descended from them or have the partial English ancestry. The English were by no means absent and by no means miraculously disappeared, quite the opposite.

