Our Foreigners | Page 8

11.2 | 3,574 | 11.2 Irish | 1,406 | 2.3 | 734 | 2.8
Dutch | 122 | 0.2 | 64 | 0.2 French | 183 | 0.3 | 96 | 0.3 German | 1,712 |
2.8 | 894 | 2.8 All others[A] | 61 | 0.1 | 32 | 0.1
--------------+---------+-------+---------+------ [Note A: Including
Hebrews.]
New Jersey presented a more complex problem. Here were Welsh and
Swedes, Finns and Danes, as well as French, Dutch, Scotch, Irish, and
English. A careful analysis was made of lists of freeholders, and other
available sources, in the various counties. The results of these
computations in the States from which no schedules of the First Census
survive are given in Table B printed on page 28.
The calculations for the entire country in 1790, based upon the census
schedules of the States from which reports are still available and upon
estimates for the others are summed up in the following manner:
Number and per cent distribution of the white population, 1790:
Nationality Number Per Cent
All Nationalities 3,172,444 100.0 English 2,605,699 82.1 Scotch
221,562 7.0 Irish 61,534 1.9 Dutch 78,959 2.5 French 17,619 0.6

German 176,407 5.6 All others 10,664 0.3
To this method of estimating nationality, it will at once be objected that
undue prominence is given to the derivation of the surname, an
objection fully understood by those who made the estimate and one
which deprives their conclusions of strict scientific verity. In a new
country, where the population is in a constant flux and where members
of community composed of one race easily migrate to another part of
the country and fall in with people of another race, it is very easy to
modify the name to suit new circumstances. We know, for instance that
Isaac Isaacks of Pennsylvania was not a Jew, that the Van Buskirks of
New Jersey were German, not Dutch, that D'Aubigné was early
shortened into Dabny and Aulnay into Olney. So also many a Brown
had been Braun, and several Blacks had once been only Schwartz. Even
the universal Smith had absorbed more than one original Schmidt.
These rather exceptional cases, however, probably, do not vitiate the
general conclusion here made as to the British and non-British element
in the population of America, for the Dutch, the German, the French,
and the Swedish cognomens are characteristically different from the
British. But the differentiation between Irish, Welsh, Scotch,
Scotch-Irish, and English names is infinitely more difficult. The
Scotch-Irish particularly have challenged the conclusions reached by
the Census Bureau. They claim a much larger proportion of the original
bulk of our population than the seven per cent included under the
heading Scotch. Henry Jones Ford considers the conclusions as far as
they pertain to the Scotch-Irish as "fallacious and untrustworthy."
"Many Ulster names," he says,[5] "are also common English names....
Names classed as Scotch or Irish were probably mostly those of
Scotch-Irish families.... The probability is that the English proportion
should be much smaller and that the Scotch-Irish, who are not included
in the Census Bureau's classification, should be much larger than the
combined proportions allotted to the Scotch and the Irish."
Whatever may be the actual proportions of these British elements, as
revealed by a study of the patronymics of the population at the time of
American independence, the fact that the ethnic stock was
overwhelmingly British stands out most prominently. We shall never

know the exact ratios between the Scotch and the English, the Welsh
and the Irish blended in this hardy, self-assertive, and fecund strain. But
we do know that the language, the political institutions, and the
common law as practiced and established in London had a
predominating influence on the destinies of the United States. While
the colonists drifted far from the religious establishments of the mother
country and found her commercial policies unendurable and her
political hauteur galling, they nevertheless retained those legal and
institutional forms which remain the foundation of Anglo-Saxon life.
For nearly half a century the American stock remained almost entirely
free from foreign admixture. It is estimated that between 1790 and
1820 only 250,000 immigrants came to America, and of these the great
majority came after the War of 1812. The white population of the
United States in 1820 was 7,862,166. Ten years later it had risen to
10,537,378. This astounding increase was almost wholly due to the
fecundity of the native stock. The equitable balance between the sexes,
the ease of acquiring a home, the vigorous pioneer environment, and
the informal frontier social conditions all encouraged large families.
Early marriages were encouraged. Bachelors and unmarried women
were rare. Girls were matrons at twenty-five and grand-mothers at forty.
Three generations frequently dwelt in one homestead. Families of five
persons were the rule; families of eight or ten were common, while