How common are Americans with recent English ancestry?

36 comments

1. Are you asking for immigration statistics from England specifically? I’m sure there are web resources for that.

2. I know several. However, all of my English ancestors came over in the 1600s and 1700s. My most recent immigrant came from Germany in the mid-late 1800s.

3. Probably not too many. We began as a British colonial project so that gave the English a head start. But after that people tended to immigrate from places that aren’t doing so well. Parts of Europe back then, Latin America now; we’re the chance at a better life (or at least more money). England has been doing well for centuries, overall. By the way, people with English ancestry are probably grossly underreported. I know countless people with last names like Johnson or Harris claiming to be German or Italian or whatever. Even accounting for Ellis Island name changes, that’s bullshit.

   But anyway, other than Australia’s mid-century attempt to attract Britons I’m unaware of any recent large-scale English emigration to any place.

4. I mean, they certainly exist. There are about [700,000 Brits living in the US](https://wise.com/us/blog/brits-living-in-the-us), and a lot of them have kids and grandkids. But they’re less common than the first group, for sure.

5. Very low, I would imagine. Maybe 1%.

6. My best friend’s mom is an immigrant from England. It’s not something you encounter everyday but it’s not super-surprising either.

7. Anecdotally I have known two people in my life who had an English parent.

8. You don’t specify a baseline for common or recent but I would say it’s rare, as in well under 1% of the population;

   Post WW2, the vast majority of immigration has been from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, with less so from South America and Asia.

   Immigration from Europe has been quite low, which is why there has been a massive demographic shift over the last 60 years in America.

9. Not super common I would think. In my part of the US its pretty much unheard of but I do have a close friend whos parents come to the US and he got his US citizenship recently

10. My sister-in-law has a great-grandfather who emigrated from Derbyshire, England in 1902.

11. English people have not been a significant immigrant group since the late 1800s. Most Americans with English ancestry have ancestors that arrived hundreds of years ago.

12. Not as common but definitely not unheard of. My most recent immigrant ancestors came from England in the 1850s—which seems like a long time ago but they still have many living great grandchildren who would meet your criteria.

13. My family came from Canada when it was still a British possession, does that count?

14. Your understanding is basically correct, but there have been some recent English immigrants also, just not as many as from some other countries.

15. I’ve met a few people who came here as kids from the UK, or whose parents moved here. Not very many. You can look up statistics on it I’m sure.

16. My great grandpa was from Scotland, that about as close as I get.

17. My mother was English.

    So, in my family, very common. 🙂

18. I’m sure there were more than a few war brides after World War II but that’s still not going to be a statistically large percentage. Another source of British immigration is academics who come and work at American universities and never go back. But again, that’s not going to be a statistically large number.

19. My dad moved here in the ’60s, making me first-generation American on his side. I have only met maybe two other people like me in that sense, so I guess it’s not that common in my part of the country.

20. My husband’s grandparents both emigrated here as children in the 1910s.

21. Many Mormons are descended from English immigrants from the mid-19th century. Mormons did some aggressive recruiting among the working classes in England at that time.

22. I’ve got English ancestors that arrived in the 18th century, and also English ancestors within two generations.

    My daughter and son both had friends in school in Southern California who had one or more parents that had immigrated from England. My wife and I have both had multiple coworkers who were either born in England or one of their parents was.

    I’d say it’s fairly common.

23. Oddly, my wife’s mother was actually from England. Came here after the war and never bothered to get American citizenship and never went back to England after ~1949. Died in 2005.

    My wife was born in December of 1960 and apparently you can’t get UK citizenship through your mother unless you were born after February of 1961, so she just missed the cutoff.

24. 3 generations seems to be the upper limit that the census bureau cares about. They break things down by 1st, 2nd, and 3rd or higher when talking about when people come to America. As a result of this, (as of 2013) nearly 80% of the American population is listed as “3rd generation or higher”.

    [https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/P23-214.pdf](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/P23-214.pdf)

    If you care to look at the actual source.

25. I went to school with a kid whose parents were English immigrants. He was kind of a shy bookish nerdy kid so he spent most of his time with his parents rather than friends and travelling back to England so he actually had an English accent despite being 100% natural born American

26. Most immigration to the US have been driven by economics, the life of a peasant in the old country, vs economic opportunity in the US, often by moving to cities and working in factories, or moving to the midwest and starting a farm. But with the exception of Ireland, the UK was very strong economically over the past, say, 150 years, so less economic incentive to immigrate. You might think of English peasants moving to Manchester England to work in factories, not Manchester NH.

27. I know one person whose parents are British but that’s because they moved to the USA to work at the World Bank a long time ago. Which the first time I met him I didn’t know this but when he started reading something out loud he took on more of an english accent which was confusing at first until I learned what was up.

    Someone else a similar situation, one parent was american, the other english but they met abroad and settled in the USA.

    A coworker’s mom was someone from England and her dad was an American GI in WW2 and she came over after the war.

    Maybe there’s more but work or a personal connection seems to be the deal.

28. Not common

29. My great grandpa came to the US in the 1930s. He died before my time, but my dad tells me that he was very noticeably English, decades after immigrating.

30. If your question is do I have English ancestry, the answer is yes, but I have not yet found where that is. I have many Irish branches, and a one Scottish one. The English DNA could come from either.

    If your question is about my most recent ancestors, it would be:
    -2 great-grandparents from Ireland
    -4 Great-great-grandparents from Italy (with one great-grandmother being born in the USA, then growing up in Italy, then moving to America when she was 14 alone).
    -1 Polish great-great-grandmother
    -1 French Canadian Great-great-grandfather
    -1 Scottish great-great-grandfather
    -1 unknown great-great-grandfather
    -all the remaining unnamed are from Ireland.

31. My family has been here so many generations that we couldn’t trace when our ancestors arrived. DNA revealed we are 100% of English descent.

32. Yeah, there are some – quite a few actually. If I remember correctly people from the UK are not eligible for the green card lottery because so many Brits already emigrate to the US by other means. Most of the ones I’ve known have been upper class people who kind of commute between London and New York. There aren’t a lot of poor Brits who emigrate to the US.

33. My great-grandparents were English immigrants.

34. not very common. ive only met one english person who moved here and he was my professor. i think he immigrated in the 70s

35. I know a couple but it’s extremely uncommon compared to other countries.

36. My best friend just connected with some relatives in England. His grandparents had come over, and they brought a lot of photos of family with them. One of the photos is of a palace guard of sorts meeting with Queen Elizabeth back in the late fifties. Turns out his relative was the guard of the royal jewels and the picture was taken in one of the palace towers.