English Americans
English Americans (historically known as Anglo-Americans) are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England. In the 2020 United States census, English Americans were the largest group in the United States with 46.5 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%) who were "English alone".[16] Despite them being the largest self-identified ancestral origin in the United States,[17] demographers still regard the number of English Americans as an undercount.[18] As most English Americans are the descendants of settlers who first arrived during the colonial period which began over 400 years ago, many Americans are either unaware of this heritage or choose to elect a more recent known ancestral group[19] even if English is their primary ancestry.[20]
This article is about people of the U.S. with roots in England. For the language, see American English. For other uses, see American English (disambiguation).
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.[21]
Scotch-Irish Americans are for the most part descendants of Lowland Scots and Northern English (specifically County Durham, Cumberland, Northumberland and Yorkshire) settlers who migrated to Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century. Additionally, African Americans tend to have a significant degree of English and Lowland Scots ancestry tracing back to the Colonial period, typically ranging between 17 and 29%.[22]
The majority of the Founding Fathers of the United States were of English ancestry. 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.[23]