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The '''Old Stock''' (also called '''Pioneer Stock''' or '''Colonial Stock''') is a colloquial name for [[Americans]] who are descended from the original settlers of the [[Thirteen Colonies]], especially ones who have inherited last names from that era ("Old Stock families"). Historically, Old Stock Americans have been mainly White Protestants from [[Northern Europe]] whose ancestors emigrated to [[British America]] in the 17th and the 18th centuries.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Hirschman|first1=C.|title=Immigration and the American century|pmid=16463913|volume=42|issue=4|journal=Demography|pages=595–620|doi=10.1353/dem.2005.0031|year=2005|citeseerx=10.1.1.533.8964|s2cid=46298096}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Khan|first1=Razib|title=Don't count old stock Anglo-America out|url=https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/dont-count-old-stock-anglo-america-out|publisher=Discover Magazine|access-date=July 14, 2016}}</ref><ref name="American Baptist Historical Society 1976 p. ">{{cite book | author=American Baptist Historical Society | title=Foundations | publisher=American Baptist Historical Society | issue=v. 19 | year=1976 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QWvkAAAAMAAJ | access-date=2023-11-25 | page=}}</ref><ref name="Qualey 2020 m810">{{cite web | last=Qualey | first=Carlton | title=Ethnicity and History | publisher=MSL Academic Endeavors | date=Jan 31, 2020 | url=https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/ethnicity/chapter/ethnicity-and-history/ | access-date=Nov 25, 2023}}</ref>
The '''Old Stock''' (also called '''Pioneer Stock''' or '''Colonial Stock''') is a colloquial name for [[Americans]] who are descended from the original settlers of the [[Thirteen Colonies]], especially ones who have inherited last names from that era ("Old Stock families"). Historically, Old Stock Americans have been mainly White Protestants from [[Northern Europe]] whose ancestors emigrated to [[British America]] in the 17th and 18th centuries.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Hirschman|first1=C.|title=Immigration and the American century|pmid=16463913|volume=42|issue=4|journal=Demography|pages=595–620|doi=10.1353/dem.2005.0031|year=2005|citeseerx=10.1.1.533.8964|s2cid=46298096}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Khan|first1=Razib|title=Don't count old stock Anglo-America out|url=https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/dont-count-old-stock-anglo-america-out|publisher=Discover Magazine|access-date=July 14, 2016}}</ref><ref name="American Baptist Historical Society 1976 p. ">{{cite book | author=American Baptist Historical Society | title=Foundations | publisher=American Baptist Historical Society | issue=v. 19 | year=1976 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QWvkAAAAMAAJ | access-date=2023-11-25 | page=}}</ref><ref name="Qualey 2020 m810">{{cite web | last=Qualey | first=Carlton | title=Ethnicity and History | publisher=MSL Academic Endeavors | date=Jan 31, 2020 | url=https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/ethnicity/chapter/ethnicity-and-history/ | access-date=Nov 25, 2023}}</ref>


In the 19th and 20th centuries some Old Stock Americans, primarily [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestants|English Protestants]], saw Catholics as a threat to traditional [[republicanism|American republican]] values, as they were loyal to a foreign [[papacy|pope]].<ref>David Brion Davis, "Some themes of counter-subversion: an analysis of anti-Masonic, anti-Catholic, and anti-Mormon literature." ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' 47.2 (1960): 205–224 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1891707 online].</ref><ref name="Olson Beal 2011 p. 187">{{cite book | last1=Olson | first1=J.S. | last2=Beal | first2=H.O. | title=The Ethnic Dimension in American History | publisher=Wiley | year=2011 | isbn=978-1-4443-5839-1 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3SmFEG9n6hwC&pg=PA187 | access-date=2023-11-25 | page=187}}</ref><ref name="Humanities LibreTexts 2020 z557">{{cite web | title=2.3: Immigration, Ethnicity, and the "Nadir of Race Relations" | website=Humanities LibreTexts | date=2020-03-31 | url=https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/History/National_History/Book%3A_A_History_of_the_United_States_(1870-Present)/02%3A_Populism_and_Imperialism_18901900/2.03%3A_Immigration_Ethnicity_and_the_Nadir_of_Race_Relations | access-date=2023-11-25}}</ref><ref name="National Academies Press 2017 p. ">{{cite book | title=The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration | publisher=National Academies Press | publication-place=Washington, D.C. | date=Jun 13, 2017 | isbn=978-0-309-44445-3 | doi=10.17226/23550 | page= | hdl=10919/83151 | editor-last1=Blau | editor-last2=MacKie | editor-first1=Francine D. | editor-first2=Christopher }}</ref>
In the 19th and 20th centuries the Old Stock, especially [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestants|English Protestants]], gained a reputation for some of their members opposing or mistrusting Catholic immigrants to America, whom they saw as a threat to traditional [[republicanism|American republican]] values due to their perceived allegiance to a foreign [[papacy|pope]].<ref>David Brion Davis, "Some themes of counter-subversion: an analysis of anti-Masonic, anti-Catholic, and anti-Mormon literature." ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' 47.2 (1960): 205–224 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1891707 online].</ref><ref name="Olson Beal 2011 p. 187">{{cite book | last1=Olson | first1=J.S. | last2=Beal | first2=H.O. | title=The Ethnic Dimension in American History | publisher=Wiley | year=2011 | isbn=978-1-4443-5839-1 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3SmFEG9n6hwC&pg=PA187 | access-date=2023-11-25 | page=187}}</ref><ref name="Humanities LibreTexts 2020 z557">{{cite web | title=2.3: Immigration, Ethnicity, and the "Nadir of Race Relations" | website=Humanities LibreTexts | date=2020-03-31 | url=https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/History/National_History/Book%3A_A_History_of_the_United_States_(1870-Present)/02%3A_Populism_and_Imperialism_18901900/2.03%3A_Immigration_Ethnicity_and_the_Nadir_of_Race_Relations | access-date=2023-11-25}}</ref><ref name="National Academies Press 2017 p. ">{{cite book | title=The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration | publisher=National Academies Press | publication-place=Washington, D.C. | date=Jun 13, 2017 | isbn=978-0-309-44445-3 | doi=10.17226/23550 | page= | hdl=10919/83151 | editor-last1=Blau | editor-last2=MacKie | editor-first1=Francine D. | editor-first2=Christopher }}</ref>


==Settlement in the colonies==
==Settlement in the colonies==
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==19th to mid-20th century==
==19th to mid-20th century==
{{Also|Xenophobia in the United States}}
{{Also|Xenophobia in the United States}}
[[File:Hyphenated Americans Voting Cartoon 1899.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Cartoon from ''[[Puck (magazine)|Puck]]'', August 9, 1899 by [[J. S. Pughe]]. [[Uncle Sam]] sees hyphenated voters and asks, "Why should I let these freaks cast whole ballots when they are only half Americans?"]]
[[File:Hyphenated Americans Voting Cartoon 1899.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Cartoon from ''[[Puck (magazine)|Puck]]'', August 9, 1899 by [[J. S. Pughe]]. [[Uncle Sam]] sees hyphenated voters and asks, "Why should I let these freaks cast whole ballots when they are only half Americans?"]]


Until the second half of the 20th century, Old Stock Americans dominated American culture and politics.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Oyangen|first1=K.|title=Immigrant Identities in the Rural Midwest, 1830–1925|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KFkq3ewX81sC&q=%22old+stock+americans%22&pg=PA197|publisher=Iowa State University|access-date=July 13, 2016|isbn=9780549147114}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Lichtman|first1=Alan J.|title=Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KbGiJpDk6pwC&q=old+stock+dominated+american+politics&pg=PA19|publisher=Lexington Books|access-date=July 13, 2016|isbn=9780739101261|year=2000}}</ref>
Until the second half of the 20th century, the Old Stock dominated American culture and politics.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Oyangen|first1=K.|title=Immigrant Identities in the Rural Midwest, 1830–1925|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KFkq3ewX81sC&q=%22old+stock+americans%22&pg=PA197|publisher=Iowa State University|access-date=July 13, 2016|isbn=9780549147114}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Lichtman|first1=Alan J.|title=Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KbGiJpDk6pwC&q=old+stock+dominated+american+politics&pg=PA19|publisher=Lexington Books|access-date=July 13, 2016|isbn=9780739101261|year=2000}}</ref>


Starting in the 1840s, millions of [[German-Americans|German]] and [[Irish-Americans|Irish]] Catholics immigrated to the rapidly industrializing United States during the 19th century. Anti-Catholic elements formed the [[Know Nothing|Know Nothing movement]] that had brief success in the mid 1850s, then faded away. Its presidential candidate, former president [[Millard Fillmore]], took 22% of the total national vote in the [[1856 United States presidential election]].<ref>Ray Allen Billington, ''The Protestant Crusade: 1800-1860: a study of the origins of American nativism'' (1938) pp. 407–436. [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.214564 online]</ref>
Starting in the 1840s, millions of [[German-Americans|German]] and [[Irish-Americans|Irish]] Catholics immigrated to the rapidly industrializing United States during the 19th century. Anti-Catholic elements formed the [[Know Nothing|Know Nothing movement]] that had brief success in the mid 1850s, then faded away. Its presidential candidate, former president [[Millard Fillmore]], took 22% of the total national vote in the [[1856 United States presidential election]].<ref>Ray Allen Billington, ''The Protestant Crusade: 1800-1860: a study of the origins of American nativism'' (1938) pp. 407–436. [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.214564 online]</ref>

Revision as of 08:36, 26 May 2024

Old Stock
Pioneer Stock, Colonial Stock
Regions with significant populations
United States and Canada[1]
Languages
American English, Pennsylvania German, historical minority Jersey Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and French.
Religion
Christianity (primarily Protestantism, with some Catholicism especially in Maryland) and minority Judaism
Related ethnic groups
British, English, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Ulster-Scots, Old Stock Canadians, Pennsylvania German, New Netherlander, Afrikaners, Huguenots, Anglo-Celtic Australians, European New Zealanders, Anglo-Indians, British diaspora in Africa

The Old Stock (also called Pioneer Stock or Colonial Stock) is a colloquial name for Americans who are descended from the original settlers of the Thirteen Colonies, especially ones who have inherited last names from that era ("Old Stock families"). Historically, Old Stock Americans have been mainly White Protestants from Northern Europe whose ancestors emigrated to British America in the 17th and 18th centuries.[2][3][4][5]

In the 19th and 20th centuries the Old Stock, especially English Protestants, gained a reputation for some of their members opposing or mistrusting Catholic immigrants to America, whom they saw as a threat to traditional American republican values due to their perceived allegiance to a foreign pope.[6][7][8][9]

Settlement in the colonies

Further information: Nativism in United States politics

Between 1700 and 1775, the overwhelming majority of settlers to the colonies (up to 90%)[citation needed] were Britons of varying ethnic backgrounds such as English, Scottish (including Ulster-Scots), Welsh, and native Irish, with initial settlements focused on the colonial hearths of Virginia, New England and Bermuda under Elizabeth I, James VI and I and Charles I. By 1776 there were between 2 and 2.5 million colonists in the Thirteen Colonies.[citation needed]

Early European settlers

Populations of French Huguenots, Dutch, Swedes, and Germans arrived before 1776, some as fellow royal subjects, other populations as legacies of earlier colonies such as New Netherland, which became the Middle Colonies of British America, and the Dutch colonial capital of New Amsterdam retained a distinct commercial cosmopolitan character as New York which became America's largest city. Ethnic Finns made up the majority of settlers of New Sweden colony which passed to Dutch and English rule. While small in number, Forest Finns left an outsized legacy, among European Americans uniquely accustomed to a pioneer life taming wilderness on frontiers of the Swedish Empire, bringing slash-and-burn agriculture and resourceful timber usage to the New World in the 17th century. From Tavastia, Savo and Karelia, Finnish log cabin architecture arrived early in colonial America, like the 1638 Nothnagle Cabin–adopted by later pioneer settlers like the Scotch-Irish to become symbols of American frontier culture advancing westward across North America.[10] As the Scotch-Irish first resettled Ulster from the violent Scottish borderlands before departing for America, Forest Finns lived on the rough frontier borderlands of eastern Finland until the Swedish king invited them to resettle and clear wooded central Sweden, before remigrating to America.[11][12] In 1776, a descendent of Finnish New Sweden settlers, John Morton, joined Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson to cast the deciding vote of the Pennsylvania delegation in support of independence and became a signer of the Declaration of Independence two days later.[13]

British settlers in New England

While the majority of colonists were from Great Britain, these were not monolithic in ethnic, political, social, and cultural origins, but rather transplanted different Old World folkways to the New World. The two most significant colonies had been settled by opposing factions in the English Civil War and the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The founders of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colony in the North were mostly Puritans from East Anglia, who had been influenced by egalitarian Roundhead republican ideals of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth of England and the Protectorate; in New England they concentrated in towns where decisions were made by direct democracy, prizing communal conformity, social equality, and Puritan work ethic. Partially owing to the insularity of Puritan communities, colonial New England was far more homogeneously "English" than other regions, in contrast to the historically tolerant Dutch colonial parts of the Northeast, and more diverse colonies of the Mid-Atlantic and the South which from an early stage had strong elements of German and Scottish stock, from varying religious traditions.[14][15][16][17]

British settlers in the Old South

Conversely, in Chesapeake Colonies to the south, the Colony of Virginia had been settled by their Cavalier royalist rivals—many younger sons of English gentry who fled Southern England when Cromwell took power, accompanied by indentured servants. Sir William Berkeley, colonial governor of Virginia, loyal to King Charles I, banished Puritans while offering refuge to the Virginia Cavaliers—many of whom became First Families of Virginia. For his colony's fidelity to the Crown, Charles II awarded Virginia its nickname "Old Dominion".[18] In contrast to egalitarian and collectivist New England Colonies to the north, settlers of the Southern Colonies in Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, and Georgia recreated a hierarchical social order governed by an aristocratic American gentry which would dominate the antebellum Old South for generations. Sons of British nobility established American plantations where the planter class employed indentured servants to farm cash crops; later replaced by African slaves, especially in Deep South states where a feudal West Indies-style slave plantation economy developed. Freed English American indentured servants, along with Scottish Americans, Scotch-Irish Americans, Palatines and other German Americans arrived as hearty pioneers, taming harsh frontier wilderness to settle their own homesteads amid streams and hilly terrain, becoming old stock of the mountainous backcountry. To contrast against Yankee "Anglo-Saxon" democratic radicalism of New England, at times even English Americans in Dixie (especially in decades leading up to the American Civil War) would not only identify with chivalrous Cavaliers, but even assert a distinct aristocratic racial heritage as knightly heirs to the Normans who conquered and civilized 'barbaric' and unruly Anglo-Saxons of medieval England.[15][16][19][20][17]

19th to mid-20th century

See also: Xenophobia in the United States
Cartoon from Puck, August 9, 1899 by J. S. Pughe. Uncle Sam sees hyphenated voters and asks, "Why should I let these freaks cast whole ballots when they are only half Americans?"

Until the second half of the 20th century, the Old Stock dominated American culture and politics.[21][22]

Starting in the 1840s, millions of German and Irish Catholics immigrated to the rapidly industrializing United States during the 19th century. Anti-Catholic elements formed the Know Nothing movement that had brief success in the mid 1850s, then faded away. Its presidential candidate, former president Millard Fillmore, took 22% of the total national vote in the 1856 United States presidential election.[23]

American settlers arriving in the formerly Spanish or Mexican holdings of the Southwest were labelled as "Anglos".[24]

Modern day

See also

References

  1. ^ Wilson, Bruce G. "Loyalists in Canada". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Retrieved April 11, 2020.
  2. ^ Hirschman, C. (2005). "Immigration and the American century". Demography. 42 (4): 595–620. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.533.8964. doi:10.1353/dem.2005.0031. PMID 16463913. S2CID 46298096.
  3. ^ Khan, Razib. "Don't count old stock Anglo-America out". Discover Magazine. Retrieved July 14, 2016.
  4. ^ American Baptist Historical Society (1976). Foundations. American Baptist Historical Society. Retrieved November 25, 2023.
  5. ^ Qualey, Carlton (January 31, 2020). "Ethnicity and History". MSL Academic Endeavors. Retrieved November 25, 2023.
  6. ^ David Brion Davis, "Some themes of counter-subversion: an analysis of anti-Masonic, anti-Catholic, and anti-Mormon literature." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47.2 (1960): 205–224 online.
  7. ^ Olson, J.S.; Beal, H.O. (2011). The Ethnic Dimension in American History. Wiley. p. 187. ISBN 978-1-4443-5839-1. Retrieved November 25, 2023.
  8. ^ "2.3: Immigration, Ethnicity, and the "Nadir of Race Relations"". Humanities LibreTexts. March 31, 2020. Retrieved November 25, 2023.
  9. ^ Blau, Francine D.; MacKie, Christopher, eds. (June 13, 2017). The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/23550. hdl:10919/83151. ISBN 978-0-309-44445-3.
  10. ^ Purvis, Thomas L. (1999). Balkin, Richard (ed.). Colonial America to 1763 (Almanacs of American Life). New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0816025275. OCLC 39368430.
  11. ^ Jordan, Terry G.; Kaups, Matti E. (1989). The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethical and Ecological Interpretation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0801836862. OCLC 17804299.
  12. ^ Wedin, Maud (October 2012). "Highlights of Research in Scandinavia on Forest Finns" (PDF). American-Swedish Organization. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 9, 2017.
  13. ^ Lossing, B.J. (1857). Biographical Sketches of the Signers of the American Declaration of Independence. New York: Derby & Jackson. p. 112.
  14. ^ Lind, Michael (January 20, 2001). "America's tribes - Prospect Magazine". Prospect Magazine. London: Prospect Publishing Ltd. Archived from the original on September 27, 2022. Retrieved September 28, 2022.
  15. ^ a b Fischer, David Hackett (1989). Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195069051. OCLC 727645641.
  16. ^ a b Woodard, Colin (2011). American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0670022960. OCLC 810122408.
  17. ^ a b Watson, Ritchie Devon (2008). Normans and Saxons: Southern Race Mythology and the Intellectual History of the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0807133125. OCLC 167763992.
  18. ^ Salmon, Emily J.; Campbell, Edward D.C., eds. (1994). The Hornbook of Virginia History: A Ready-Reference Guide to the Old Dominion's People, Places, and Past (4th ed.). Richmond: The Library of Virginia. ISBN 978-0884901778. OCLC 30892983.
  19. ^ McKee, Jesse O. (August 21, 2017). Ethnicity in Contemporary America: A Geographical Appraisal. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742500341. Retrieved August 21, 2017 – via Google Books.
  20. ^ Nelson, Eric (2014). The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674735347. OCLC 880122463.
  21. ^ Oyangen, K. Immigrant Identities in the Rural Midwest, 1830–1925. Iowa State University. ISBN 9780549147114. Retrieved July 13, 2016.
  22. ^ Lichtman, Alan J. (2000). Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928. Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739101261. Retrieved July 13, 2016.
  23. ^ Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade: 1800-1860: a study of the origins of American nativism (1938) pp. 407–436. online
  24. ^ "The latest to arrive were the English-speaking Americans-called “Anglos ” in New Mexico--who began moving in from the east a century ago." Neville V. Scarfe, "Testing Geographical Interest by a Visual Method." Journal of Geography 54.8 (1955): 377-387.
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