Title: Understanding Your Ancestors: Immigrant Ancestors: Who Went and Why
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Content: Most of its content deals with German immigration in general, but some does just deal with Germans in New England. When most people think of German immigrants, states like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin come to mind – not Massachusetts or New Hampshire. It’s true that German immigrants, although one of the largest immigrant groups in history, have always remained a minority in New England. Yet the massive and influential German immigrant left no part of the country untouched. From their first permanent settlement in Germantown in 1683 through the boom years of the 1880s, Germans have impacted the history of our country – even in New England. Migration and intermarriage has meant that now a large proportion of Americans can trace at least one ancestor to Germany. In fact, in the 2000 census, nearly forty-eight million or seventeen percent of the population claimed German as their most important ancestral ethnicity. German was the largest group in the U.S. – higher than those claiming English roots. Sixteen percent of these forty-eight million were from the Northeast. Countless others would claim German as a secondary ancestral ethnicity.