re: Does this ancestory demographic of the U.S. surprise you?

I remember I was a bit surprised to learn how big the German immigration to America was.

The Irish immigration, like later ones (Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican) got the publicity b/c it was so huge in NYC. But the Germans had the national numbers.

In Alistair Cooke's classic book America (1972) he points out that we think of the US as being mostly English-descended, but outside the South it's no more than one of four people.