White Protestant New Yorkers
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 06:15:31 PM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Politics
  Political Geography & Demographics (Moderators: muon2, 15 Down, 35 To Go)
  White Protestant New Yorkers
« previous next »
Pages: [1]
Author Topic: White Protestant New Yorkers  (Read 1693 times)
Thunderbird is the word
Zen Lunatic
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 3,021


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« on: March 24, 2016, 04:23:02 PM »

We've talked about All in the family here before and the image of Archie Bunker as a WASP and how implausable that would be but has anyone ever written anything about what became of the descendents of the New York nativists of the pre-Civil War era like the Bowery Boys? I'm guessing that to a large extent they eventually ended up intermarrying with the Irish or gradually migrating from the city to Long Island but to the extent that they continued to be a demographic in New York probably voted Republican in response to the heavily Irish Democratic Party.
Logged
YaBoyNY
NYMillennial
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 1,469
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2016, 05:06:07 PM »

Intermarriage and urban flight, mostly.

The ones that stayed in the city eventually became Democrats during the 80s/90s/00s. Most of New York's white Republicans are Italian.
Logged
King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,068


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2016, 02:03:51 AM »

I suspect that save a few old patrician types and maybe some super-duper rich investment bankers, WASP New Yorkers are probably quite liberal - and not very Protestant.
Logged
Thunderbird is the word
Zen Lunatic
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 3,021


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #3 on: March 25, 2016, 02:15:18 AM »

I suspect that save a few old patrician types and maybe some super-duper rich investment bankers, WASP New Yorkers are probably quite liberal - and not very Protestant.

Well aside from the old patrician types and some outer borough German-Americans i'd imagine that most are probably transplants at this point. 
Logged
King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,068


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2016, 03:57:33 PM »

Top census tracts for English ancestry in NYC:

http://www.usa.com/rank/new-york-ny--english-as-first-ancestry-population-percentage--census-tract-rank.htm?yr=9000&dis=&wist=&plow=&phigh=
Logged
Asenath Waite
Fulbright DNC
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 2,431
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #5 on: March 16, 2021, 01:35:39 PM »

If you could figure out the areas that Hoover did best in in 1928 (if city precinct level data is available anywhere) and work backwards that might be a good place to start.
Logged
King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,068


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #6 on: March 16, 2021, 01:41:42 PM »

Do we mean White Protestants or people of "WASP" origin?
Logged
Torie
Moderators
Atlas Legend
*****
Posts: 46,057
Ukraine


Political Matrix
E: -3.48, S: -4.70

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #7 on: March 16, 2021, 02:21:21 PM »

My Daddy was a WASP who grew up in Brooklyn. His grandfather lived in his parents house in Brooklyn, who was a Confederate soldier who became a POW in the battle of Petersburg, and after the war, moved to Brooklyn of all things. Anyway, my Dad was a Pub because of the "corrupt" Irish pols like Jimmy Walker, and because he found the Irish tended to be pugilistic, to the point that given his Irish sounding last name, he sometimes found it convenient to pretend to be Irish. After his first wife died, right after WWII he married an Iowa gal, my mother, and moved to California.
Logged
Asenath Waite
Fulbright DNC
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 2,431
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #8 on: March 16, 2021, 02:35:59 PM »

My Daddy was a WASP who grew up in Brooklyn. His grandfather lived in his parents house in Brooklyn, who was a Confederate soldier who became a POW in the battle of Petersburg, and after the war, moved to Brooklyn of all things. Anyway, my Dad was a Pub because of the "corrupt" Irish pols like Jimmy Walker, and because he found the Irish tended to be pugilistic, to the point that given his Irish sounding last name, he sometimes found it convenient to pretend to be Irish. After his first wife died, right after WWII he married an Iowa gal, my mother, and moved to California.

That's a really fascinating family history. Were other branches of your family on your father's side also native WASP New Yorkers?
Logged
Asenath Waite
Fulbright DNC
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 2,431
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #9 on: March 16, 2021, 02:49:27 PM »

Do we mean White Protestants or people of "WASP" origin?

There's a decent number of non-WASP White Protestants living in the New York area to this day, mostly of German descent and Bay Ridge is known as a Swedish neighborhood. There also was significant immigration from England and Scotland during the Ellis Island era though I don't think they ever clustered in a particular area that became known as a Protestant neighborhood. Torie's family history made me wonder how many southern whites emigrated to New York because while it definitely wasn't as many as California or midwestern cities there probably was a fair number as there's census tracts in Brooklyn with significant Scotts-Irish ancestry to this day.

I'm guessing the OP was referring specifically to "old stock" New Yorkers here before the Civil War and it would honestly be incorrect to refer to all of them as WASP either as it's possible a majority might even have been of Dutch descent. New York was probably the least anglo of the thirteen colonies.
Logged
Torie
Moderators
Atlas Legend
*****
Posts: 46,057
Ukraine


Political Matrix
E: -3.48, S: -4.70

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #10 on: March 16, 2021, 03:12:23 PM »
« Edited: March 16, 2021, 03:15:26 PM by Torie »

My Daddy was a WASP who grew up in Brooklyn. His grandfather lived in his parents house in Brooklyn, who was a Confederate soldier who became a POW in the battle of Petersburg, and after the war, moved to Brooklyn of all things. Anyway, my Dad was a Pub because of the "corrupt" Irish pols like Jimmy Walker, and because he found the Irish tended to be pugilistic, to the point that given his Irish sounding last name, he sometimes found it convenient to pretend to be Irish. After his first wife died, right after WWII he married an Iowa gal, my mother, and moved to California.

That's a really fascinating family history. Were other branches of your family on your father's side also native WASP New Yorkers?

My father's parents grew up on the same block on Pacific Avenue in Brooklyn. His mother's mother was from New England, and I found out recently goes back to the Mayflower via the Averill family, and thus most of the WASP New England elite are distant ancestors, including Barbara Bush (the Pierce family). Other "relatives"  are Emily Dickenson, and the Salem witch, Sarah Wildes, who are first cousins of mine, seven times removed in the case of Emily, and maybe a dozen times removed in the case of the witch. Most witches happened to be women of property, which under English law was only possible for women who never married or were widows. Women with independence and money threatened the Puritan social order, and their ownership of land was highly resented. Hanging them seemed to be a good solution. I think a couple of years after she was hanged, they said they were sorry, and gave her son 5 pounds in recompense or something.

My Dad's maternal grandfather grew up in Montreal and moved to Brooklyn (Pacific Avenue). His Dad, my great, great grandfather, was a Scottish engineer who moved to Montreal, and built the steam engine that powered the first steam boat across the Atlantic, the Royal William, and is quite famous in Canadian maritime circles. The Scottish guy's last name btw was Bennet, an odd spelling without the double T, and I have often wondered if I am related to the Senator from Colorado, who has the same last name with the same unusual spelling.

My Dad's Uncle Bennet was an athlete, and got a job as a stunt man in the silent movie Westerns filmed on Long Island, and soon decided that he could do a better job than the directors he worked for in directing them, and moved to Hollywood when the industry did (and directed some 425 films). That is why both my Dad and his brother both ended up in Hollywood, my uncle in the 1920's, and my Dad a score years' later. One thing leads to another.  It seems as if almost everyone, on both my mother's and father's side, ended up in California to make their way in the world. I once as a lawyer worked with another lawyer in Los Angeles, and when my mother took me to a family reunion in Pasadena as her "date" after my Dad died, we found out we were third cousins! Imagine that?

And now I am back in NY!
Logged
King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,068


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #11 on: March 16, 2021, 04:09:15 PM »

Glazer and Moynihan estimated the "WASP" (i.e. colonial stock + descendants of British immigrants) population at about 5% of NYC in the early 1960s.
Logged
H. Ross Peron
General Mung Beans
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 9,406
Korea, Republic of


Political Matrix
E: -6.58, S: -1.91

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #12 on: March 16, 2021, 04:15:52 PM »

Glazer and Moynihan estimated the "WASP" (i.e. colonial stock + descendants of British immigrants) population at about 5% of NYC in the early 1960s.

That seems quite low for the 1960s when the "silk stocking" district still seemed predominantly WASP. Was he counting Anglo Protestant transplants from other parts of the country who came to New York for work?
Logged
King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,068


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #13 on: March 16, 2021, 04:25:20 PM »

The city in 1960 was 14% Black and 8% Puerto Rican.  They estimated the city to be about one quarter Jewish, one sixth Italian, one tenth each Irish and German. 

(I'm referring to Beyond the Melting Pot, a classic sociological study of ethnicity).
Logged
King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,068


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #14 on: March 16, 2021, 04:29:31 PM »

I'm guessing today many if not most with English, Scottish, German, Dutch, French and "American" ancestry in NYC today are transplants.  Most live in Manhattan or Brownstone Brooklyn and they're almost certainly the most D white demographic, given that they're a mix of patricians and urban liberals.
Logged
King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,068


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #15 on: March 18, 2021, 12:39:47 PM »
« Edited: March 18, 2021, 12:47:59 PM by King of Kensington »

Do we mean White Protestants or people of "WASP" origin?

There's a decent number of non-WASP White Protestants living in the New York area to this day, mostly of German descent and Bay Ridge is known as a Swedish neighborhood. There also was significant immigration from England and Scotland during the Ellis Island era though I don't think they ever clustered in a particular area that became known as a Protestant neighborhood. Torie's family history made me wonder how many southern whites emigrated to New York because while it definitely wasn't as many as California or midwestern cities there probably was a fair number as there's census tracts in Brooklyn with significant Scotts-Irish ancestry to this day.

I'm guessing the OP was referring specifically to "old stock" New Yorkers here before the Civil War and it would honestly be incorrect to refer to all of them as WASP either as it's possible a majority might even have been of Dutch descent. New York was probably the least anglo of the thirteen colonies.

New York ca. 1790 was English than Dutch, and there was Yankee migration to the city in the early 19th century as well.  A significant number of the "old stock" had at least some Dutch ancestry though, just as in Philadelphia a significant number had colonial German ancestry.
Logged
Alcibiades
YaBB God
*****
Posts: 3,851
United Kingdom


Political Matrix
E: -4.39, S: -6.96

P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #16 on: March 18, 2021, 12:50:16 PM »

The Upper East Side certainly had a strong WASP culture even as late as the 1980s and 1990s.
Logged
King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,068


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #17 on: March 18, 2021, 03:48:30 PM »

I wonder when the "WASP" population in NYC peaked (in raw numbers).  Hard to measure since there wasn't an ancestry count until 1980 and the composition of the Native White Native Parentage category was rather different in say, in 1890, 1930 and 1960.
Logged
Badger
badger
Atlas Legend
*****
Posts: 40,252
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #18 on: March 18, 2021, 06:50:33 PM »


I can't get the maps to load here. Where in the city is that 1 census tract that I think is number five in the list with about 5,000 English Americans comprising a little under one fifth of the population of the tract?
Logged
Pages: [1]  
« previous next »
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.047 seconds with 11 queries.