Ethnic Groups of Eastern North America, 1750

Although this chapter retains the historical convention of referring to the coastal Atlantic as “English colonies,” the ethnic composition of the region was much more complicated. To be sure, people of English ancestry predominated in New England, the Chesapeake region, and the Carolinas. But the Hudson River valley remained chiefly Dutch, and southeastern Pennsylvania remained German. Much of the western frontier was populated by English-speaking people of Scottish and Irish ancestry. And in parts of Virginia and the Carolinas, slaves of African descent were in the majority.