These American States Are More German Than Most Of Germany

41 million Americans have German ancestry. That makes German the single largest ancestry group in the United States — larger than Irish, English, Italian, or Mexican. And most of them have no idea. If your family is from Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or the Texas Hill Country — this video is about your family. WISCONSIN — 37.1% German. Milwaukee was over 40% German American by 1900. Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, Miller — the beer industry was built entirely by German immigrants. Frederick Pabst was born in Saxony. NORTH DAKOTA — 36.1% German. Four counties over 60% German. The Volga Germans — German families who settled in Russia under Catherine the Great, maintained their culture for a century, then fled to the American plains in the 1870s. SOUTH DAKOTA — 34.8% German. Same Volga German immigration as North Dakota. Lutheran church registers in Herreid, Eureka, and Hoven go back to the 1870s. NEBRASKA — 31.5% German. Omaha was 57% German American in 1910. The Platte River Valley counties — Platte, Colfax, Butler, Seward — are among the most densely German-origin counties in America. IOWA — 31.6% German. The Amana Colonies — seven villages founded in the 1850s by German Pietists — maintained communal German life until 1932 and are now a National Historic Landmark. MINNESOTA — 30.4% German. New Ulm — founded in 1854 as a Utopian German community — has 66% German ancestry today. Over one million Germans in the Minneapolis metro. KANSAS — 25.5% German. Volga Germans brought Turkey Red wheat from Russia — the strain that made Kansas the breadbasket of America. St. Fidelis Church in Victoria Kansas seats 1,100 in a town of 200. OHIO — 24.4% German. Cincinnati was the German Athens of America — over 40% German by 1900. The Over-the-Rhine historic district still exists today. The Forty-Eighters — 1848 revolution refugees — built the Republican Party from Ohio. PENNSYLVANIA — 22.4% German. 3 million — the largest German-American population of any state. Germantown Philadelphia founded 1683 — the first German settlement in America. The Pennsylvania Dutch are not Dutch — Dutch is a corruption of Deutsch, the German word for German. TEXAS — 2.4 million German Americans. Fredericksburg founded 1846 by German settlers. Texas German dialect still spoken in the Hill Country and being recorded by UT Austin before its last native speakers are gone. LBJ was born in Gillespie County — German country. WHY MOST GERMAN AMERICANS DON'T KNOW — After 1917 German-language schools closed. German newspapers shut down. Berlin Iowa became Lincoln Iowa overnight. Schmidt became Smith. Müller became Miller. Zimmermann became Carpenter. Within one generation the most widely spoken non-English language in American history had vanished. DISCLAIMER: Ancestry percentages from US Census Bureau American Community Survey 2021-2022 data via worldpopulationreview.com and beautifydata.com. Individual family ancestry may vary. This video is for educational purposes. #GermanAncestry #GermanAmericans #GermanGenealogy #GermanAmerican #GermanHeritage #GermanRoots #GermanBlood #GermanLastNames #VolkaGermans #PennsylvaniaDutch #Amish #MidwestAncestry #WisconsinHistory #NorthDakotaHistory #NebraskaHistory #IowaHistory #MinnesotaHistory #KansasHistory #OhioHistory #TexasGermans #FriedrichsburgTexas #GermanImmigration #GermanAmerica #AncestryDNA #GermanDNA #FamilyHistory #GenealogyResearch #AmericanGenealogy #FamilyTree #AmericanBloodlines #FindYourRoots #HiddenAncestry #GermanCulture #GermanSettlers #VolgaGermans #TurkeyRedWheat #Forty8ers #AmanaColonies #GermanMilwaukee #CincinnatiGerman #PennsylvaniaDutchHeritage