The Celtic South

The first and most important thing to know about Celts in America is that they tended to settle in different areas from those settled by the English and other Germanic peoples: by and large, the Celts went south, the English north. Though no definitive studies of seventeenth-century patterns of migration have been made, such evidence as is available suggests that this ethnic polarisation of the British American colonies began at the beginning. Charles Banks, for example, in his study of 2,885 English migrants to New England between 1620 and 1650, found that only 185 originated in the Celtic fringe; 2,043 came from the east and south-east of England. Conversely, Frank Manahan studied 7,359 references to seventeenth-century Virginians and found that 6,647 came from Wales, Cornwall, Ireland or the Celtic fringe.