Quote:
Originally Posted by sopas ej
Except the Huguenots. Many Americans with French ancestry, their French ancestors were Huguenots.
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Yes there were Huguenot immigrants that went directly to the U.S. from France, and other groups like Basques who were not your mainline Monsieur Dupont French people either.
But the vast majority of people in the U.S. who are of "French" origin had ancestors who transited via what is today Canada at some point.
They're generally descended from people who migrated from Quebec and Acadia to work in the industries of the NE US in the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, or from Acadians (ancestors of the Cajuns) who deported by the British during the Grand Dérangement starting in 1755, or from adventurers (coureurs de bois, voyageurs) who were roaming all over the continent starting in the 1600s.
The US Bureau of the Census has both French and French Canadian as ancestry categories. In addition to others like Cajun I am pretty sure. In the case of the first category (French) a lot of those people are of French Canadian too. Many places in the northern half of the NE US have ancestry breakdowns where 8% of the population is "French Canadian" and 9% is "French". But my hunch is that these people all have pretty much the same origins.