Irish Americans

Irish Americans (Irish: Gaedheal-Mheiriceánaigh) are an ethnic group comprising Americans who have full or partial ancestry from Ireland, especially those who identify with that ancestry, along with their cultural characteristics. About 33.3 million Americans—10.5% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2013 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. This compares with a population of 6.4 million on the island of Ireland. Three million people separately identified as Scotch-Irish, whose ancestors were Ulster Scots who emigrated from Ireland to the United States.

Irish immigration to the United States

17th to mid-19th century

Many colonial settlers coming from the province of Ulster came to be known in the United States as the "Scots-Irish", although most descendants of the Scots-Irish today identify their ancestry as "American" or "Irish". They were descendants of Scottish and English tenant farmers who had been settled in Ireland by the British government during the 17th-century Plantation of Ulster. An estimated 250,000 migrated to the United States during the colonial era. Only 20,000 immigrants of these immigrants from Ireland were Catholics—English, Irish or a few Germans. Catholics numbered 40,000 or 1.6% of the total population of 2.5 million in 1775. The Scots-Irish settled mainly in the colonial "back country" of the Appalachian Mountain region, and became the prominent ethnic strain in the culture that developed there. The descendants of Scots-Irish settlers had a great influence on the later culture of the United States through such contributions as American folk music, country and western music, and stock car racing, which became popular throughout the country in the late 20th century.