surprise me, since Appalachia filled up early with Scots-Irish who’d lived on the English-Scottish border for centuries and thus had a fiery hatred for the English crown and central authority in general. These folks loved the freedom of the frontier and were the earliest people to start identifying as “American” instead of English or any other ancestry.

But I also note that this map doesn’t include “American” as an ancestry, so maybe respondents who answered that way were left off.

Fascinating how those patterns are still entrenched today, especially in a place like Appalachia. Clannish folks with a deep love for the US and an entrenched suspicion towards elites and central authorities. And lots of substance abuse problems. Which is basically exactly what the wealthy urbanites of Boston and Philadelphia said about them when they arrived here in the 1700s.