You’ll notice that all but three of Wisconsin’s 72 counties (and, for that matter, nearly every county in states around Wisconsin) are depicted as having Germans as their largest ethnic group. One exception is Menominee County, home of the Menominee tribe. The other two are Vernon and Tremepealeau counties, which have more Norwegians than anything else.

49,206,934 Germans

By far the largest ancestral group, stretching from coast to coast across 21st century America is German, with 49,206,934 people. The peak immigration for Germans was in the mid-19th century as thousands were driven from their homes by unemployment and unrest.

The majority of German–Americans can now be found in the the center of the nation, with the majority living in Maricopa County, Arizona and according to Business Insider, famous German–Americans include, Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Walt Disney, Henry J. Heinz and Oscar Mayer.

Indeed, despite having no successful New World colonies, the first significant groups of German immigrants arrived in the United States in the 1670s and settled in New York and Pennsylvania.

Germans were attracted to America for familiar reasons, open tracts of land and religious freedom and their contributions to the nation included establishing the first kindergartens, Christmas trees and hot dogs and hamburgers.

(If Cruise doesn’t sound German to you, Cruise’s real last name is Mapother. Not sure that sounds German either, but  …)

As for the smaller-portion ingredients:

35,523,082 Irish

Another group who joined the great story of the United States were the Irish and the great famine of the 1840s sparked mass migration from Ireland.

It is estimated that between 1820 and 1920, 4.5 million Irish moved to the United States and settled in the large cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco.

Currently, almost 12 percent of the total population of the United States claim Irish ancestry – compared with a total population of six and a half million for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland today.

Irish residents of note include John F. Kennedy, Derek Jeter and Neil Armstrong and 35,523,082 people call themselves Irish. …

26,923,091 English

The next largest grouping of people in the United States by ancestry are those who claim to be English-American.

Predominantly found in the Northwest and West, the number of people directly claiming to be English-American has dropped by 20 million since the 1980 U.S. Census because more citizens have started to identify themselves as American.

They are based predominantly in the northeast of the country in New England and in Utah, where the majority of Mormon immigrants moved in the middle 19th century.

Notable American people with English ancestry are Orson Welles and Bill Gates and 26,923,091 people claim to come from the land of the original Pilgrims. …

9,739,653 Polish

The largest of the Slavic groups to live in the United States, Polish Americans were some of the earliest Eastern European colonists to the New World.

Up to 2.5 million Polies came to the United States between the mid-19th century and World War 1 and flocked to the largest industrial cities of New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Chicago. …

9,136,092 French

Historically, along with the English, the French colonized North America first and successfully in the North East in the border areas alongside Quebec and in the south around New Orleans and Louisiana.

The personal irony here is that even though I am more German than anything else, I am more non-German than German. For our oldest son’s fourth-grade genealogy assignment, my wife and I sat down to figure our genealogy, which means our children’s, of course. It took several hours and dividing down to 42nds to properly (or so we think) divide them — in my own descending order, German, Norwegian (from which comes “Prestegard,” which means, depending on whom you ask, “animal farm” or “priest’s farm”), Polish, British, French, Dutch and Irish. (Some of those are guesses because my maternal grandmother was the original multiethnic in the family. My paternal grandfather, a native of southeastern Minnesota, married a Polish–German girl from north central Minnesota. My maternal grandfather’s last name was Wellner, ja.)

The other irony is that I don’t eat much German food. (Hamburgers are American, not German, invented in Seymour. Sausages may have been invented in Germany, but Austria, Germany, Chicago and St. Louis all dispute the location of the invention of the hot dog.) My favorite ethnic food group is Italian, followed perhaps by wherever barbeque comes from.