Appalachian Beaver County

Today’s ethnic landscape of Appalachia is considerably mixed and diverse, but historically the dominant ethnic group, providing as much as 90% of 18th and 19th century immigration to the region, has been white, Scots-Irish peoples of northern Europe, including waves of Irish and German peoples.  The formidable presence and dominance of these particular ethnic groups west of the Alleghenies is only partially explained by the numbers and cannot be explained completely by the volume of settlers and immigrants pouring into the region.  These were, in the eyes of the colonial powers and then the young American government, the chosen people. As historian Gregory Smithers explains, along the northern Appalachian frontier of the Ohio River valley and Western Pennsylvania, there was a conscious effort to ensure a certain ethnic and racial supremacy. Blacks, native Americans, and other ethno-social social groups were subordinate, their participation in the region’s social, political, and economic institutions minimized. 

Unlike many most other areas of rugged and rural Appalachia, Beaver County was, relatively speaking, a frontier metropolitan powerhouse, just down river and second only to Pittsburgh (“The Paris of Appalachia”). Although early Beaver Countians shared an ethnic kinship with the rest of Appalachia (by accident or design), we can say that our “neck of the woods” has always been a lot different than anywhere else in the region, especially influenced by our waterways and industrial revolution of the 19th century.