One question is Chicago, which is right on the borderline in your top map. Were the original settlers originally descended from Boston or Philadelphia? Or was the flood of 19th Century immigrants into Chicago so overwhelming in numbers that that question, for once, isn't germane?

San Francisco is clearly New England in origin and Los Angeles is Pennsylvanian-Midwestern, but even though I lived in Chicago for a long time, I don't have a good sense of who set the original template for Chicago.

Another question would be the background of Texas cities -- Austin is an outpost of the progressive German Midwest, a Texan Cincinnati or St. Louis, which is one reason why Northerners like it more than they like other Texas cities. But what about Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio? They have different cultural flavors. Do those go back to the earliest American settlers?

i think many cities are hard to fit into these templates because of their cosmopolitan nature. cultural geography was a lot easier before 1900, when the vast majority of the united states was rural. FWIW, before 1850, here are the new england % for settler origin before 1850 for each state:
indiana - 8 percent
illinois - 19 percent
michigan - 45 percent
wisconsin - 35 percent

from what i have read early chicago had a lot of scotch-irish, but they never ended up dominating the city like they did the southern half of illinois.

States mainly within Midland, Lower South and Mormon areas on the first map voted for McCain in the recent election, while Obama took most of the others. Note that some states can be in one area geographically while most of their populations are in another. Washington and Oregon are two examples, much of their areas being in the Midland zone while the population centers are Yankee. It's not surprising that Obama handily won both states.

Most of the earliest mayors of Chicago appear to have originated from either New York State or New England. Herbert Asbury's Gangs of Chicago (not the orignal title), says of the early settlers:

"The vanguard began to arrive in the spring of 1834, and by midsummer, at which time some two hundred and fifty west bound wagons were leaving Buffalo every day, Chicago was literally overflowing with land hungry settlers."

I have read that San Francisco is different just because of the kind of individuals who came in 1849 for the Gold Rush. Not where they came from, but why they came -- they were get rich quick adventurers, not settlers and farmers.

These are useful models, but I have to quibble with where the third map places the 'Upper Canadian' epicentre. That's too far north; too far away from Lakes Ontario & Erie. It's even upstream (along the Ottawa river) from the city of Ottawa - which was in no way itself the core area of Upper Canadian settlement.

Strange, too, that the Quebec French does not apparently encompass the Montreal area. Obviously any map like this is going to have some arbitrary inclusions & exclusions, but in Canadian history terms I can't see how these placements are justified.

Google’s Blog alert sent me to this post because of the term “Culture regions.” This post should be useful to the subscribers of Regional Community Development News, so I will include a link to it in the November 26 issue. It can be found at
http://regional-communities.blog...s.blogspot.com/ Please visit, check the tools and consider a link. Tom