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St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone, but as always, you probably saw buttons reading “Kiss me, I’m Irish” from all sorts of people, Irish or not.
We are all Irish on St. Paddy’s Day, they say. But according to U.S. News & World Report, only about 9.4% of Americans are of Irish descent, yet 61% of us planned to celebrate on March 17.
It all got me wondering, how Irish are Nebraskans? Back in the day, I did a story on this topic and found that, be gosh and begorrah, the “Irish Capital of Nebraska” — O’Neill — wasn’t the most Irish town in the state.
That title went to Greeley, a village of now 434 people north of Grand Island where all the streets have Irish names and they have a wonderful half-way to St. Patrick’s Day festival in September featuring great Irish folk bands.
Overall, 13.5% of Nebraskans claim Irish origins, according to the American Community estimates done by the U.S. Census Bureau for 2023 (recent statistics I found thanks to Morgan Vogel, assistant director of the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha).
Nebraska’s Irish are more than a wee bit behind New Hampshire, which leads the nation with 20.4% of its residents declaring Irish ancestry, says U.S. News & World Report. The northeast states all have large Irish populations.
In Nebraska, we’re mostly Germans, based on what we report to the Census Bureau.
About 30% of us declare our ancestry as German, according to the World Population Review. Only Wisconsin (No. 1 at nearly 36%), North Dakota and South Dakota are more German than us.
That same review pegged Nebraska as having the most residents, percentage wise, of Czechs at 3.95%. We polka-lovers are well ahead of South Dakota and Iowa, which are 1.84% and 1.55% Czech, respectively.
Oak Creek Township, which includes the village of Valparaiso, had the most Czechs per capita in Nebraska, according to 2021 estimates, at 38%, just ahead of Wilber’s 37% and David City’s 28%.
As for German towns, my favorite is the unincorporated village of Bow Valley, up in Cedar County. Nearly 67% of those living in that area claimed German origins. Every five years, that village celebrates its heritage with a traditional “schuetzenfest,” a target shooting competition in which the winner is declared “king” of a festival.
There used to be quite a battle over the most Swedish spot on the Nebraska map, with Stromsburg, Wausa and Oakland duking it out.
But the census estimates from 2023 give Stromsburg the title, with 24.9% of the residents of the official “Swede Captial of Nebraska” declaring that Nordic county as their origin.
Oakland, the official “Swedish Capital” of the state had 20.8% of its population citing Swedish ancestry, just ahead of Wausa — a self-declared Swedish capital — at 20.6%.
How much stock to put on these population estimates and census form declarations is up to you. The most recent census figures indicated that one-fourth of all people didn’t report an ancestry, and 20% reported “other” as their origin.
Overall, Sapp from UNO added, fewer people are indicating their ancestry on the census forms as the generations pass, and there’s talk of dropping ancestry questions from the census. As for the battle for the most Irish place in the state? It appears that Greeley still rides atop the Blarney Stone.
One third of Greeley residents identified as Irish-Americans in the American Community Survey, while up in O’Neill, the percentage was 12.5%.
O’Neill has a much larger German population, the Greeley folks pointed out back in the day. The most current number is that 35% of O’Neill residents identify German as their ancestry.
Why, I asked the Greeley-ites, has O’Neill had a St. Patrick’s Day Festival for much longer, and how has it been dubbed as Nebraska’s official “Irish Capital?”
That’s easy, the Irish of Greeley told me, with all those Germans up there, they are just more organized.
Paul Hammel has covered the state government and the state for decades. He is a retired senior contributor with the Nebraska
