Talk:First white child

People to investigate

 * Hélène Desportes - "(7 July 1620 to 24 June 1675) was the first white child born in Canada, New France."
 * I added this with a source but the dates are less than certain.
 * Mr Stone, a local landowner and said to be the first white child born in New Zealand - Mount Albert, New Zealand
 * Lucy Beare - the first white child born in South Australia on Kangaroo Island.

I'm sure there will be other reports of first white children, some of which will be notable. violet/riga (t) 15:56, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

What about Snorri Þorfinnsson Snorri Þorfinnsson (likely born between 1005 and 1013) was the son of Þorfinnur Karlsefni and Guðríður Eiríksdóttir. Generally known to his contemporaries as Snorri Guðríðsson, as his mother outlived his father, he was purported to be born in Vinland, possibly making him the first European to be born in North America.

Title?
My two cents -- "white" seems kinda POV. I feel like a new title might be worth it. Zidel333 21:51, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The common term is "first white child" and was used at the time that such things were happening - modern POVs about it should be ignored as it is the term that was used. violet/riga (t) 22:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Children were not "white" unless both parents were. Children produced from a union of an indigenous mother and a Spanish father were called "mestizos" Mestizos who had children with a Spaniard or an Amerindian were called by the terms "castizo" and "cholo", respectively. Likewise, children resulting from a union of slave owner and his slave were not considered "white". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.232.157.83 (talk) 14:58, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Fathers and mothers
This seems kind of intuitively obvious, but it needs stating: These babies were almost certainly not the first children of white fathers born in each of the stated areas. As a rule, European men (explorers etc.) had been impregnating local women for ages, maybe generations, before an area was deemed suitable for colonisation. The "first white child" marks the point at which it was considered safe to bring the first white women to an area. Can any one source this? BrainyBabe 02:06, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You're correct; hence the title of this article being "First White Child". Mestizos, mulattos, and other sorts of half-castes don't count. Wormwoodpoppies (talk) 23:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Antartica
It seems to me that the birth in Antartica doesn't really fit under this category. The birth's notability has nothing to do with it being of a white child, that's only coincidental, it'd be similarly important were it of a child of any other race. The inclusion seems... out of date. ṃўɭĩє What did I do wrong 01:33, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Biracial child
Can a biracial child count? Isn't Robert Young (Hawaii), the first white child of Hawaii.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 00:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Why is the First ANglo in Texas Included?
People have argued here that to be included, the child needs to be of 100% European parentage. Setting aside the obvious problems with even that definition, the article then includes the first "anglo," baby born in what is currently the state of Texas - admitting that it doesn't meet the criteria. This inconsistency gives a strongly racist whiff to this whole entry in my view. It seems to me that there are two options:

1. Remove the Texas statement, as it doesn't fit.

2. Change it to first settlers children (as we are discussing, according to the entry, the first native born children in what historians and sociologists call the settler nations) and include all known first children in European settlements outside Europe - whether born of two European parents or not.

TheCormac (talk) 14:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes... "White" is not the same as "Anglo". I remind editors that Spain is in Europe, and the vast majority of Spaniards are considered white...  All the Spanish colonies (including the Mexican province of Texas) had a social class of settlers who had pure Spanish (ie European) ancestry.  Surely one of these would have been the first white child born in the province.... and I suspect that this child was born at least a hundred years before the first "Anglo" set foot in the area. Blueboar (talk) 21:42, 21 December 2011 (UTC)


 * During the first half of the 20th century, Mexicans had a rather ambiguous racial status in Texas, and were not considered fully "white". I'm sure that full-blooded Spanish hidalgos and aristocrats wouldn't have had too much trouble being socially accepted, but there were a whole lot less of them than ordinary mestizos...  In any case, I don't have any real opinion as to whether it should be restored to the article or kept out, but that was more or less the thinking of those who came up with the fact in 1951 or 1969... AnonMoos (talk) 01:10, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Africa and maybe an Asian section
I think South Africa should be included also perhaps Hong Kong or Shanghai. 184.178.219.137 (talk) 22:00, 24 August 2017 (UTC)


 * There were very few or no areas of "white" concentrated settlement in Asia (outside of the Russian Far East), and only a few in Africa (Rhodesia, South Africa, Kenyan highlands etc.). In any case, if there are no sources on the first born in such areas, then it would be "original research" on our part to try to determine them... AnonMoos (talk) 02:09, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

"First white child" is not a historical tradition or concept.
There is no legal concept or tradition of a "first white child" in any European colony. Virginia Dare was the celebrated birth of the first English colony in the Americas. The gradations of Latin European racial admixtures were used as an informative census system rather any tool of oppression (the first settlers of Los Angeles have their monuments emblazoned as mullattos and mestizos). The concept of white was only obliquely introduced upon the U.S. systematization of slavery, which wasn't legal or racially based at the beginning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbirdwhistler (talk • contribs) 21:21, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Move to First children of European settler parents
This article is a mess.

Is it about the "concept" of the first child being born to european settler parents in various parts of the world that were colonised? -> as the introductory paragraph (entirely unsourced...) states?

Or is it a List of those children?

Seems like the later to me, and in that case, it should be moved to a name that better reflects the articles content. (That is, if its seen as worth keeping at all, which I'm not very sure of, tbh... ) Regards Sean Heron (talk) 13:08, 11 April 2023 (UTC)


 * "First children of European settler parents" might go against WP:COMMONNAME. It's not a very prominent idea nowadays, but it was rather prominent in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century (and even in recent years was used in the name of VDARE)... AnonMoos (talk) 22:27, 11 April 2023 (UTC)