I've never been a hyphenate-American, not being strongly "of" one ethnic heritage over another, and all the known ancestors having been here for several generations. Cleveland is a city with many strong ethnic enclaves, with nationality clubs, festivals, cultural gardens, dance troupes, weekly language radio on NPR. The only English designated things are the English -speaking Union, who seem to promote Shakespeare essay contests, and a section of the cultural gardens.

That we are part of the Connecticut Western Reserve, with much of the early settlers being New England Protestants, an English heritage was the default, I'm thinking, for most folks ( till the Irish came canal building. )

So all the hyphenated were the other folks, who banded together., and have a strong inclination to marry within their own ethnic group. Clannish, some to the point of having cotillions to help keep it that way. African-Americans were the most immediately recognizable, well before that term was used. The sections of town that became "Little Italy" or "Slavic Village" or the Hungarian section of Buckeye, would socially exclude outsiders for generations. England also didn't have the mass migrations that war and civil upheavals that gave us waves of Irish, Polish, Italians, or Jews did. The city(suburb) I live in, every street name has a direct antecedent in England.
Being the assumed (even if incorrect) majority, Englishness wasn't something that had to be worked at like Irishness or Lithuanianness. Trying to get folks come to English Country Dance on an ethnic basis hasn't worked at all, but there are half a dozen schools of Irish dance.

I've actually been thinking about how in some subtle ways, identifying with English roots is looked down upon. They're the oppressors, dontcha know? Slavers, and what they did to the Irish and Scots! Scorned because I thought we spoke what my folks called "the King's English" - way too proper. I see the divisiveness of having strong single ethnic identification, as so few of us are even close to being purely one thing or another, as a detriment to harmony. So I don't hyphenate. I will label myself an "Anglophile" for my love of that heritage, song, dance, eccentric folkways, literature, art, and tea till the cows come home. I acknowledge that the English and Irish parts of family history are all that interest me, and I avoid all emotional connection to the German side though I couldn't avoid the heavy Germantic body, dagnabbit.

That's my take on why English-American just isn't a thing.

Joanne in Cleveland Heights