Actually there were a number of men whose ancestry was English. :

Frank Converse, S. Leavit, Matt Peal, James Buckley, Dan Rice, Luke West, Geo. Briggs

Irish was not the only influence. That is why I used the term Celtic (which may still be less than correct if you also count men like Brower who had German ancestry).

Also, reconstruction may have added new dimensions to the interaction between Irish and African music, but we can still document huge interactiosn between these forms of music well before the Civil War. Sweeney was the example I used, but Cece Conway has documentsed others as well. I can try and quote some of her work if it is of interest, but as I am at work, the information is not at my fingertips right now.

The banjo itself is but one of the outcomes of this interaction of cultures. The banjo came from Africa as several archtypes. None of these were truly banjos, but over time the banjo emerged as a separate instrument. The African influence is clear and can not be denied, but what of the German influence of Hanoverarian Wiliam Boucher,the first commercial builder and inventor of the head tightening system? These influences must also be investigated.

On the mumming end, I just read a very good work that looks at the mumming traditions and minstrelsy. It is called" The Demons of Disorder" by Dale Cockerell. He finds blackface in mumming well into the middle ages. The book is worth the read.

George