Western Migration in America

American Western Migration clues for ancestry research tutorial.

One of the essential considerations in finding our ancestors is immigration research. Immigration/migration patterns reveal clues to finding the country of origin of immigrant ancestors and so much more.

Western Migration in America for Ancestor Research
Table of Contents

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Think like A Historian Not As Genealogist for Immigration

Look at immigration from a historian’s point of view and not from the genealogical point of view. You’re trying to understand what your ancestors did and why. As a genealogist, you wonder why your ancestors migrated, and you look for clues that might direct you to the birthplace in your country of origin. As genealogists, we first search through deeds, wills, bible records, and other documents. Documents can tell you that your ancestor sold his property from one person to another, but it does not tell why he then picked up and moved from Virginia to Tennessee. When you add seek to understand immigration patterns of the time and people, your chances for success expand dramatically because you understand what your family was thinking, see what others individuals were doing, where they were going, and where they came from.

By learning about the immigration patterns for a specific ethnic group to which your ancestor belonged in the period they lived, we begin to see trends that correlate to our family, such as the ports they arrived, the counties and cities from which they came, and where they settled, the reasons for decisions that were made, the types of records they left behind and where.

You start by answering the question:

  • What was their ethnic background or group to which you think they belonged?
  • Where were they Puritans, Welch, or Germans?
  • Now you begin to answer the questions:
  • Why did they come?
  • When did they come?
  • Where did they settle?
  • What were their social and work conditions?
  • What was their religious background?

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Other Resources to Help Trace Immigrant Ancestors

Are you developing a family history for an individual or family? Are you trying to find their immigrant origins? Start by seeing the articles

The following videos can help you get a head start in understanding immigration and country of origin ancestor research.

 

How to Find the Origin of Immigrants Coming to America
An introduction to immigration and migration historical research. You will be introduced to a five-step methodology to find the immigrant origins when conducting individual and family history research.

Addition videos include:

The following are records I have found extremely helpful and full of clues to finding an individual’s birthplace and immigrant origins. It is designed to provide a quick reference and direction for finding and searching for records as probable places to find information. You can use these records to develop an immigrant paper trail to assist you in finding and tracing an individual immigrant’s origins. Check out these articles:

Records for Tracing Immigrant Ancestors
Cemetery Records Census Records Church Records 
Colonial Town Records Historical and Genealogical Societies Histories and Biographies
Land Grant Records Maps and Gazetteers Naturalization Record
Obituaries Passport Applications Ship Passenger Lists
Social Security Applications Social Security Death Index

Check out the following country profiles to learn more about their immigration and migration in America.

Immigration and Migration in America
Czechs and Slovaks Danish Dutch
English Finnish French
German Greek Hungarian
Icelandic Irish Italian
Norwegian Polish Russian
Scandinavian Scottish Swedish
Welch United States Western Migration

Articles include:

Learn more about immigrant records at “Immigrant Records at the National Archives.”

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America: People on the Move

When you stepped back and began looking at my ancestors as part of an ethnic group at a given time and place, you quickly see that America is a land of people on the move. Our ancestors were part of groups that, for specific reasons, felt a “push’ to move to escape political or religious oppression, wars, and violence, and major natural disasters. The reasons include:

  • War or another armed conflict
  • Famine or drought
  • Disease
  • Poverty
  • Political corruption
  • Disagreement with politics
  • Religious intolerance
  • Natural disasters
  • Discontent with the natives, such as frequent harassment, bullying, and abuse
  • Lack of employment opportunities
  • These factors generally do not affect people in developed countries; even a natural disaster is unlikely to cause out-migration.

When you are pushed, where do you go? One senses the “pull” America had upon our ancestors. Economic and professional opportunities were the foundation for our ancestors coming to America. It was the availability of lands for farming, an abundance of jobs, and higher salaries. The reasons include:

  • Higher incomes
  • Lower taxes
  • Better weather
  • Better availability of employment
  • Better medical facilities
  • Better education facilities
  • Better behavior among people
  • Family reasons
  • Political stability
  • Religious tolerance
  • Relative freedom
  • Weather
  • National prestige

The following immigration/migration profiles are provided as an example of valuable information for finding the origin of your ancestors and helping to understand your ethnic heritage better. This information is not all-inclusive, but it will be a good starting point for you to expand upon.

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California Gold Rush and Western Migration

Western Migration in America

Nine days before the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed, gold was discovered in northern California.

  • The news of the gold discovery soon spread around the globe, and a massive rush of people poured into the region.
  • By the end of 1848, about six thousand miners had arrived and obtained ten million dollars worth of gold.
  • During 1849, about forty thousand to fifty thousand more gold seekers had poured into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada; gold production was two or three times as tremendous but spread among more miners.
  • In 1850 an estimated eighty thousand more miners arrived. In 1852, the peak year of production, about eighty million dollars in gold was mined in the state.
  • To get to California as quickly as possible to participate in the rush for riches in the mid-1800s, just a few routes were available from within the United States, and all of them took months.

People came overland, on horseback or with a small wagon, often by the Oregon-California Trails. They also came by sea.

  • Coming from the East Coast, they sailed down around Cape Horn at the southernmost part of South America or through the Strait of Magellan in Argentina and then sailed back up along the West Coast. This trip also took about five months and was pretty expensive.
  • Other ocean routes brought the traveler partway down the Atlantic shores of South America and then required overland routes across that continent and boarding a ship on the Pacific side.
  • Many fortune seekers came in from Europe and South America, and Asia was also represented among the newcomers.
  • California’s population quadrupled during the 1850s, reaching nearly 380,000 by 1860, and it continued to grow at a rate twice that of the nation as a whole in the 1860s and 1870s.
  • The new population of California was remarkably diverse, coming from many different backgrounds.

The 1850 census found that nearly a quarter of all Californians were foreign-born, while only a tenth of the national population had been born abroad.

  • In succeeding decades, the percentage of foreign-born Californians increased, rising to just under 40 percent during the 1860s.
  • Most of the migrants who rushed to California to pan for gold were young males who had no intention of staying there. The 1850 census records that 92 percent of California’s population was male. They wanted to get rich and go home. Many did leave within a year or two. Most were disappointed, broke, and unhappy, having survived the lawless, violent frontier conditions but not having found the fortune they sought.
  • One of the most severe problems facing California in the early years of the gold rush was the absence of adequate government.

Miners organized more than five hundred “mining districts” to regulate their affairs; in San Francisco and other cities, “vigilance committees” were formed to combat widespread robbery and arson.

  • Violence was rampant during the Gold Rush. There was drinking and fighting in the gold camps where miners stayed, and many arguments were resolved with guns.
  • Although there were many murders among the European Americans who had arrived in California’s gold camps, the Chinese and Native Americans were particularly victimized by the gold miners’ cruelty and lawlessness.
  • Immigrants from China, arriving with gold fever like everyone else, were physically abused, denied fundamental rights, and prohibited from working.
  • The gold-seekers treatment of California’s Native Americans (called “forty-niners,” because they began to arrive in 1849) is an appalling segment of American history. Men viciously hunted down Native.
  • Americans and shot them as if in sport. Some newspaper writers advocated the annihilation (killing everyone in a particular group) of California Indians. It is estimated that there were about 150,000 Native people in California in 1848, before the Gold Rush.
  • According to historian James Sandoz, as quoted by Stegner, by 1860, there were only about 30,000 Indians left in California. Some died from infectious diseases, but murder by migrating Europeans killed most of the population.

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Forced Migrations

Western Migration in America

In 1755 the British expelled the French-speaking Acadians from Nova Scotia. Between four thousand and seven thousand Acadians were forced onto ships and carried to various ports. Between seven thousand and ten thousand more Acadians fled from their homes. Many historians believe that about half the Acadian population died due to the expulsion from their homeland, mostly from disease, starvation, or exposure.

In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, empowering the president to enter into treaties with Native Americans living east of the Mississippi to exchange their lands for land west of the Mississippi River. Indians were to move to a territory composed of present-day Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska known as Indian Territory. According to the removal plan, all the Indian nations could form a commonwealth governed by a confederation of tribes.

Between thirteen thousand and sixteen thousand Cherokee were marched from Georgia to Oklahoma during the fall and winter of 1838 to 1839. More than one-fourth, or between four thousand and eight thousand people, died during the forced march from starvation, sickness, exposure to the cold weather, and exhaustion. The Cherokee remember the trek as “The Trail Where They Cried,” referred to as the Trail of Tears in most history books.

In 1864 the U.S. government settled the “Navajo problem,” bringing in frontiersman Kit Carson (1809–1868). Carson and his army proceeded through the Navajo lands, taking their livestock and burning their homes and crops. Thousands of nearly starving Navajo surrendered. Eight thousand Navajo was resettled at Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner in New Mexico in the following year. In large groups at various times, they were forced to make the three hundred-mile walk on foot, an event that has become known as the Long Walk.

In 1889 Indian Territory was opened for settlement to non-Indians in the first Oklahoma Land Runs. An estimated fifty thousand people lined up at the boundaries of the Indian Territory that day. By sundown, they had claimed two million acres of land.

On March 31, 1942, all Japanese Americans living along the West Coast were directed to report to control stations and register the names of all family members. They were then told when and where to report with their families for relocation to an assembly area, a temporary camp where they could be held until they could be more permanently placed in an internment camp.

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When did they come, and where did they settle?

Africans sold into slavery arrived in the New World using forced immigration.

  • Unlike the nation’s other immigrants, they did not arrive on U.S. shores to seek opportunities or start a new life; instead, they were shipped to the country against their will and deprived of their human rights for the benefit of enslavers.
  • An immigrant travels to a country of which they are not a native to settle there as a permanent resident.
  • Although Africans brought to the United States as enslaved people were indeed immigrants, their experiences differed widely from the experiences of people who chose to immigrate.

Many of the lands the pioneers in the United States took over during the westward expansion already belonged to Native Americans who had lived on the continent for thousands of years.

  • During the westward mass migration, thousands of people in the eastern United States moved to the western frontier regions.
  • The consequences of the mass migration for American Indians often were gruesome and unfair.
  • The experiences of each of the tribes upon the arrival of the white settlers to their lands differed. Most were shut out of their lands. Many tribes, however, remained on their ancestral lands under the provisions of treaties (contracts signed by two parties showing agreement on the terms described within the contract) with the United States. Almost always, however, it was only on a small portion of their lands on reservations (lands set aside by the government to use a particular Native American group or groups) and under terms that drastically changed their way of life.
  • Some Native American tribes, witnessing the defeat of other tribes, chose to migrate (to move from one place to another) to avoid conflict with the white settlers. Tribes that tried to stay in their homelands were forced by the United States government to leave, sometimes at gunpoint.
  • Some Native American groups that these forced migrations happened to were the Five Civilized Tribes, the Navajo, and the Nez Perce.

Some groups arrived in the United States through involuntary exile (being forced to leave) from their homeland. Such was the case with the Acadians, French-speaking Catholics forced from Nova Scotia by the British, and the Acadians eventually found their way to Louisiana. Although the United States prides itself on providing fundamental rights to its people, forced removal of groups from their homes due to religion or ancestry has occurred in the nation’s history.

The Mormons, whose religious beliefs were targeted by local governments, were exiled from their home base in Missouri, triggering the migration of tens of thousands west to Utah.

Later, more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans were evacuated (removed during an emergency) from their homes on the West Coast and placed in internment camps (places in which people are confined in wartime) by the American government during World War II (1939–45) for no other reason than their ancestry.

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Mail Systems and Western Migration

Western Migration in America

In the nineteenth century, migrating westward meant leaving many aspects of civilization behind, but people still needed to send and receive mail.

  • Some mail was delivered to California by boats that made the trip around South America from the East Coast.
  • Stagecoaches, though independently owned, were often paid by the government to handle the mail on regular schedules.
  • The government even improved the roads used for this purpose and sometimes posted troops to guard the mail-bearing coaches.
  • The first government contract with an independent stagecoach was in 1858.

By 1860 a company called the Pony Express had formed to take on mail delivery in the West.

  • For a little over a year, the Pony Express riders delivered mail in an area spanning between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California.
  • The company hired young riders to do the job. Each rider changed horses every ten or fifteen miles at the 190 stations the service established. After about seventy-five miles, a new rider took over.
  • Many of the two hundred riders employed by the Pony Express were teenagers, and the company gave them Bibles and made them promise not to drink or swear.
  • The first run of the Pony Express in April 1860 proved successful, reaching California in only ten days. The service operated once a week at first, then twice weekly.
  • In November 1860, the riders carried a telegraph report of the election of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) to the presidency from Fort Kearny, Nebraska, to Fort Churchill, Nevada, in six days, their fastest ride yet.
  • But in 1861, the company folded as the first transcontinental telegraph line reached San Francisco.
  • The railroads soon took over the mail delivery.

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Homestead Act and Western Migration

Western Migration in America

During the 1830s and 1840s, the notion of free land for setters attracted powerful support from labor organizations. People like Horace Greeley (1811–1872), the editor of the influential New York Tribune, campaigned to distribute homestead parcels to anyone who wanted them.

For decades, though, a political coalition of Easterners and Southerners managed to block a free land policy. Southerners suspected that antislavery settlers would populate the territories. The conservative Easterners who allied themselves with the slaveholding Southerners on this issue generally opposed westward migration. After years of conflict, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Law.

Under the bill’s provisions, a settler twenty-one years of age or older who were or intended to become a citizen and who acted as the head of a household could acquire a tract of 160 acres of surveyed public land free of all but minor registration payments. The title to that land went to the settler after five years of continuous residence. The act immediately drew people from all over the world to the interior of the United States.

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Oregon Trail and Western Migration

Western Migration in America

The first people to travel the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon were Presbyterian missionaries Marcus (1802–1847) and Narcissa (1808–1847) Whitman. They made the trip with three other missionaries in 1836. They developed a mission among the Cayuse Indians in the Walla Walla River Valley in the southwestern corner of present-day Washington.

The Methodist Church sent missionaries to Oregon in 1837 and 1840.

  • Although the missionaries had little success in changing the religious beliefs of the Native Americans, their success in getting to Oregon and living there made a significant impact on friends and family back home.

In 1841 and 1842, miniature wagon trains set off from Independence, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail. According to Frank McLynn in his book Wagons West: The Epic Story of America’s Overland Trails, 34 people made it overland to California in 1841, and 125 made it to Oregon in 1842.

Although the British policy discouraged U.S. migrants from entering Oregon, they were usually beneficial to those who arrived. As the decade progressed and Americans responded to the westward expansion fever, the Oregon Trail became heavily traveled. In 1843, 1,000 people with 120 wagons and vast herds of cattle and oxen met in Missouri to start their long, arduous journey overland on the Oregon Trail.

Of these, 875 people made it to the Pacific Northwest, where they settled in the fertile Willamette Valley. More than 1,500 people made the trip the following year, arriving either in Oregon or California. In 1845, 2,760 pioneers set off for Oregon or California. In 1849, the majority of the migrants were on their way to Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

According to McLynn, more than 14,000 people traveled overland to the Pacific Coast. Of that total, only 2,735 went to California, while 11,512 went to Oregon. In 1845 many Americans believed it was the manifest destiny of the United States to expand from coast to coast.

This expansion could not be accomplished without gaining control of California and the Oregon Territory. The United States became eager to annex the Oregon Territory early in the decade and made constant offers to the British to divide the Territory. Britain was not interested in Oregon but wanted to keep its interests in Vancouver and its access to the Columbia River in what is now the state of Washington.

In 1845, war with Britain over the disputed area seemed likely. However, the leading British presence in the Oregon Territory, the Hudson’s Bay Company, had lost interest in the area because the beaver population had been depleted. The company moved its headquarters out of the region.

The British could not defend it with so many Americans already living in the Willamette Valley. In 1846 Britain accepted the U.S. proposal to set the border between the United States and British interests in Canada at the forty-ninth parallel. Oregon and Washington had become a part of the United States.

  • It would not be so easy to win California. Mexico had many reasons for bitterness toward the United States and its pursuit of manifest destiny.
  • In 1846 the Mexican-American War (1846–48) began.
  • In January 1847, the Mexican forces in California surrendered. More than a year later, after a long period of fighting in central Mexico, a treaty of peace was signed at Guadalupe-Hidalgo in February 1848.
  • Under the terms of the Treaty of Hidalgo, Mexico ceded California and other territories to the United States in exchange for fifteen million dollars and the acquisition by the United States of some three million dollars in claims by Mexican citizens.

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On the Move: Life in Wagon Trains

Western Migration in America

Before the railroads traversed the continent, some people made the trip out West in a stagecoach.

  • There were numerous independent stagecoach lines, with stops throughout the West. People could book passages and be driven to their destination with other travelers, but this was not as easy as it may sound.
  • The trips were dusty, crowded, long, and very difficult. The cost to customers for the trip was about seven cents a mile and often severe physical discomfort, as the ride could brutally shake passengers.
  • The most popular slang terms for stagecoaches on the western routes were the “shake guts” and “spankers.”

Most pioneers selected to obtain their wagon.

  • Many set out on their journey to the West with their farm wagon filled with belongings and covered with a canvas tent. Others bought wagons designed explicitly for the overland trails.
  • They often joined a wagon train, an organized caravan of wagons with a captain to lead the way across the continent.

People starting from points east in 1843 and 1869 generally started their trip on the Missouri River, which runs from West to east from present-day southern Montana at the far West, through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. The Missouri River then crosses Missouri, where it meets the Mississippi River.

  • Most migrants boarded their wagon on a steamship somewhere on the eastern part of the river. They then got off the ship at a “jumping off point”—usually Independence, St. Joseph, Westport in Missouri, or Omaha or Council Bluffs in Nebraska.
  • Each spring in these towns, thousands of wagons would gather to await the departure of the wagon train.
  • On an agreed-upon day, the journey would begin, but very slowly. The route would become so congested with wagons that the first several days could be spent simply getting all the wagons on the road.

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The wagon trains usually had a hired guide, generally, a mountain man who knew the route well.

  • They usually elected leaders and formed a simple government so that decisions could be made throughout the trip. People did not always act in harmony, however. Pioneer diaries reveal that quarreling and hostility were very common among the wagon train participants.

Like immigrants from overseas, the migrants pushing West were generally people of middle income: neither the wealthiest nor the poorest of Americans.

  • The wealthy probably did not often go because they were well enough off where they were. The poor simply could not afford to go.
  • The cost of the wagon, supplies, and setting up in the West would be prohibitive.
  • It is said that the very least amount of starting money to make the trip would have been about $500, but $1,000 was more reasonable, and many spent much more than that. If the pioneer was not using their farm wagon, a wagon and a team of oxen or mules might cost between $300 and $600.
  • In 1850 the average wage for a laborer was about 25 cents per day (this usually included room and board) and about 62 cents a day for a skilled laborer. At the time, these were substantial amounts of money. To spend $1,000 in 1850 would be equivalent to spending more than $22,000 today.
  • Most people leaving for the West sold their farm or home and just about everything else they owned. Some people who did no

Two types of covered wagons dominated the overland trips of the pioneers in the mid-nineteenth century: Conestoga wagons and prairie schooners.

  • Conestoga wagons were developed in the eastern United States to haul heavy cargo. At about twenty-three feet long, they were so big animal teams couldn’t pull them over the treacherous roads of the Oregon Trail.
  • Prairie schooners were about half the size of Conestoga wagons and were helpful on the Oregon Trail, where a minor team of animals could haul them. They featured a hoop frame to hold the bonnet over the wagon bed.
  • Mules or oxen almost always pulled wagons on the Oregon Trail. Horses were not able to travel long enough without grass and water.
  • The wagons needed to hold ample supplies for the pioneers to survive the trip.
  • The wagons had to be as light as possible not to overexert the animals on the rugged trip.

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Participants in wagon trains were urged not to carry furniture or anything else they would not need on the trip. Most of the tremendous load in their wagon was in essential foods. According to McLynn, a family of four would need at least:

  • 800 pounds of flour per person
  • 400 pounds of bacon per person
  • 300 pounds of beans, rice, and dried fruit
  • 75 pounds of coffee
  • 200 pounds of lard
  • 25 pounds of salt and pepper
  • They would also need simple tools to fix their wagon, shoes, clothes, cooking utensils, pots and pans, and dishes.

Once they were on the road, the pioneers settled as best they could into a daily routine, though they were often beset by challenges (river crossings, bad weather). People slept either in their wagons, though these were often too crowded with supplies, or in tents. They woke early in the morning.

  • Men would herd the cattle that had strayed during the night, break camp, and yoke their teams, while the children gathered buffalo chips (dung, that is, dried manure droppings left by the herds of buffalo on the plains) to burn for fires.
  • Women cooked the breakfast, and by 7:00 A.M., everyone was continuing to travel. Many people walked most of the day.
  • The trains plodded on at a walking pace, usually covering fifteen to twenty-five miles on a good day. The person who drove the team was often the only one on the wagon, although sometimes others would nap in the back in the afternoons.
  • The wagon train guide chose the spot for encampment in the evening.
  • The wagons in the train would form a large circle, with the livestock inside the circle, as protection from Indian raids or wandering off.
  • Then tents were pitched outside the circle. Children gathered the buffalo chips for the evening fires, and women began cooking the evening meal.
  • After dinner, there was talk and even singing and storytelling around the fire, while the women were generally left with the cleanup.

According to many historians, in the division of labor that prevailed, women may have worked the hardest on the trail.

  • When the caravan stopped at mealtime, the women could not just relax; they were expected to prepare and serve a hearty, simple meal.
  • They baked bread daily—even pastries were on most families’ menus. All this was done with the difficulties of cooking outside, keeping bugs and dirt out of the food, using a makeshift oven, and dealing with all kinds of weather.
  • Besides cooking and childcare, women were responsible for laundry—a grueling job that required quite a few hours at the riverside.
  • Because no one wanted to hold up the day’s travel for laundry, the chore usually had to be done on Sunday, the only day the train did not travel. Thus, while others rested, women were often pounding out the family’s filthy clothes on the rocks of a frigid river.

It is said that about one in ten pioneers died while crossing the continent in a wagon train. The greatest dangers were drowning and wagon accidents.

  • Exposed to the weather and each other, there were many outbreaks of infectious disease, especially cholera, an often fatal disease of the intestines.
  • Although much has been written about the dangers posed by Native Americans, most tribes were very helpful to the emigrants.
  • In many cases, the wagon trains relied on Native Americans for survival, either for the goods they could trade or their help in emergencies.

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Orphan Trains and Western Migration

Western Migration in America

From about 1850 through the early twentieth century, thousands of children were transferred from the overcrowded orphanages and homes in the large cities in the northeastern United States to live with families on farms throughout the middle West.

The name orphan train originates with the railroad trains that transported the children to their new homes.

  • While some of the children were orphans, many had one or even two living parents. In those cases, the child’s parents were unable or unwilling to care for them.
  • Other parents believed their children would have a better life if sent to a caring family in the farmlands of the West.
  • Many parents and children were immigrants who found life in America harder than they anticipated.

The goal of the orphan trains was to provide the children with a better life – many had fended for themselves on the streets of New York.

  • Many were not babies but were in their teens when sent West.
  • The results were mixed. In some cases, as adults, the orphan train riders were very positive about their adoptive family, feeling they were treated well, loved, and given a better chance in life.
  • However, in many cases, the children were taken into a new home only for the work they were expected to do.
  • Some were mistreated. In many cases, siblings were separated from each other and from the only family they knew.

Family history research about Orphan Train Riders is often a complex undertaking. Record scan is scarce.

  • Like adults, children often did not remember or did not discuss their previous life in the east.
  • Many feel that contact with siblings and living relatives was discouraged – perhaps in an attempt to “help the children adjust” to their new home.

Although Orphan Trains originated in other eastern cities, this list of references focuses on three of the most prominent agencies from New York City:

  • New York Juvenile Asylum
  • New York Children’s Aid Society
  • New York Foundling Hospital (Roman Catholic)

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Railroads and Western Migration

Western Migration in America

In the 1830s, steam railroads began to appear in the nation, and most railroad lines merely joined major waterways as people continued to rely on water transportation. However, investors began to develop new routes, and by 1853 seven routes connected the eastern seaboard with the interior West.

Although no railroad connected the East Coast with California until 1869, by 1860, the United States possessed more than thirty thousand miles of rails, most of it east of the Missouri River.’ In 1862 the U.S. Congress decided to go forward with long-discussed plans for a transcontinental railroad, which stretched from coast to coast. Two railroad companies were given the job.

Central Pacific Company started laying tracks in Sacramento, California, and cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In contrast, the Union Pacific Railroad started its project in Omaha, Nebraska, to meet with Central Pacific.

The actual meeting of the two projects in Promontory Point, Utah Territory, on May 10, 1869, marked the achievement of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.

Before the 1870s, cities and towns could arise only on coasts and major waterways. Water provided the only means to deliver the food and goods consumed by the population and transport the goods produced there.

After 1870, thousands of miles of rail connected even the most remote areas to the rest of the country, and communities sprouted up rapidly all over the nation.

Westward Migration 1783-1912: When and why did they come
Between 1805 and 1840, mountain men trapping for beaver opened up the roads that would open the West to U.S. expansion and settlement. In 1843, 1,000 people with 120 wagons and vast herds of cattle and oxen met in Missouri to start overland on the Oregon Trail. More than 1,500 people made the trip the following year, arriving either in Oregon or California. In 1845, 2,760 pioneers set off for Oregon or California. During wagon migration, about 14,000 people traveled overland to the Pacific Coast.

After gold was discovered in California in 1848, California’s population quadrupled, reaching nearly 380,000 by 1860. The state’s population continued to grow at a rate twice that of the nation in the 1860s and 1870s.

In 1862 Congress subsidized (financially supported) two railroad companies to finish the transcontinental railroad. The Central Pacific Company started laying tracks in Sacramento, California, and cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Union Pacific Railroad started its project in Omaha, Nebraska, to meet with Central Pacific. The actual meeting of the two projects in Promontory Point, Utah Territory, on May 10, 1869, marked the achievement of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.

The Homestead Act of 1862 touched off a mass migration from 1870 to 1900, when 4.3 million acres were settled, mainly in the prairie and High Plains regions of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. Overall, the amount of farmland under cultivation doubled.

The source material for this resource is a compilation from the following references:

  • Benson, Sonia. U.S. Immigration and Migration Almanac. Ed. Sarah Hermsen. UXL-GALE, 2004. eNotes.com. 2006.
  • Daniels, Roger. Coming to America. A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, New York, New York: HarperCollins, 2002.
  • Dollarhide, William. British Origins of American Colonists, 1629 – 1775, Bountiful, UT: Heritage Quest, 1997.
  • Dollarhide, William. Map Guide of American Migration Routes, 1735 – 1815, Bountiful, UT: Heritage Quest, 2000.
  • Wills, Chuck. Destination America. The People and Cultures That Created A Nation, New York, New York: D.K. Publishing, Inc., 2005.
    6. Research Outlines by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City, UT.

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