Use Western European immigration to America profiles to help you learn about and find ancestor records, create ancestor profiles and write ancestor narratives.
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 European Immigration to America for Ancestor Research
Table of Contents
- Think like A Historian Not As Genealogist for Immigration
- Other Resources to Help Trace Immigrant Ancestors
- America: People on the Move
- Dutch Immigration
- French Immigration
- German Immigration
- What are some of the German important immigration facts?
- Why did the Germans come?
- When did the Germans come?
- Where did the Germans settle?
- What were the German’s social and work conditions?
- What was the German’s religious background?
- Are there other unique German groups to remember?
- Are there any clues to the German family naming patterns?
- Greek Immigration
- Italian Immigration
- Jewish Immigration
Return to Western European Immigration to America Table of Contents
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?
Return to Western European Immigration to America Table of Contents
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
- 5 Steps to Finding Immigrant Ancestor Country of Origin
- Overcome Research Brick Walls to Find Ancestor’s Country of Origin
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:
- What Records to Search to Discover Immigrant Origins-Part 1
- What Records to Search to Discover Immigrant Origins-Part 2
- How to Find Immigrants Real Surname and Life Event Dates
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 of 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:
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:
- British Immigration to America for Ancestry Research
- Scandinavian Immigration to America for Ancestry Research
- Western European Immigration to America for Ancestry Research
- Eastern European Immigration to America for Ancestry Research
- Western Migration in America for Ancestry Research
Learn more about immigrant records at “Immigrant Records at the National Archives.”
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.
Dutch Immigration
What are some of the Dutch important immigration facts?
The third governor of the Dutch colony New Netherland, Peter Minuit (1580–1638), purchased Manhattan Island from the Canarsie Indians for sixty guilders, or about twenty-four dollars, in trinkets. Minuit later also bought the island from the Manhattan tribe, who had a better claim than the Canarsie.
The bad management of the West Indies Company made the prospect of immigrating to New Netherland very unappealing to the Dutch people, and the population of Dutch in the colony remained very low. The Dutch only ruled their American colony for fifty years before the English seized it. Between 1820 and 1914, about two hundred thousand Dutch people immigrated to the United States. The majority of them were farming families.
When and why did the Dutch come?
The Netherlands’ interest in colonizing was mainly a commercial one. Looming hostilities between the Dutch and the Spanish, the Dutch wanted a base in the New World to compete with Spain. The Netherlands chartered the Dutch WestIndiesCompanyfor the purpose of creating a permanent trading post in the New World.
- The post would need people to live in it, which proved to be a problem. In the Netherlands, the standard of living was good.
- The government was fair, and there was freedom of religion.
- Motivating people who were comfortable at home to move to America, with all the risks and hardships involved in setting up a colony, was difficult.
New Netherland constituted some of the most choice real estates in North America, then and now.
- And the Hudson afforded excellent transportation. It encompassed Manhattan Island and the New York Harbor, part of Long Island, from the Hudson River east to the Connecticut River and west far out into the fur-trading region. It included most present-day New Jersey and Delaware and part of Pennsylvania.
- The port on the Atlantic Ocean (now New York City) was excellent for trade, surrounding land was fertile, and the climate was healthful.
As they settled in, the Dutch colonists tried to make their new home more like the Netherlands. They put together the funds to build a school and established the Dutch Reformed Church, a Protestant Calvinist denomination. Founded in 1628, it is one of the oldest denominations in the United States. True to their background, the Dutch settlers welcomed people of most religions, including Jews.
African slaves were brought into the colony. In the early 1660s, the British decided to begin a military campaign to take control of the colony, which lay between its New England and Chesapeake colonies. In 1664 four British ships arrived off New Amsterdam and demanded the colony’s surrender. In return for surrendering, they offered guarantees to the Dutch inhabitants: all the rights of Englishmen, trading privileges, freedom of religion, the continuance of Dutch customs and inheritance laws, and up to eighteen months for the settlers to decide whether to leave or not.
Dutch immigration after the colonial era
The Dutch had lost their chance at an empire in the New World, but the Dutch people’s emigration had barely begun. Between 1820 and 1914, about two hundred thousand Dutch peasants and rural artisans immigrated to the United States in several significant waves of migration.
The first wave lasted from 1847 to 1857. It consisted mainly of Catholics and conservative Dutch Reformed Protestants searching for greater religious freedom after the Dutch government cracked down on nonconformists in religion.
- Most settled in the New York area, while others scattered throughout the East Coast.
After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the second wave of Dutch immigrants flocked to the United States.
- This migration was made up mainly of farm laborers and headed West, to the West Coast and the Great Plains.
- The United States wanted to expand its territory westward and recruited immigrants through programs such as the 1862 Homestead Act, under which parcels of land were given free to those who agreed to farm them for a certain number of years.
- Available land was dwindling in the Netherlands, and with fewer opportunities at home, landless peasants were motivated to make a move.
The third wave from 1880to1893was prompted by a farming crisis in the Netherlands.
- Lousy weather and overworked land caused low crop yields for several years, beginning in 1878.
- Even farm owners chose to leave their homes and search for better opportunities elsewhere, particularly in the American Midwest and West, where land was still available at cheap rates.
The fourth primary wave of Dutch immigration to the United States occurred from 1903 to 1913, spurred by an economic slump.
- This time the immigrants mainly were urban (city-oriented), and they settled in major industrial centers in America, such as New York City and Chicago.
- Some craftspeople and merchants had also immigrated with the farmers of the previous three waves, escaping high taxes and fees in the Netherlands. Still, most Dutch immigrants from 1847 to 1913 were farming families.
In the years immediately following World War II (1939–45), another wave of Dutch immigrants came to the United States to escape the conditions left in the aftermath of the German occupation of their homeland during the war, which had brought about persecution starvation, and immense suffering.
• About eighty thousand Dutch entered the United States during this last significant wave of immigration. Some were Jews who had survived the Holocaust.
Where did the Dutch settle?
Although the earliest Dutch settlers lived in what became New York State, the first wave of later immigrants settled almost entirely within a fifty-mile radius of the southern shoreline of Lake Michigan. Later, they spread throughout the country.
What was the Dutch religious background?
Dutch Reformed Church. Many early Dutch immigrants resisted Americanization (changing or abandoning their own culture to become more American), especially in their church life.
The Dutch Reformed Church carried out its sermons in the Dutch language and taught that the Dutch way was accurate. Nearly a century later, in 1762, the Dutch Reformed Church conceded to Americanization and began holding some services in English to maintain its membership. All Dutch Reformed Church services were in English by the end of the American Revolution (1775–83).
Catholics. Dutch Catholics who immigrated to America usually assimilated more quickly into mainstream American life. They tended to be wealthier and more urban than Dutch Protestants, primarily farmers, so more Catholics had the resources to establish themselves quickly in industrialized U.S. society. Dutch Catholic, and later Jewish, immigrants also came to the United States, but most Dutch Americans were and are members of the Dutch Reformed Church by far.
Return to Western European Immigration to America Table of Contents
What were the Dutch social and work conditions?
Most Dutch Americans immigrated in entire family units and settled in communities with others from the same province of the Netherlands. This process occurred in a pattern called chain migration. After immigrants of the first wave (1847–57) established themselves in the United States, relatives and friends of the original immigrants followed them to America.
These newcomers settled near their kin, creating tightly knit communities of Dutch Americans. Surrounded by compatriots, they were slow to assimilate and kept the Dutch culture wholly intact for several generations.
Are there any clues to family naming patterns?
The custom was that the
- 1st son be named for paternal grandfather
- 2nd son named after his maternal grandfather
- 1st daughter for her maternal grandmother;
- 2nd daughter for her paternal grandmother.
- If four children were born, then all four grandparents are known.
French Immigration
What are some of the French important immigration facts?
During the sixteenth century, persecution of French Protestants called Huguenots began in France. The height of the violence was the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre on August 24, 1572, in which an estimated thirty thousand Huguenots were killed.
In 1682 French explorer Robert Cavelier (1643–1687), Sieur de La Salle descended the Mississippi River from the Illinois River to the Mississippi’s mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. He laid claim to virtually all of the interior of North America for France and named the land Louisiana.
When the United States bought the Louisiana Territory in 1802, it comprised 828,000 square miles of land, which nearly doubled the nation’s size. France ceded, or turned over, its American colonies in 1763.
When and why did the French come?
New France. Most of France’s early dealings with North America involved the fur trade.
- French fur traders established alliances with many North American native tribal groups, who supplied them with furs, guides, and transportation in return for European goods.
- In 1603 French King Henry IV (1553–1610), intrigued with the commercial possibilities in the New World but especially fur trading, sent explorer Samuel de Champlain (c. 1567–1635) to investigate.
- After his first trip, Champlain convinced the king that the French claims in North America
- He settled in an area called Acadia in 1604, which consisted approximately of the present-day Maritime Provinces of Canada: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island; and also founded a permanent settlement at Quebec City 1608.
- Within a few years, Quebec would become the center of the French fur trading in the New World. But despite Champlain’s efforts at colonizing, New France grew very slowly in the first decades.
In 1629, a development system was instituted in New France called the seigneurial system.
- The French government gave a large parcel of land to an individual.
- That person, called a seigneur, was required to populate and farm the area.
- The seigneur recruited immigrants to work in his house and on his farms on a wage basis.
- He was also responsible for helping the settlers adapt to the new country.
- The recruits were committed to staying for at least three years.
- If they chose to stay beyond that time, they were granted a small piece of their land.
- Champlain awarded some of the first settlers in the Saint Lawrence Valley immense parcels of land under the seigneurial system, encouraging them to recruit emigrants from France.
- In the present-day northern United States and southern Canada, the seigneurs of the Saint Lawrence Valley were responsible for bringing in the first immigrants from France to settle in the area.
For the century and a half of French colonization, three-quarters of the emigrants were men, although the French government sent women to the colonies to marry these workers from time to time. In 1665 France sent one thousand soldiers to help fight the Iroquois, and of those, four hundred chose to stay when offered land of their own.
The French found easy access to the heart of the North American continent from Canada. New France extended from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. French explorers and woodsmen overran the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley, establishing key forts: Fort Cataraqui, now Kingston, Ontario, in 1673
- Fort Miami, now Saint Joseph, Michigan, in 1679
- Fort Saint Louis and Fort Crévecoeur in Illinois from 1680 to 1682.
- Fort Biloxi, in present-day Mississippi, was founded in 1699
- Mobile, in present-day Alabama, in 1702
- New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1717.
The French presence in what would become the United States was mainly confined to villages along the Mississippi River in what became known as the pays des Illinois, or Illinois country, and in Louisiana. By 1752 some 58 percent of the white settlers in Illinois country came from Canada, 38 percent from France, and the small remainder from Switzerland, Italy, and Louisiana.
- Whites also brought in a considerable black slave population from the different territories of the Americas and the Caribbean.
- By the mid-1760s, there were an estimated eleven hundred whites, five hundred enslaved Black people, and a few enslaved Indians living in the Illinois country.
Louisiana. Louisiana Territory was vast but vaguely defined. When the United States bought it in 1802, it comprised 828,000 square miles of land, which nearly doubled the nation’s size. Louisiana stretched west from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and north from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border.
For France, the settlement of this enormous territory began and ended slowly.
- In 1684 the French government financed La Salle in a disastrous expedition in which he brought four ships, with about two hundred soldiers and three hundred settlers, to the New World. The ships got lost, missing the mouth of the Mississippi River, and then experienced a string of disasters.
- The crew eventually rebelled and murdered La Salle. A second expedition settled in Biloxi Bay, in present-day Mississippi. The settlers struggled to survive in the sweltering tropical climate; most later moved north to the upper Mississippi and Illinois.
- The first census of Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1699, listed only eighty-two persons, all-male. By 1708 there were 278 persons in Louisiana.
- In 1718, when Louisiana became a province (a division of the French nation, like a state), the colony had four hundred Europeans. The high mortality rates kept the population low during the next few years, despite new arrivals.
The colony of Louisianawas governed by several directors and then fell into the hands of the Company of the Indies in 1717.
- The company believed a surge in population was their only hope of making the colony a financial success. Consequently, between October 1717 and May 1721, 7,020 colonists were sent to Louisiana from France; only 5,420 survived the crossing.
- Two thousand enslaved Africans were also sent to the colony. By 1726 a census showed that the population was only 1,952 people—thousands of people had been lost, mainly to diseases that prevailed in the hot, humid climate.
- The Indies Company lost control of the colony in 1731, and slave imports ceased.
- By 1763, when France surrendered Louisiana to the Spanish, the population stood at some 3,654 whites and 4,598 enslaved people.
The French takeover of the Mississippi Valley in the interior section of the New World settlements led directly to the clash with Great Britain in the French and Indian war (1754–63; a war between England and France with some Indians fighting as allies to the French), which cost France its entire American empire.
New France ceased to exist after the final surrender to England in 1763, except Louisiana, which was ceded (given) to Spain the same year. The initial French settlement was reinforced during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by a small stream of French and French-speaking immigrants from Europe and the Caribbean; as late as 1860, there were fifteen thousand French-born residents in New Orleans.
- But the crucial migration to Louisiana was the migration of French-speaking refugees from what is now called Nova Scotia but which they called Acadia.
- These Acadians – or, as they came to call themselves, Cajuns –have become a distinct ethnic group.
- In 1980 eight hundred thousand Cajuns lived in the south and south-central Louisiana, and another twenty thousand in the Saint John River Valley in Maine.
- They are descended from French immigrants to Canada, mainly from Normandy and Brittany, who settled in Nova Scotia in the seventeenth century.
France was regaining Louisiana from Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth century when a slave revolt on the West Indian island of St. Dominique erupted.
- The uprising doomed France’s hopes for profit from its Caribbean sugar plantations.
- Without the sugar trade, France had no interest in Louisiana.
- The United States wanted the land, and France quickly sold it to the U.S. government for fifteen million dollars.
- The inhabitants of Louisiana were suddenly U.S. citizens.
- When the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, the population of the whole area was about 97,000.
- In 2002, the population from the same area was 36.1 million.
French Americans. French immigration to the United States has never been substantial. During the entire century and a half of French colonization in North America, only about ten thousand people migrated from France to the New World.
During the 1790s, several French aristocrats fled to the United States to escape persecution or even death in the French Revolution (1789–93; a war in which the monarchy was overthrown and a republic was established). At the same time, a revolution in the French colony of St. Dominique in the Caribbean drove out the French aristocrats there, most of whom also came to the United States.
A shift in French politics in 1815 led to another French migration. Between the 1790s and 1850s, between ten and twenty-five thousand French immigrated to America. Between 1840 and 1860, about one hundred thousand French people immigrated to the United States, forming the most significant French immigration wave.
Where did the French settle?
The most significant population of French Canadian descent can be found in New England and the Great Lakes states.
French in Louisiana. Louisiana continues to base its legal system on the Code Napoléon (a code of laws written by French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte [1769–1861]), the only state to do so; other states use English common law. Louisiana’s population retains a mixture of people of original French descent and Cajuns.
Cajuns were people who were exiled from French-speaking Acadia in present-day Nova Scotia, Canada. There is also a French-speaking culture in New England, made up of immigrants from Quebec.
French in New England. During the late 1800s, there was a mass migration of French Canadians, many from the Quebec area to the industrializing towns of New England, and a second wave began in the 1910s, peaking in 1920.
Thousands arrived in northeastern cities and towns, such as Manchester and Nashua, New Hampshire; Lowell, Fall River, New Bedford, Holyoke, Salem, and Southbridge, Massachusetts.
The logging mills in Lewiston, Maine, also drew many French Canadians, and many retained the French language and French Canadian customs in their new home for several generations. Later French Canadian migrations were often closer to the Canadian border, mainly focusing on Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
What was the French religious background?
Lutheran and Catholic
French Huguenots. Over time, French Protestants became strongly influenced by Calvinism, the name given to French theologian John Calvin (1509–1564).
- Calvinists believed that the symbols and rituals of the Roman Catholic practice were useless in finding salvation (being saved from eternal damnation).
- In their view, the only instrument necessary to achieve grace (God’s help or mercy) was the Bible, newly available to them in their languages—unlike the Catholic practice of presenting the Bible in Latin.
- Calvinists viewed deep faith in God as very important for the soul, but even with faith, salvation and grace were not available to all.
- They believed that God had already chosen “the elect”—the people predestined to receive divine favor and be saved from damnation.
The French Calvinists, who came to be called Huguenots, were never a majority in France–at its highest, their churches made up only about 10 percent of all French churches.
- A large portion of the Huguenots was from France’s nobility and the upper middle classes. Many were very outspoken about their beliefs, working tirelessly for the spread of Protestantism throughout France.
- French kings feared the Huguenots.
- They believed the nobility should be aligned with the king and that, by threatening the national Church, the Huguenots diminished the monarch’s power.
- The persecution (causing to suffer, especially for a difference of religious views) of Huguenots in France varied over the years.
- Some monarchs were very hostile, while several other French kings established good relations.
The Huguenots: the first French colonists in the New World
- Hostility toward the Protestants was intense in 1536.
- The French government issued a general order urging the extermination (the killing of an entire population) of the Huguenots.
- Even under the threat of death, Protestantism continued to spread.
- As the number of Huguenots grew, the hostility between them and the Catholics increased.
- By 1550 Huguenots who refused to convert to Catholicism were being burned.
- 1562, about twelve hundred Huguenots were slain at Vassey, France.
- The Huguenots had the determination, the numbers, and the resources to fight back in a war called the French Wars of Religion for the next thirty-five years.
Massacre on August 24, 1572. Starting as a three-day massacre of three thousand Huguenots in Paris, the killing spread throughout France. An estimated thirty thousand Huguenots had been killed when it was over, and some say it was many more.
Just before the Vassey slayings in 1562, the French king had decided to establish a French colony in Florida. In April 1598, the new French king, Henry IV (1553–1610), signed the Edict of Nantes, which ended the Wars of Religion and allowed the Huguenots some religious freedoms, including the free exercise of their religion in twenty specified towns of France.
- After this, huge numbers of Huguenots (with estimates ranging from 200,000 to 1,000,000 ) fled to surrounding Protestant countries: England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Prussia — whose Calvinist Great Elector Frederick William welcomed them to help rebuild his war-ravaged and underpopulated country.
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- Since the Huguenots of France were in prominent part artisans and professional people, they were usually well-received in the countries to which they fled.
- Between 1618 and 1725, about five to seven thousand Huguenot refugees reached the shores of America.
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- The largest concentrations were in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina.
The largest population of Huguenots in the United States had settled in Charleston, South Carolina. The Huguenots in the United States generally joined Protestant churches, particularly the Presbyterian Church. Many adapted to the prevailing culture around them, while others maintained the strict Calvinism of their past.
German Immigration
What are some of the German important immigration facts?
Although they are not from the Netherlands, German Americans in Pennsylvania have become known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. In the German language, the word for “German” is “Deutsch” (pronounced dutch), and other settlers likely mistook the word for the English “Dutch.”
A form of Protestantism that arose in Germany was called the “plain” churches, or Anabaptists. The Mennonites and the Amish, the German Brethren, Dunkards, and the Society of Friends, or Quakers. All these groups believed in nonviolence and simple worship. Anabaptists differed from most Protestant groups in their belief that an individual should be baptized as an adult rather than in infancy.
In 1848 German rebels who wanted the German states to unify under a democratic, constitutional government set off a series of uprisings. The movement did not succeed. Afterward, facing arrest and persecution at the hands of the German princes, between four and ten thousand “forty-eight” immigrated to the United States.
German American craftspeople brought their guild system to the United States. These craft guilds evolved into trade unions, giving rise to the general labor-union movement.
Until World War I (1914–18), millions of German Americans continued to speak the German language. Many lived in German-speaking enclaves, even those who did not try to maintain their native language. German Americans even took political action to ensure their children could be educated in the German language.
Why did the Germans come?
Mass migrations were mainly motivated by the desire for economic opportunity and prosperity.
- For many years rural Germans had lived on small family farms.
- As the German states faced industrialization (the change from a farm-based economy to an economic system based on manufacturing goods and distribution of services on an organized and mass-produced basis), the old way of rural life was quickly disappearing.
- Many were forced to move into cities and learn new skills.
- Yet, with unemployment in Germany rising, the cities did not always hold much hope. Some had few options left in Germany and sought more opportunities among those who emigrated.
The shipping companies hired recruiters to travel through the German states.
- They would arrive in a village or a town in brightly colored wagons with a fanfare of trumpets and drums.
- When a crowd had assembled, the recruiters would describe the wonders of the New World and urge the people to migrate.
- Their advertising campaign was successful.
Many Germans, seeking better opportunities, contracted themselves out as indentured servants. These people agreed to work for a colonist for a set period to pay for their passage from Europe to the New World.
- At the end of the service term (usually seven years), the indentured servant was given a small piece of land or goods to help set up a new life in the colony.
When did the Germans come?
From sixty-five thousand to one hundred thousand German-speaking people made their way to the United States during the colonial era (before 1776).
By 1790 the German American population in the American colonies had reached about 360,000. Immigration from Europe to the United States overwhelmingly increased in the mid-1800s. The U.S. population recorded in the census of 1860 was 31,500,000; of that population, 4,736,000, or 15 percent, were of foreign birth.
- The more significant part of these immigrants had come from two countries: 1,611,000 from Ireland and 1,301,000 from Germany (principally from the southwestern states of Württemberg, Baden, and Bavaria).
The mass migration from Germany had begun in the 1830s, but the peak decades were the 1850s, with more than 950,000 immigrants, and the 1880s, with nearly 1.5 million. In Germany, most emigrants left from Bremerhaven or Hamburg. By the 1850s, New York had become the principal port of arrival for German immigrants.
Where did the Germans settle?
One of the first points of settlement was Germantown in the British colony of Pennsylvania.
- Pennsylvania’s founder, William Penn (1644–1718), was a member of the Quakers, a radical Protestant sect in England founded by George Fox (1624–1691) in the late 1640s.
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- As a member of the Society of Friends, he rejected formal creeds and worship.
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- Like other proprietors in the New World, Penn hoped to profit from the sale or rent of land in his colony, but his primary aim in setting up a colony was a religious one.
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- His search for settlers started among English people, especially Quakers.
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- Before long, he was recruiting among the Mennonites (an Anabaptist group founded by Menno Simons [1496–1561], a Dutch priest) in the Rhineland, where Anabaptists were experiencing persecution.
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- The Germans in Pennsylvania have come to be known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. Despite the name, they are not from the Netherlands.
In the German language, the word for “German” is “Deutsch” (pronounced doytch), and other settlers likely mistook the German word for the English “Dutch.” Although many people associate the Pennsylvania Dutch with the Amish (another Anabaptist sect), the term “Pennsylvania Dutch” includes all German-speaking immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania and surrounding areas.
Many Pennsylvania Dutch came from the Rhineland states, especially the Palatinate (Pfalz). Immigrants from the Palatinate started arriving in more significant numbers after 1710. The first settlers sent home flattering reports of the new colony, leading to more people making the journey and settling in the increasingly German areas.
Pennsylvania’s population was one-third German by the American Revolution (1775–83). In the United States, most Germans lived in the countryside. Only about two-fifths lived in cities larger than 25,000 people. Germans settled in the states from Ohio to Missouri on the south quadrant, from Michigan to North Dakota and Nebraska on the north and west quadrants.
These territories were accessible on waterways from New Orleans up the Mississippi and Ohio, or Missouri, or from New York across the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes, and areas already connected by railroads. For artisans, the booming cities of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, St. Louis and Chicago offered job opportunities, which could also be said for East Coast cities like New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Many chose to stay in the East, while others moved westward along the Erie Canal through Buffalo and out to Ohio. By the 1840s, prominent German immigrants went to New Orleans on cotton ships from Le Havre, France. The majority moved to the valleys of the upper Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
By 1880, Wisconsin had more German Americans than any other state. Between 1860 and 1890, three-fifths of German immigrants moved to rural areas, while two-fifths moved to the cities. When they settled, they often established German-speaking communities, setting up their churches, schools, newspapers, and other institutions and keeping their cultural traditions alive in the New World.
Many Jewish immigrants settled in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, but other cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans, had significant Jewish communities. (For more information, see chapter 15 on Jewish immigration to the United States.)
What were the German’s social and work conditions?
In 1870, German-born farmers made up one-third of the agricultural industry in the region.
- Large numbers of German farmers could be found in the Midwest and Texas.
- Some even went as far west as Anaheim, California.
- West coast German farmers, though, didn’t live up to the east coast stereotype of a German farmer. Most west coast farmers would sacrifice fertile land for a closer location to other Germans.
In cities, Germans would cluster together to form communities, not unlike the Chinese Chinatowns. These replications of Germany would house prominent German businesses such as the more significant beer industry. German entrepreneurs such as bakers, butchers, cabinetmakers, cigar makers, distillers, machinists, and tailors also could be found in abundance in these “Miniature-Germany” towns. German women, however, were less likely than the average American woman to enter the labor force. Very few German women could hold jobs in a factory or as a clerk. Instead, they sought after work as bakers, domestic workers, hotel keepers, janitors, laundry workers, nurses, peddlers, saloon keepers, and tailors.
What was the German’s religious background?
Rough estimates put German immigrants at one-third Catholic and the other two-thirds predominantly Lutheran and Reformed. A form of Protestantism that arose in Germany was called the “plain” churches, or Anabaptists. The Mennonites and the Amish, the German Brethren, Dunkards, and the Society of Friends, or Quakers.
- All these groups believed in nonviolence and simple worship. Anabaptists differed from most Protestant groups in their belief that an individual should be baptized as an adult rather than in infancy.
- Since many of the Anabaptist settlers had come to the new country to lead a simpler life according to their religion, they often isolated themselves and their children from American culture and society, even rejecting public schooling.
- Cooperatively small in numbers were German Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, Pietists, Jews and Free Thinkers. About 250,000—of the German immigrants were Jews.
- Jews had lived in Germany, many having settled in the Rhine area. Jews had long been assimilated into German cultures when suddenly, from the 1830s into the 1880s, several German states began to pass anti-Semitic laws (laws hostile toward Jews).
- These laws prohibited young Jews from marrying or starting a family in their communities in southern Germany.
- Some decided to immigrate to the United States.
- The first Jews from Bohemia, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, and Alsace-Lorraine came in the 1820s.
- Many of these immigrants were young, aspiring, and middle class, skilled at a trade or a profession.
- Often they were equipped with savings to get themselves started in a trade in the new country.
Are there other unique German groups to remember?
The Hessians. In the American Revolution (1775–83), British King George III (1738–1820) did not have enough soldiers to fight the rebels in his American colonies, so he purchased the services of approximately thirty thousand soldiers from the German states and shipped them to America to fight.
Quite a few of the states provided him with soldiers, but the majority of them came from the state of Hesse-Kassel. Because there were so many soldiers from Hesse-Kassel, all the Germans fighting on the British side came to be called Hessians by the Americans.
The prince of Hesse-Kassel sold at least twelve thousand soldiers to King George, receiving a significant sum per head. However, the prince did not pay the soldiers, and many of them had been forced into the service against their will.
About six thousand Hessians deserted the British army and fought on the colonists’ side. After the war, as many as twelve thousand soldiers stayed in the new country and became U.S. citizens. This was made easier for them because there was already a reasonably substantial German American population that they could join.
Are there any clues to the German family naming patterns?
The custom of Germans was to give, at baptism, two names.
- The first was a spiritual or a saint’s name in honor of a favorite saint.
- The second or middle name was the person’s name within the family.
In some German families, it was common to name the firstborn son after the child’s paternal grandfather and the second-born son after the maternal grandfather. The suffix “in” or “en” added to the end of a name, such as Anna Maria Hetzelin denoted female, often an unmarried female.
In some German areas, you will find that all of the sons had the same first name, frequently Johann, and all daughters, often Anna.
- You might find a family with Johann Georg, Johann Jacob and Johann Michael. Usually, they went by their second name.
- But when an official record was involved, they might revert to their full name. Hans is a nickname for Johann, so you might also find records for Hans Michael or Hans Jacob.
- Occasionally, names would be reversed so that Michael Georg became Georg Michael, probably because Georg was the name he went by and Michael was only secondary.
Greek Immigration
What are some of the Greek important immigration facts?
Like many other national groups, Greek Americans sometimes become divided between those who have been in the country for several generations and those who have arrived more recently. Conflicts between these two groups came to a head in 1967 when the U.S. government-backed a military takeover in Greece and supported the resulting oppressive dictatorship there for seven more years.
The U.S. government also supported Turkey’s controversial invasion of the island republic of Cyprus, which had both Greek and Turkish inhabitants, in 1974.
Those Greek Americans who had lived in the United States for generations and considered themselves more American than Greek were less likely to question U.S. policy. However, more recent immigrants strongly opposed the U.S. support of the military dictatorship and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Since then, political shifts in Greece have kept alive the disagreement among Greek Americans.
Why did the Greeks come?
The first Greeks who decided to immigrate to the United States in the late nineteenth century were farmers who suffered from poverty due to an unstable Greek economy and a population explosion resulting from improvements in sanitation and medicine.
- By the turn of the twentieth century, many farmers could not raise enough food to feed their families and pay their rent and taxes, and there were not enough jobs to sustain the lower classes through the bad times.
- Most who decided to emigrate were uneducated and illiterate.
- Like the Italian immigrants at that time, many wished to come to the United States only long enough to earn some money to bring home to their families.
When did the Greeks come?
Between 1900 and 1920, about 350,000 Greek immigrants arrived in the United States. The Immigration Act was passed in 1924, and it severely restricted the number of immigrants allowed into the United States from countries that had not had a significant population there in 1890. The Greek immigration slowed significantly. World War II and the Greek Civil War (1947–49) almost immediately followed, further reducing Greek immigration until about 1950. After World War II, the United States, in return for its allies’ support, passed the Refugee Relief Act to allow refugees from countries devastated by the war to immigrate. Many Greeks took advantage of this opportunity, and the number of Greek immigrants rose dramatically.
Another wave of Greek immigration began in the late 1960s when an oppressive regime took over the Greek government, and many Greeks decided to flee. The Immigration Act of 1965 had ended the quota system, making entering the country much more accessible. More than 142,000 people immigrated to the United States from Greece in the first decade after the act. Since World War II, most Greek immigrants to the United States have stayed there, and many are women and professionals.
Where did the Greeks settle?
Although Greek Americans are spread across the United States, over one-third live in the Northeast. Massachusetts and New Hampshire have the highest percentage of Greek Americans in their total state populations.
- The five states with the most significant numbers of Greek Americans are (in descending order) New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Florida. Greek Americans cluster in cities, especially New York, Boston, and Chicago. Only a few of the original Greektown still exist, including Astoria in the Queens borough of New York City and Greektown in Detroit, Michigan.
- Formerly, Greektowns were located in Lowell, Massachusetts; Salt Lake City, Utah; Tarpon Springs, Florida (where Greek Americans ran a profitable sponge-diving business); St. Louis, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; and New York City; as well as others on Long Island and across New York.
- The populations of these enclaves have scattered as most Greek Americans have assimilated into the U.S. mainstream.
What were the Greek’s social and work conditions?
Like the Italians, the Greek immigrants had a system where padrones in the United States helped new immigrants find jobs.
- The Greek padrones developed a system in which they recruited workers from Greece to come to the United States under a contract. This worked much like the indentured servant system: the employers would pay for the worker’s passage to America, and in return, the worker would agree to work for several years at an agreed-upon, but a meager, wage.
- Many Greek families who could not make ends meet sent their teenage sons under these contracts. The terms of employment were complicated for these young workers, but many desired to venture out into a new world of possibilities and were glad to go, at least at first.
- Young men and boys under the padrone system often worked as shoe shines or as helpers to grocers and other shopkeepers.
- Most intended to return home to Greece with enough money to buy farmland for their families.
In 1912 war broke out between Greece and Turkey. The ties to home were still solid for the main male Greek American population at that time, and about forty-five thousand Greek Americans returned to Greece to defend their country in the Balkan Wars.
- Although many of these young men had always planned to return to Greece, they found little opportunity there after the war. Many decided to return to the United States and settle there instead.
- Most Greeks had little experience with the industrialized work world of the United States. They tended to avoid farm work but took other unskilled jobs, usually for meager wages.
- New England’s textile industry attracted many Greek immigrants.
- Many of the newcomers were exploited by the padrone system, but most managed to survive and tuck away bits of money to build up their savings slowly.
Many Greek immigrants eventually opened their businesses.
- They specialized in shoeshine stands, florist shops, grocery stores, fruit stands, and restaurants, particularly diners. Many of these businesses still exist today, as many Greek Americans continue to own their businesses.
Often when a Greek male who had come to the United States had become settled in a business, he began to seek a wife. In an immigrant’s first years in the country, he might decide to have a marriage arranged for him back in Greece.
- He would become engaged to a young woman from his home village known to his family, communicating with her through the mail. Then the woman would immigrate, and the couple would marry soon after she arrived.
Despite low levels of education upon arriving in the United States, Greek Americans are now among the wealthiest of all ethnic groups in the United States.
- Their average income is considerably higher than other groups, and their unemployment rate is much lower. Fewer Greek Americans than any other ethnic group live below the poverty line, and very few are on welfare.
- More Greek Americans pursue higher education, enter more skilled professions, and earn higher wages with each succeeding generation.
- Therefore, the average income of Greek Americans continues to go up.
Greek Americans take marriage and family very seriously.
- Although recently on the rise, the divorce rate among Greek Americans is still relatively low compared with other ethnic groups. First- and second-generation Greek Americans usually marry other Greek Americans, but later generations have begun to marry outside their ethnic boundaries.
- Traditional Greek families are pretty close and often live in extended family groups. Today’s Greek American families are becoming less closely bonded and are more likely to live in nuclear family units (including only the parents and their children).
- Elderly Greek Americans are also more likely to be admitted to a nursing home rather than be cared for at home by family members.
Italian Immigration
What are some of the Italian important immigration facts?
Italians were the most significant single nationality to have immigrated to the United States in the era of mass migration, with more than four million immigrating from 1890 to 1924.
Southern Italy was one of the poorest regions of Europe in the nineteenth century. The island of Sicily and the region around Naples, both in the south, accounted for over half the Italians who moved to the United States looking for a way to earn money.
About 70 percent of Italians from southern Italy could not read or write, and few spoke English upon arrival in New York. The lack of money and education often drove them into low-paying jobs, particularly construction.
When did the Italians come, and where did the Italians settle?
The combination of crop failure, a tax on basic food, and population growth, coming on top of an economic structure barely able to support many people in the best of times, led many Italians in the late 1800s to decide that their best, and perhaps only, the solution was to immigrate to another country.
Two of the poorest regions of Italy, the island of Sicily and the region around Naples, also in the south of Italy, accounted for over half the Italians who left their land and moved to the United States.
Unlike people who left their native lands at the end of the nineteenth century to escape persecution—for example, Jews leaving Eastern Europe at about the same time the Italians were leaving Italy—the overwhelming majority of Italian emigrants were looking for a way to earn money to support their families.
Many Italian emigrants saw their voyage to the United States as a temporary solution to their economic problems. They planned to find a job in the United States that would provide money to tide over their family in Italy until better times. About one-fourth of the Italians who moved to the United States between 1880 and 1920 eventually did return home.
In some cases, Italians worked outside Italy for part of the year, then returned home to live with their extended families for the rest of the year. Other Italians left for the United States, intending to return after a few years, but they stayed a lifetime.
Far from being a rejection of their life in Italy, emigration was viewed as a way of preserving it. Just as tourists do not automatically change their eating habits and learn the language of a country they are visiting; many Italian immigrants did not feel a strong need to fit into their new culture since they planned to remain in the United States only temporarily.
Instead, whenever possible, Italian immigrants connected with people to whom they were related. They preserved their native culture by setting up Italian communities, often called Little Italy, in the United States.
Because Italians in the United States tended to remain together as a community, for many of them, being in the United States was like living in an Italian village that happened to be across the Atlantic Ocean from Italy.
- Little Italy made it possible to maintain a culture and lifestyle that was familiar and distinctly Italian rather than American. The tradition of extended families contributed to keeping together Italian enclaves (distinct social groups existing within a foreign territory) that lasted longer than many others.
- While people of other nationalities who immigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became widely dispersed around the United States, the 1990U.S. census showed that 86 percent of Americans of Italian ancestry were concentrated in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
What were the Italian’s social and work conditions?
When an Italian man, frequently alone but sometimes with his immediate family of wife and children, went to the United States, it was customary to look for a relative from the same village or region for help in getting settled and finding work.
- The traditional extended families of Italy carried over to the United States, encouraging Italian immigrants to live near relatives or friends of relatives in the same neighborhoods of American cities.
- Even inside Italian ethnic neighborhoods, residents from the same village or region stuck together.
- Often, it was only after immigrants found themselves living in cities filled with people who did not speak Italian and had no relationship to Italy that Italians developed a sense of being the more general term “Italian,” rather than relating to a more specific region, such as Sicilian or Neapolitan (from Naples).
- In cities like Boston and New York, Little Italy neighborhoods continue to exist in the twenty-first century, more than a century after the first large wave of Italian immigration in the 1880s.
Rather than engaging in farming, which implied a permanent move, Italian immigrants tended to take work as laborers in cities of the northeastern United States.
- Landing with very little money, Italian immigrants needed to find a job as soon as possible, settling near the American port where they landed, especially New York City.
- About 70 percent of Italians from southern Italy could not read or write, and few spoke English upon arrival in New York.
- The lack of money and education often drove Italians into low-paying jobs, like shining shoes or jobs that no one else wanted, such as sweeping streets or collecting garbage.
- By 1890, about 90 percent of New York City’s public works employees (workers responsible for street cleaning, garbage collection, and street repair) were Italian.
- About half the Italian immigrants between 1880 and 1920 found jobs in construction, a far more significant proportion than any single immigrant group.
- The tunnels of New York City’s subway system, the bridges linking the island of Manhattan to New Jersey on the West and Long Island on the East, and the first generation of skyscrapers in New York all were built with the help of Italian immigrants.
Italian immigrants often lived in miserable conditions starting in America with practically no money and were forced to work for low wages.
- Italian men who arrived in New York alone with plans to send money home to support their families endured a meager existence.
- Italian immigrant families were often crammed into one or two rented rooms that lacked adequate plumbing, had little fresh air, and were built with thin walls that deprived families of privacy. Italian immigrants were not the only ones subjected to low living standards.
- Other immigrant groups arriving about the same time lived and worked under similar conditions.
Newly arrived Italian men could use an employment system around a padrone, which means “boss” or “master.”
- The padrone was an Italian already established in the United States who acted as a professional labor broker.
- Employers came to him to find workers, and Italian immigrants came to find jobs. Both employer and employee paid the padrone.
- The padrone system contributed to a concentration of Italian workers in specific industries, such as construction, where the padrones had contacts.
- Padrones also served other roles for immigrants, including acting as bankers to send money back to Italy and writing letters home from illiterate workers. Italian women immigrants tended to take a different path, often taking work into their homes, such as sewing.
• Other young Italian women worked in garment factories manufacturing clothing.
Italians often joined one of the dozens of mutual protection societies.
- These groups served as a social club, sometimes grouped around people from the same region of Italy.
- The mutual protection societies provided such benefits as unemployment insurance and education for both children and adults. The largest Italian mutual protection society was the Order of the Sons of Italy in America, founded in New York City in 1905.
- It had three hundred thousand members in the 1920s.
In the last decade of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth centuries, it was common to find several families from the same Italian town living next to each other on the same street in New York or Boston, maintaining the same social ties they had in Italy. In Italian culture, the family was the overriding social relationship.
- It was customary for three generations of a family—children, parents, and grandparents—to live in the same house on the same block as brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
- Strong family ties and enduring links to villages in Italy helped Italians form one of the most influential and distinctive ethnic groups (people from similar national backgrounds) in the United States.Are there any clues to family naming patterns?
Are there any clues to family naming patterns?
This is one of the only naming patterns where the father’s and mothers names are not used
- First daughter paternal grandmother
- Second daughter maternal grandmother
- Third daughter father’s eldest sister
- Fourth daughter mother’s oldest sister
- First son paternal grandfather
- Second son maternal grandfather
- Third son father’s oldest brother
- Fourth son mother’s eldest brother
Jewish Immigration
What are some of the Jewish important immigration facts?
At the time of the American Revolution, about fifteen hundred Jews lived in America. Many were Sephardic or Spanish Jews, and German Jews began to immigrate to the United States in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Between 1836 and 1850, the Jewish community grew from fewer than fifteen thousand to about fifty thousand. Two hundred new synagogues were constructed during the 1840s and 1850s.
Between 1881 and 1914, two million Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States. They usually arrived in family groups. In 1939, over nine hundred Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany became stranded on their ship, St. Louis, in Cuba’s harbors. They tried desperately to contact President Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945), but the United States would not let them land on its shores, and they were forced to sail back to an uncertain fate in Europe. Between the 1960s and the late 1990s, approximately a half-million Soviet Jews have immigrated to the United States. Are there any clues to the Jewish family naming patterns?
Are there any clues to the Jewish family naming patterns?
If your family has Ashkenazic origins, tradition dictates that a newborn child be named in honor of a deceased family member.
- Therefore, several people in a generation may bear the same Hebrew or Yiddish name in honor of a mutual ancestor.
- This naming pattern can guide you to some hypotheses about ancestral names.
- For instance, in my mother’s Entel family, her sister and several of her first cousins are called Bella.
They were named after their great-grandmother Bejla Szumowicz Entel. In Sephardic tradition, naming follows a different pattern.
- Children are named for the living.
- Typically, the firstborn son is named after the paternal grandfather, and the second is named after the maternal grandfather.
- Similarly, the firstborn daughter is named after the paternal grandmother, and the second is named after the maternal grandmother.
- As you interview your relatives, ask who each family member was named for.
In parts of eastern Europe, Surnames were not required among Jews until a 1787 Hapsburg decree and an 1845 Russian edict.
- Surnames fall into several categories.
- Place, matronymic, or patronymic names can guide you to specific geographic locations where such surnames were used.
- According to Alexander Beider’s Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire, the name Krasner suggests a geographic origin and may stem from Krasnaya, Krasna, or Krasnoe. Matronymic names, such as Dvorkin (from Dvora), were common in Belarus.
- Artificial names, such as my paternal grandmother’s maiden name of Zuckerkandel (rock candy), were used by more than half of Poland’s Jews, beginning with those in eastern Galicia.
The source material for this resource is a compilation from the following references:
1. Benson, Sonia. U.S. Immigration and Migration Almanac. Ed. Sarah Hermsen. UXL-GALE, 2004. eNotes.com. 2006.
2. Daniels, Roger. Coming to America. A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, New York, New York: HarperCollins, 2002.
3. Dollarhide, William. British Origins of American Colonists, 1629 – 1775, Bountiful, UT: Heritage Quest, 1997.
4. Dollarhide, William. Map Guide of American Migration Routes, 1735 – 1815, Bountiful, UT: Heritage Quest, 2000.
5. 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.
