Ladies and Gentlemen:
Caution in making conclusions is always a good practice. A first look
is not always enough in determining why a person or a family settled where
they did. Let me give you an example from Nebraska in the 1880s.
Four families emigrated from Vorpommern in late winter 1881, landed in
Baltimore April 16, 1881 and made their way to Grand Island, Nebraska. The
men in these families took jobs with the railroad, the primary employer in the
town at that time. They were not railroad men, nor had they worked on a
railroad before immigration; they were farmers. However, if you look at where
these men were seven years later, you would find that they were all
homesteaders thirty miles west of Grand Island. They had taken jobs in the city where
they were readily available and saved their money and took advantage of the
opportunity to acquire a farm when one became available.
It should be remembered that Germans often occupied farms when the
original American settler left the area for more virgin territory. There is a
fine treatment of some of the issues addressed on the list in a book titled
Immigrants and Politics; The Germans of Nebraska, 1880-1900 by Frederick C.
Luebke. The chapters "The Germans Come to Nebraska", "Nebraska's Germans and the
Process of Assimilation", and "The Germans of Nebraska: A Collective
Portrait" are excellent. Another resource that I would recommend to everyone is
Germany and the Emigration 1816-1885 by Mack Walker. Published in 1964 by the
Harvard Univ. Press where Mack Walker taught history, it is not readily
available, but it is well worth the search.
Gary Beard
Bellevue, Washington