Experimental Blog #34

Comments on "Daily Life in Immigrant America 1820-1870" How the First Great Wave of Immigrants Made Their Way in America by James M. Bergquist

This book is the first of two books, not 3, as I mistakenly thought and wrote in blog #9 on December 26, 2009. Each book somewhat arbitrarily covers 50 years of a 100 year period. The 50 year period of this book begins in 1820, when almost 8,400 immigrants came to America, and ends in 1870, with over 387,000 immigrants arriving. Almost 429,000 people arrived in the "peak" year of 1854; which was not exceeded until the 1880s, I believe.
The first wave of immigrants described by the author, James M. Bergquist, was composed mostly of Protestants from the north of Ireland, which is not so often remembered, but Catholic Irish soon overwhelmed these earlier arrivals, especially during the "Irish Potato Famine" of the 1840s. Although the Irish immigrants came mostly from small farms in Ireland, they generally did not adapt to American large scale agricultural methods and take up farming. Instead, they did an enormous amount of generally unskilled labor, especially building canals and, later, railroads.
In later decades, Irish immigration was also distinguished for the fact that women arrivals outnumbered men.
Germans composed the second largest group, although they eventually totaled more than any other immigrant group because they continued coming to America in large numbers into the next 50 year period. Earlier Germans were largely Catholic from the southern and western German states, but later, Protestants of northern and eastern Germany predominated. Among other accomplishments, they became known for making thousands of farms and towns from Pennsylvania through the Midwest to Missouri and Texas.
Immigrants from Great Britain adapted to American life most easily wherever they went, and were sometimes called "the invisible immigrants."
Among the Scandinavian immigrants, Norwegians came in the greatest numbers, and they usually settled in the Upper Midwest.
Overall, the book describes much of the country and society made, or transformed, by all of these immigrants that the immigrants who arrived in the next 50 years, from 1870 to 1920, found when they came to America.