Mid-1800s German immigration to America
“The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In The Patriarch, John Casper’s parents, Elizabeth (Karsh) Kasper and Karl Jacob Kasper describe their experiences coming to America from Baden-Württemberg, now part of Germany.
Elizabeth Kasper’s family came to America in 1838 by way of France and a ship from the port of Le Havre. Her family landed in New York harbor . Karl Jacob Casper and his siblings came over in 1849 by way of northern Germany and the port of Bremen. They also arrived in New York harbor.
In The Patriarch, John relays the reason why the passengers were so miserable and cramped on the ship. “[Mother] took great pains to describe the Zwischendeck, the passenger level between the upper deck and the cargo below. Since the ship brought immigrants to America, but only cargo back, the cramped passenger level was quickly assembled in Le Havre, then torn out and filled up with freight in New York for the return voyage.”
Neither Elizabeth nor Karl Jacob saw The Statue of Liberty since it wasn’t opened until 1886. Still, Elizabeth and Karl Jacob were exactly the kind of people Emma Lazarus had in mind when she penned her great verses.
Karl Jacob and Elizabeth were my great-great-grandparents. They and over a million others left one of the German states to escape political and economic suffering between the time of the American Revolution and World War I.
By the time the Karsh family left for Indiana in the late 1830s, Germans were coming to America in large numbers. From 1830 to 1914, over 85% of all Germans leaving their homeland chose the United States over other countries, as their new home.
News of the prosperity and opportunities found in America excited Germans back home. Some of the letters received from newly settled Germans in the Midwest were published in German newspapers. Many historians cite those encouraging letters from Indiana, Ohio, and other newly settled lands as a primary reason why the number of German immigrants rose from about 10,000 per year in 1832 to almost 200,000 per year in 1854.
it is highly likely that Karl Jacob Casper was involved in some manner with the failed 1848 revolution back in Germany and was likely one of the “Forty-eighters” described in The Patriarch. In the 1840s in the German states, land seizures by local governments had increased, unemployment was high, taxation was burdensome, and young men were involuntarily conscripted into the military. Young people who yearned for greater freedom looked west across the ocean for better places to live.
The largest settlements of Germans in the 1800s were in New York City, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Milwaukee. There were also very large additional settlements throughout the Midwest, including the rich farmlands of Indiana. There are letters from new German settlers in Indiana that one reason they felt immediately welcome in that area was the generous attitudes of the Quakers already living there.
Once they arrived, most German immigrants quickly went to work establishing families, farms, and businesses throughout the midwest. It wasn’t until the period of 1914-1919 that anti-German sentiment grew in appreciable ways in the US.
For further reading:
An outstanding article by Klaus Lüber makes good additional reading: https://www.deutschland.de/en/usa/us-immigration-americas-german-roots
For more information on German immigration to Indiana:
Ancestry.com. German Settlers and German Settlements in Indiana [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. Original data: William A. Fritsch. German Settlers and German Settlements in Indiana. Evansville, IN, USA: 1915.