When did the first Irish immigrants arrive in the U.S.?
697558#50
The first waves of Irish immigrants took place between 1763 and 1880. when ten thousand Irish immigrants arrived on the Island. From 1800 to 1850, "10,000 immigrants from every county in Ireland" had settled in Prince Edward Island and represented 25% of the Island population by 1850.
Irish Canadians
42658069#2
In 1848 the first large group of Germans immigrated due to failed revolts in German states. The Germans arriving on or soon after that year became known as the "Forty-Eighters". Irving Cutler, the author of "Chicago", wrote that their true underlying motive to come to the U.S. was economic even though they had to immediately leave Germany due to political issues. According to Cutler, these Germans did not place importance on religious reasons, and they "arrived much less destitute" compared to Irish immigrants. The German population increased to 5,073 in 1850, and that year Germans made up 1/6th of Chicago's population.
Germans in Chicago
13772020#0
German Americans () are citizens of the United States of German ancestry; they form the largest ethnic ancestry group in the United States, accounting for 17% of U.S. population.
The first significant numbers arrived in the 1680s in New York and Pennsylvania. Some eight million German immigrants have entered the United States since that point. Immigration continued in substantial numbers during the 19th century; the largest number of arrivals moved 1840–1900, when Germans formed the largest group of immigrants coming to the U.S., outnumbering the Irish and English. Some arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Europe, and others for the chance to start afresh in the New World. California and Pennsylvania have the largest populations of German origin, with more than six million German Americans residing in the two states alone. More than 50 million people in the United States identify German as their ancestry; it is often mixed with other Northern European ethnicities. This list also includes people of German Jewish descent.
List of German Americans
1883734#3
Upon arrival in North America, these migrants at first usually identified simply as Irish, without the qualifier "Scotch". It was not until a century later, following the surge in Irish immigration after the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, that the descendants of the earlier arrivals began to commonly call themselves Scotch-Irish to distinguish themselves from the newer, predominantly Catholic and poor immigrants; these largely had no Scottish ancestry. At first, the two groups had little interaction in America, as the Scots-Irish had become settled decades earlier, primarily in the backcountry of the Appalachian region. The new wave of Catholic Irish settled primarily in port cities such as Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, Memphis and New Orleans, where large immigrant communities formed and there were an increasing number of jobs. Many of the new Irish migrants also went to the interior in the 19th century, attracted to jobs on large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals and railroads.
Scotch-Irish Americans
16359386#1
The first Irish settlers to arrive in Canada came in the 17th century when the French began to arrive in present day Canada and brought with them Irish soldiers. In the 18th century, Irish fisherman would sail to Newfoundland and Labrador to fish off the coasts and many settled in the province. By 1850, over 500,000 Irish migrants arrived in Canada, though many did continue onwards to the United States.
Canada–Ireland relations
41875965#0
People of Irish descent form the largest single ethnic group in Boston, Massachusetts. Once a Puritan stronghold, Boston changed dramatically in the 19th century with the arrival of European immigrants. The Irish dominated the first wave of newcomers during this period, especially following the Great Irish Famine. Their arrival transformed Boston from an Anglo-Saxon, Protestant city into one that has become progressively more diverse. The Yankees hired Irish as workers and servants, but there was little social interaction. In the 1840s and 50s, the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know-Nothing movement targeted Irish Catholics in Boston. In the 1860s, many Irish immigrants fought for the Union in the American Civil War, and that display of patriotism helped to dispel much of the prejudice against them.
History of Irish Americans in Boston
2009597#7
According to a 1995 "New York Times" "Streetscapes" article by Christopher Gray, the census taker who visited the Irish-born McSorley in 1880 recorded the year the founder of the pub first arrived in the United States as 1855, but immigration records show that he arrived on January 23, 1851, at the age of 18, accompanied by Mary McSorley, who was 16. When confronted with the fact that the 1880 census did not contain this entry, Gray corrected it to 1900 in his book. John McSorley first appeared in city directories in 1862, and the building his bar occupies was built no earlier than 1858, according to city records.
McSorley's Old Ale House
752072#10
To fill the new factory jobs, immigrants poured into the United States in the first mass wave of immigration in the 1840s and 1850s. Known as the period of old immigration, this time saw 4.2 million immigrants come into the United States raising the overall population by 20 million people. Historians often describe this as a time of “push-pull” immigration. People who were “pushed” to the United States immigrated because of poor conditions back home that made survival dubious while immigrants who were “pulled” came from stable environments to find greater economic success. One group who was “pushed” to the United States was the Irish, who were attempting to escape the Great Famine in their nation. Settling around the coastal cities of Boston, Massachusetts and New York City, the Irish were not initially welcomed because of their poverty and Roman Catholic beliefs. They lived in crowded, filthy neighborhoods and performed low-paying and physically demanding jobs. The Catholic Church was widely distrusted by many Americans as a symbol of European autocracy. German immigrations, on the other hand, were “pulled” to America to avoid a looming financial disaster in their nation. Unlike the Irish, the German immigrants often sold their possessions and arrived in America with money in hand. German immigrants were both Protestant and Catholic, although the latter did not face the discrimination that the Irish did. Many Germans settled in communities in the Midwest rather than on the coast. Major cities such as Cincinnati, Ohio and St. Louis, Missouri developed large German populations. Unlike the Irish, most German immigrants were educated, middle-class people who mainly came to America for political rather than economic reasons. In the big cities such as New York, immigrants often lived in ethnic enclaves called “ghettos” that were often impoverished and crime-ridden. The most infamous of these immigrant neighborhoods was the Five Points in New York City. With increasing labor agitation for higher wages and better working conditions in places like Lowell, Massachusetts, many factory owners began to replace female workers with immigrants who would work cheaper and were less demanding about factory conditions.
History of the United States (1849–1865)
7143848#20
The Irish were the most influential ethnic group regarding the initial waves of immigration to the United States and of Americanization. Newly arrived immigrants in American cities had a hard time avoiding the Irish. There was no way around the Irish for the newcomers, as the Irish were present in every aspect of American working-class society. Between 1840 and 1890, more than 3,000,000 Irish immigrants had entered the United States, and by 1900, about 5,000,000 of their first and second generations were settled in. There were more Irish living in the United States than in Ireland. Irish Americans played a major role in the newcomer's Americanization. In other words, identity in the United States emerged from dynamic relationships among ethnic groups, as well as from particular groups' own distinct history and traditions.
Americanization (immigration)
46284800#64
Irish immigrants were the first immigrant group to America to build and organize Methodist churches. Many of the early Irish immigrants who did so came from a German-Irish background. Barbara Heck, an Irish woman of German descent from County Limerick, Ireland, immigrated to America in 1760, with her husband, Paul. She is often considered to be the "Mother of American Methodism." Heck guided and mentored her cousin, Philip Embury, who was also an "Irish Palatine" immigrant. Heck and Embury constructed the John Street Methodist Church, which today is usually recognized as the oldest Methodist Church in the United States. However, another church constructed by prominent Irish Methodist immigrant, Robert Strawbridge, may have preceded the John Street Methodist Church.
Irish Americans