Why do you think immigrants from Germany and Ireland settled in the United States in different places?
1 Answer
People tend to settle where there are large numbers of their particular ethnic group.
Explanation:
The Irish settled pretty much everywhere. There were three large migrations of Irish from Ireland each leaving Ireland for a different reason and decades apart. The final group in the 1890s moved primarily to the cities of Boston and New York. That was because they were the poorest of any Irish immigrant and they found significant numbers of Irish living in these cities already.
The German immigrants arrived in the 1880s and 1890s. Many of them of were skilled laborers who left bad European economic conditions. The Dutch and Germans had slowly been moving from Europe to southern New York and Pennsylvania from the earliest days of our country. Once again, the later immigrants moved to a place where their native language and customs were known and practiced.
It must be noted that throughout the 19th Century small groups from all of Europe and the Middle East came to America and each formed small communities in the Eastern and Mid-western Cities. When the larger numbers of any ethnic group came to the United States they already knew the city they wanted to go to.
On a humorous note, when the Poles came to America in the early 1900s their destination of choice was Chicago, there already being a significant group there. But while coming through the ports of Boston and New York, the Pole's English was so poor or non-existent, that many were directed to the Massachusetts city of Chicopee.
