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Making A German-American Place: Davenport, Iowa, 1836-1918, Benjamin E. Bruster

Celebration of Learning

This study examines the impact of German-Americans in the creation of Davenport and Scott County, Iowa from 1836 through 1918. Like cities many other 19^th century places in the American interior, Davenport and Scott County direly needed people to settle it, build its infrastructure, develop its economy, and contribute to growing social and political life. Conveniently, Davenport and Scott County boosters’ desires occurred simultaneously with rampant pauperism, political, ideological, and religious revolutions, economic redundancy, and widespread dreams of rebirth in Germany. These conditions produced an unprecedented migration from Germany to Davenport and Scott County in the second-half of the …