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Defining An Immigrant, Helle Mathiasen

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Before emigrating in August 1965, I had already experienced America while a child living in Denmark. My first American memory is the smell of Wrigley's Doublement gum. I also remember the green gum package containing the thin, shiny silver paper with the jagged edge you had to remove in order to touch the delectable candy. For me, as a child, chewing gum was America. I was born in Vangede in 1940, the year the Germans invaded Denmark. During much of the five-year Nazi Occupation, our family lived in Sydhavnen, in Copenhagen, on Sjcel0r Boulevard number 3, in a onebedroom apartment. …

Re-Immigration To Denmark: The Challenge Of Reintegration, Jette Mackintosh

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Over the years, I have known a lot of happy and contented immigrants to the United States, and this made me wonder what motivated return migration. It was a completely uncharted field, so it was an exciting challenge when, in 1996, I was asked to give a paper on the subject at an international conference in Gothenburg. It has since developed into a full-scale research project and a book.

The Establishment Of Danish Lutheran Churches In Canada, Rolf Buschardt Christensen

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This paper presents a brief history of the establishment of Danish Lutheran congregations in Canada during the twentieth century. As they will continue to evolve, the paper ends with a short discussion of challenges facing the Danish congregations in Canada as they enter the twenty-first century.

Danish Lutheran Churches In America: Contributions Of The United (Danish) Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1896-1960, Edward A. Hansen

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The United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church was formed in 1896 by a merger of two Danish immigrant groups. One group, the "Blair Synod" had been excluded from the Danish Lutherans organized in America in 1872, in a controversy mainly involving the Bible as the Word of God. The second group, the "North Church," had been organized in 1884 by Danish members of the NorwegianDanish Evangelical Lutheran Church (founded in 1870). These Danes had withdrawn peaceably from their Norwegian brethren, in order better to serve immigrants from Denmark. By the 1940s this united church had changed from almost exclusive use of …

The Danish Emigration Archives, Birgit Flemming Larsen

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The Danish Emigration Archives was founded in 1932 as the DanAmerica Archives.

Max Henius, a native of Aalborg and an enterprising businessman in Chicago, was the immigrant behind the Archives. It might be seen as flexibility by Danish Americans and their descendants to place their own ethnic group's source materials at a distance to themselves. It did cause some discussions at that time.

The purpose of the Archives is to preserve the history of those Danes who left Denmark to settle in foreign countries. Through the years The Danish Emigration Archives has suffered under several changes due to World War …

The Archive And History: Reflection And Anticipation, Niel Johnson

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Engraved on the front of the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, is this statement: This Library will belong to the people of the United States. My papers will be the property of the people and be accessible to them. And this is as it should be. The papers of the President are among the most valuable sources of material for history. They ought to be preserved and they ought to be used.

A Society, A Museum, And An Archive: A Historical Update On Emerging Danish American Institutions, Peter L. Petersen

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In 1992, John Mark Nielsen and I published an article entitled "Collecting and Preserving the Danish-American Immigrant Story: An Overview of Current Research and Preservation Efforts." In it, we used as our introduction the observation at the 1973 Scanpresence Conference of my friend and fellow presenter, John R. Christianson, that when compared to the historical preservation efforts of other Scandinavian groups, something seemed to have gone wrong in the Danish America. Writing nearly twenty years after Christianson made his remarks, we were able to point to significant and positive developments in the Danish American community, particularly the establishment in 1977 …

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American Ships And Danish Immigrants In 1869, Harry R. Skallerup

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During the period between the end of the Civil War and the heightening of hostilities of the Franco-Prussian War in late 1870, American-built wooden paddle-wheel steamships played a competitive role in the expansion of transatlantic passenger traffic. The war, however, along with the ascendancy of propeller-driven ships with larger iron hulls and more efficient engines, led to their demise in this trade. But within the hiatus of the wars, 1869 stands out as the year in which the first direct, scheduled steamer departures from Copenhagen to New York were made. This service was provided by passenger steamers of U.S. registry …

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For The Want Of Ten Dollars: The Development Of The Terra Cotta Industry In New Jersey, Thorvald Hansen

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When the Mathiasens, Karl and his father, left Thisted, on Denmark's northeast Jutland peninsula, for America in 1872, the intention of the elder Mathiasen was to go to Michigan where he had a sister living. When they arrived in New York the father totaled up the funds he had and discovered that the trip thus far had cost more than he expected. He lacked ten dollars of having enough to travel farther west. On the advice of a kindly Dane they walked the few miles to Perth Amboy, New Jersey where they were told they could probably find work. It …

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Stjernen--A Danish Or An American Paper?, Karsten Kjer Christensen

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On October 8, 1936, The Dannebrog News printed a special issue celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Dannebrog's incorporation as a town. The first Danish immigrants arrived in Howard County in 1871 and founded the settlement of Dannebrog the following year. But it would be another fourteen years before Dannebrog received official status and could establish its first town council. First appearing in 1898, the English-language The Dannebrog News became the longest persevering publication in the Dannebrog area. It was not the town's first, however, as two other newspapers preceded it. In the spring of 1874, an attorney by the name …

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My Re-Americanization, Willard R. Garred

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They met in Tivoli, Copenhagen, Denmark. Ray Garred was a United States Navy sailor with a squadron of battleships sent by President William Howard Taft on a goodwill tour of England, the Scandinavian capitals, and Kronstadt, St. Petersburg's port city and Russian naval base. She was a Danish girl, Olavia Frederiksen, who had spent four years in the United States as a domestic servant and had learned English in an evening school for immigrants. The year was 1911, summer time. Tivoli, as many tourists know, is a natural place for visitors to Copenhagen to congregate, and it was where a …

Teenage Immigrant, Anne Ipsen

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The poem by Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty defines the classical model of immigrants fleeing from poverty, oppression, or persecution. They are refugees, forced by intolerable circumstances to move from their homeland. Less stereotypic is the highly skilled or educated individual who makes a positive choice towards better opportunity. These immigrants tend to come as individuals or as a nuclear family and are less likely to live in or identify with an ethnic group. They assimilate more readily, especially if they have some English before arrival, while keeping closer ties with relatives and making more frequent trips to …

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To Denmark And Back An Excerpt From The Unpublished Memoirs Of John M. Jensen, Frederik V. Jensen, Peter L. Petersen

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The "most influential individual in the United Evangelical Lutheran Church's final twenty-five years" is how synod President William Larsen once described John M. Jensen1, longtime editor of The Ansgar Lutheran, the church's English language periodical. Jensen served the UELC as pastor, translator, historian, and representative, but it was through the pages of The Ansgar Lutheran that he had his greatest impact. Week after week for nearly twenty-five years, he wrote about spiritual matters, church policies and politics, questions of social justice, and events throughout the world, all the while serving full time as a church pastor. During World War II …

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Why Did They Emigrate? An Examination Of Five Danish Farming Periodicals During The Period From 1860 To 1900 To Determine What Motivated Farm Laborers To Emigrate., Jette Mackintosh

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One question in emigration research has always intrigued me: Why did Peter Jensen find conditions in Denmark so unbearable that he could stand them no longer or why was he so tempted by the prospects on the other side of the Atlantic that he emigrated, while his neighbor, Jens Petersen, who apparently had exactly the same conditions, stayed at home and put up with things? Unfortunately it can probably never be answered satisfactorily. It may be possible to find reasons for some of the emigrations in letters and diaries, but we have no basis for comparison in the form of …