European Languages and Societies Commons^™

Danish Churches And Congregations In Indianapolis, 1868-1885, Barbara R. George

The Bridge

A look at the population make-up of Indianapolis and Indiana during the time period from the end of the Civil War (approximately 1865) until the 1880s shows that the Danes had little impact in the relatively small Indiana immigration picture. Indiana was less influenced by foreign born than any other northern state. Although ranking ninth in the number of German-born residents in 1880, Indiana ranked thirteenth in the number of foreign born, and was sixth in total population. As a state it was not particularly aggressive in promoting itself as a viable destination for immigrants, and ranked only in front …

Dealing With The "Third Enemy": English-Language Learning And Native-Language Maintenance Among Danish Immigrants In Utah, 1850-1930, Lynn Henrichsen, George Bailey, Jacob Huckaby

The Bridge

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, over 22,000 Scandinavians joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter referred to as the church or the LDS church) and migrated to Utah.1 Well over half of these Scandinavians, 12,350 (not including children age 12 and under), were Danes.2

This influx of people who spoke a language other than English and came from a cultural background different from that of the original Anglo-American settlers of Utah presented some perplexing challenges. Even Brigham Young, the territorial governor and LDS church president, found them difficult to resolve. According to local folklore, …

Defining An Immigrant, Helle Mathiasen

The Bridge

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. …

The Danish Emigration Archives, Birgit Flemming Larsen

The Bridge

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 Bridge Builders Of Luther Memorial, Wilber J. Williamson

The Bridge

The congregation of Luther Memorial Church in Des Moines, Iowa, celebrated its centennial anniversary in 1999, during which time there was a good deal of reflection concerning the historical roots and activities of the church during the preceding one hundred years. Much of the early history of the congregation was closely associated with Grand View College. During the first decades, the school provided worship facilities as well as the pastor services for the emerging congregation. With financial support from the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church, a building was erected in 1917, which has served as the home for the congregation since …

My Journey Through The World In Happiness And Sorrow, Ida Mooser Hattemer, Theodore Alphonse Hattemer

Swiss American Historical Society Review

This is my mother's story of her Swiss family's immigration from Switzerland to Kentucky in 1895, and the story of her own American family. My mother, Ida Mooser Hattemer, dearly loved her native Switzerland, her family, and her Swiss relatives whom she talked about so much that her children felt as if they knew them intimately.

Gertrude Hofmann Langer. The Story Of A Life, Edward G. Langer

Swiss American Historical Society Review

I was born on May 1, 1911 in Kttsnacht, Canton Zttrich, Switzerland. That day is a national holiday in Switzerland which is their equivalent of our Labor Day. It certainly was Labor Day for my mother, Marie Walder Hofmann. (December 22, 1890 - August 23, 1959). The name Kttsnacht means a kiss in the night. My name was a very common name in Switzerland at the time. I had no middle name. The Swiss spelling of my name is Gertrud.

Book Review: By Wonders And By War. A Novel. Chicago: Swiss-American Historical Society, 1999. Vi, 508 Pp., Christopher Colias

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Often, historians neglect or embellish episodes of the past according to their own biases and viewpoints. Thus, history is a lattice-work of varying interpretations. Yet in Carol Williams' novel, the reader discovers that fiction is sometimes able to fill some of the gaps inherent in this historical lattice-work. Her work, although fictional, respectfully illuminates a contentious and paramount epoch of American history - the American Revolution. With meticulous research and an intimate familiarity with the South Carolina landscape, Williams describes the experience of three Swiss families struggling to make sense of a time in which their world seemed turned upside …

Off To Dallas, Felix P. Bentz

Swiss American Historical Society Review

The nine short stories which you will read below represent "Chapter V" of my Memoirs. I began to write down the story of my life in 1991 after finishing my last project as a consultant. The initial reason for this was to tell my children and grandchildren about their ancestors and what it was like to be growing up in Switzerland.

Book Review: Yodeling In Dairyland: A History Of Swiss Music In Wisconsin., Philip V. Bohlman

Swiss American Historical Society Review

One of the most striking indexes of ethnic identity is the extent to which an ethnic group is able to demonstrate that its significance in the history of a region is greater than its number. I've never known whether this was an advantage or disadvantage to Swiss-Americans, whose numbers, after all, have rarely overwhelmed those of other ethnic communities. Southern Wisconsin, nevertheless, has long offered Swiss-Americans the exception that many took as proof of the rule. In Green county, particularly in the towns of New Glarus and Monroe, numbers were on the side of Swiss-Americans, creating for them what James …

Call For Papers

The Bridge

Marcus Lee Hansen Immigration Conference. The University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Institute for Economic History, announces a conference on immigration in August, 1992, recognizing the centennial of Hansen's birth.

Peter Larson -- Danish Immigrant Entrepreneur, Henry Jorgensen

The Bridge

Eighty years ago, on July 13, 1907, Helena residents picked up their newspaper, the Helena Independent and read these front-page headlines:

"PETER LARSON DIES AT HIS HOME IN HELENA."

"A CALAMITY TO THE WHOLE NORTHWEST."

"The Man Who at the Age of Twenty Was Still a Danish Peasant is Remembered by Thousands for His Benefactions" . . ."Contractor and Master Business Man."

Danish Methodists In America, Arlow W. Andersen

The Bridge

The separate histories of foreign-language missions present a special challenge to students of American church history. Descendants of the immigrants, more and more of mixed ancestry, lack the ability to read and translate material published in the language of their forebears. To make matters more difficult, the children and grandchildren of the pioneers often shun the tedious work of research and writing. Their handicaps apply to the offspring of all foreignspeaking peoples in America. Of the nineteenth-century immigrants, the Danes come to mind.

Chapter Ii: Chicago And The Danish Settlement

The Bridge

If two words characterized Chicago in its first halfcentury, they were "growth" and "change." In 1840 Chicago was a small prairie town of 4,500 inhabitants. But the forces that brought immigrants to the Midwest had already begun to transform Chicago. With the development of trade and commerce between the Midwest and the East, better transportation over land and water became essential. In the 1840s, the State of Illinois constructed the Illinois and Michigan Canal, connecting the Mississippi River with Lake Michigan by way of Chicago. For the first time, Midwestern produce could go to market through the Great Lakes, as …

The Danish Community Of Chicago, Philip S. Friedman

The Bridge

Although millions accepted the challenge of immigrating to America, that choice required extraordinary courage. Even the initial task of leaving the homeland and traveling to America often took on mythical proportions. Prior to the journey, the immigrant needed to settle his affairs, selling for cash the possessions which could be sold. Having decided to emigrate to the New World, he did not expect to make the long return trip for many years. 1 After gathering a few essential provisions and saying goodbye to his old home, the immigrant and his family boarded a ship for the two-week voyage. Every ship …

Iii. Strangers Settling A Wild Land: Mari Sandoz' Writings About Swiss Settlers In Nebraska, Marianne Burkhard

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

On my first trip West, from the corn plains of Illinois to California and back, Nebraska was the first state with a physiognomy really distinct from the green fields I had come to know. Although there were many spectacular landscapes to be admired during the trip, the grassy hills of Western Nebraska, round and treeless, stayed in my memory. So did the sunflowers, lining the roads and swaying gently in the grass. Little did I know then that, years later, this rather bare, monotonous country would hold my imagination through literary works of women, Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz. With …

Jacob Maag (1881-1980), Swiss Stone Carver And Sculptor In The Midwest, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Jacob Maag was born in Neunkirch, Canton Schaffhausen, in 1881 and came to Omaha, Nebraska, in 1905. From 1905 to 1961 he worked as a stonecutter and sculptor mainly in Omaha, but also in other parts of the Midwest. In 1962 he became the subject of an oral history project of the Greater Omaha Historical Society as a "pioneer citizen" in their "I Remember" series. The Greater Omaha Historical Society is now defunct, but thanks to Walter Wullschleger (see SAHS Newsletter, XVI, No. 1 (Jan. 1980), 31-36) we received a transcript of that interview. We are pleased to give the …

Don Yoder, "Palatine, Hessian, Dutchman: Three Images Of The German In America," Ebbes Fer Alle - Ebber Ebbes Fer Dich. Something For Everyone - Something For You. The Pennsylvania German Society, 14 (1980), 107-29, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

In this densely documented, lucidly structured, and learned article Don Yoder, Professor of Folklore and Religion at the University of Pennsylvania, explores eighteenth century roots of stereotypes for German- speaking immigrants and their descendants, regardless of their national origin . He traces the evolving meaning of the three terms ' Palatine', 'Hessian ', and ' Dutchman' in their historical context . As always, Professor Yoder transcends any myopic, America centered view and sees the emergence of the stereotypes in their broader Atlantic context . The at times in tense relationships between English and Palatine princely families and denominational groups, for …

Swiss Food And Foodways In Early Pennsylvania, William Woys Weaver

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

When the immigrants from Basel composed this song about corning to Pennsylvania in 1803, I do not think they realized --in spite of their enthusiasrn--what a very strange mixture of things they would find there a century and a half ago. Certainly, this was a major area of Swiss settlernent and in spite of the pressures of acculturation, there were many foods that the 1803 settlers would recognize from their homeland.

Immigrating To America, Andrew Christensen

The Bridge

To get the proper backdrop for this article, let me quote a few statements from the introduction of an outstanding book on immigration to America, sponsored by the Rebild Society and written by Kristian Hvidt, the Chief Librarian of the Danish Parlimentary Library:

"In the course of the fifty years preceeding the outbreak of World War I in 1914, well over 300,000 Danes left their homeland to become immigrants; ninety percent of them settled in the U.S.A. The illuminating facts stated in human terms show that our grand and great-grandparents saw every tenth one of their countrymen leave their land …

Miscellanea

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The Monaco family of Verscio, Switzerland--when and how did five brothers and sisters immigrate from this canton of Ticino in the early 1850's and 1860's to California and Nevada?

Book Review: Descendants Of Nine Rohrbach Immigrants To Colonial America 1709-1754 And More Than One Hundred Rohrbach Immigrants To America 1820-1900 Including The Families Of Rohrbach, Paul Anthon Nielson

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Over two-thirds of this volume is devoted to the genealogies of the nine Rohrbach immigrants who have been identified as having come to America between 1709 and 1754, i.e., Christian Rohrbach, 1709; Johannes Rohrbach, 1709; Hans Georg Rorbach, 1732 Christian Rohrbach , 1739; Christian Rohrbach , 1743; Johann Reinhart Rohrbach, 1749; Johannes Rohrbach, 1750; Christian Rohrbach , 1753; and Peter Rohrbach, 1754.

Eighteenth Century Migration Of Swiss Mennonites To America, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

You all know Professor Schelbert's unique familiarity with Swiss emigration history from his earlier publications and lectures. Here he treats a subject of particular interest to us, i.e. the history of a significant group of immigrants from Switzerland driven out of their home country by religious motivations to a new continent in which they were allowed to live according to their religious convictions and where , by their genuinely honest way of life, they have made a lasting contribution to the development of that idealistic touch in the American character upon which much of our hope for a more peaceful …