(Reposted with a fixed title)
So I've started doing some research into my family tree, particularly on my mother's side as her family is entirely 50-50 descended from Irish and German farmer immigrants who eventually settled in northwestern Missouri. I'm particularly interested in the first ancestors from Ireland but especially Germany, since I know more about the Irish ones than the German.
In any case, I found that all of my German ancestors came from Baden-Wurttemberg around the same time period. It's been rather difficult to determine exactly when and where they entered the country, but at least for one set of ancestors I found that they were married in West Virginia (!?) in 1842, so naturally they must have immigrated before that. All of the possible immigration records I've found for one great(3x) grandfather are in the 1830s or early 1840s, so that doesn't quite help me in terms of pinning down the period he left.
What's even stranger is that I thought my mother's family has always been 100% Catholic (which is why these Irish and German farmers lived near enough each other to intermarry), but the couple of baptism records I've found that reference this specific grandfather's name (or at least some people born around his birth date with the same name in the same region) are all Lutheran, strangely enough. I know that region was heavily Catholic - could that be why he left? But why apparently down the line did he or his descendants convert to Catholicism, to the point that they lived in Catholic farming communities?
So my bottom-line question is, why would these people apparently in somewhat large numbers leave their homes for America at that time period (1830s to 1840s)? I know that there was heavy unrest particularly in the region in the late 1840s as there was in much of Europe, but Wikipedia was unhelpful about prior to that time period.
I know this is a shot in the dark but I figured it was my best shot at trying to figure this out.
Hello there,
Much of the immigration of German people to America during the late 1830s through until the late 1840s was because of economic hardship brought about by the excessive fluctuation in the agriculture economy of the Rhine region and an end to any hope of a liberal unification of Germany in 1848.
Those that migrated to America were far more often than not from ‘Middle Germany. This is a title given to the states, after 1815, whose monarchs did not wish to align with either Prussia or Austria during the tussle over who would rule a unified 'German' nation. These states comprised of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and Nassua and their leaders saw the end of the Napoleonic wars as an opportunity to extend their influence over territory and subjects through constitutional models of governance. Once it became apparent that these constitutional monarchs were still attempting to engage in the ‘realpolitik’ of the previous century, rather than fostering the economic and social prosperity of their people experiencing extreme hardship, small scale farmers, cottage textile workers and seasonal migrant labourers migrated to America. The majority of these moved to the mid-west, especially Wisconsin, as they were moderately wealthier than the previous wave of German and Irish migrants.
The beginning of the German exodus was in 1816 and 1817, from those territories along the Rhine, specifically the Kingdom of Württemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden. Both of these territories had given extensive military and economic resources to Napoleon as part of their membership of the Confederation of the Rhine. Now with Imperial France gone, they had to levy the economic losses of the war directly from their people. This heavy taxation coupled with the failed harvest of 1816 and the broadening of eligible military service, led to the first wave of German migrants. From 1829, further migration occurred thanks largely to collapsing agricultural prices. A series of strong harvest during the preceding years lowered grain prices and pushed many small-scale farmers in Württemberg to insolvency.
According to the information you have provided, I believe it was this collapse in the agricultural prices, which forced your ancestors to leave. If they were unable to raise cash-rich crops (grapes especially) there only option was to sell to the larger merchants in the area and move to the growing migrant German community in the mid-west.
Religious tolerance was quite widespread at that time within Germany, much of problems between reformed faiths and the Catholic Church had been largely consigned to history. Though there was still a vast distrust of Protestants in Southern Germany, this was largely down to localism and not religious intolerance. Still even today, Bavarians view those from Brandenburg as a bit off and vice-versa.
Most of the intolerance came from white protestant Americans, who feared the rise in catholic immigration from Ireland and Germany would overwhelm the Protestantism of the country. Anti-Catholic literature was common, as was the rise in anti-Catholic immigration parties. Public schools were founded in the hope of making Protestants out of Catholic children and though most if not all are now secular, they were founded on the anti-foreign ideals of the late 1840s.
I would hazard at a guess and say the conversion of your Lutheran ancestors was purely pragmatic. Because the majority of those who migrated to America were catholic and from the south, where Lutherans and Protestants were from the north, there was not a community for them to worship in.
Hope that helps.
Byas, Steve. America and immigration: a mixed history with lessons for today, The New American. March 7, 2016, Vol. 32 Issue 5, p31, 8 p.
Boyd, James. The Rhine exodus of 1816/1817 within the developing German Atlantic world, The Historical Journal vol:59 (2016) iss:1 pg:99
Walker, Mack. Germany and the emigration, Cambridge, MA, 1964 Flockerzie, Lawrence J. State-Building and Nation-Building in the "Third Germany": Saxony after the Congress of Vienna Central European History, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1991), pp. 268-292
I could only speculate about the reasons, but you could perhaps help others by giving a more exact location as Baden-Würtemberg only exists since 1952 and the reasons to leave one of the exiting states at the time could have been different.