ImmigrationJonA09

Immigration

From 1850 to 1899, immigration was at one of its highest points ever. Many people immigrated to the U.S. from lots of different countries. Before 1850, it wasn't nearly as high, but there were a lot of people from Ireland that immigrated to America. It was because of the potato famine. From 1841 to 1850, there were 780,719 people from Ireland that came here. Ireland's population was cut down to 25%. The famine killed a million people there. It was one of the worst things that ever happened in Ireland's history. But other than the potato famine, there weren't even as close as many people that immigrated to the U.S. prior to 1850. Then in 1851, there were over 400,000 people that immigrated here just in that 1 year. In that 1 year, there were more than half the amount of immigrants than there were in an entire decade. Then in 1854, Germans started to immigrate here. 50% of immigrants that came to the U.S. in 1854 were from Germany. One of the main reasons was population growth. The population was getting high, so many of them left. But there were also a bunch of different reasons why the Gemans came here. Ireland had the highest population loss in the 1800's to the U.S., and Norway was second. Scandanavians came here and went to a few different states. Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Utah were the states that they went to the most.