Immigration In The Nineteenth Century

The nineteenth century is an interesting time where immigration, a time where people from other countries come to a specific place, like America. There are a lot of unique things that benefit the country. Even though other countries brought certain items to many different places, these countries shared their culture with America because the individuals that live there wanted to share what they have with others. The Germans, Italians, and Irish made a difference by making contributions all over the earth in many various areas.
An Italian explorer started all of this. Christopher Columbus or Cristoforo Colombo, as translated in Italian, discovered America in 1492. Another explorer, Giovanni da Verrazzano, who was the first European to enter
New York Bay. The bridge where the NYC Marathon starts, the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge was named in his honor after a long and difficult legal battle led by The Italian Historical Society of America. Pietro Cesare Alberti, the first Italian to live in America, who was also a Venetian seaman who settled in what is now called New York City in 1635. Even though these people that arrived here in America settled in various areas. They contributed to the founding and settling of this country and made a difference. Enrico de Tonti explored the Great Lakes region and founded the first European settlement in Illinois in 1679, in Arkansas in 1683 and, with the French LaSalle, he also co-founded New Orleans, and was governor of the Louisiana territory for about 20 years. His brother, Alphonse de Tonti founded Detroit. Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, migrated to America and founded the first American Opera House in New York. Francesco De Casale published in New York, the first Italian American newspaper in 1849. Antonio Meucci, a world famous Italian immigrant who arrived in America in 1845 and fought during the last years of his life against Alexander Graham Bell to be credited as the inventor of the telephone. Unfortunately, after he died in 1889, he was declared the true inventor of the telephone in 2002 ("The immense contribution of Italian immigrants to America: Part I" 2014).
The people who descended from the nineteenth-century immigrants say that Irish immigration was caused by potato famine or merely the famine.
The famine that changed Ireland forever was called the “great hunger” by Cecil Woodham-Smith. This famine was a major factor of immigration in the late 1840s and early 1850s. During the famine, the population went up and down constantly. Approximately 4.5 million Irish immigrated to the United States between 1820 and 1930 according to the American data. Also, during the period, half a million went to Canada, another 350,000 to Australia and New Zealand, and another 60,000 to other overseas emigrants. The immigration percentage has grown from 1820-1924 to 12.7 percent (Daniels 126-7, 129). The Irish immigration was from 1860-1930. As shown in Table 6.5, more than 2.6 million Irish came to America in the decades after 1860. The Irish contributions to the American labor movement are hard to overestimate. Terrence V. Powderly, longtime grand master workman of the Knights of Labor and Commissioner General of Immigration is from the early second-generation, Michael J. Quill, leader of New York City’s transport workers, the Irish men have been significantly overrepresented among American labor leaders, in the American Federation of Labor which is organized almost entirely among skilled workers. The Irish American ways are well known and prominent in which the Irish adapted to and changed American politics, which they basically invented
(Daniels 143-144).
The German immigrants settled mainly in cultural area and all-German towns, but their cultural ethics and foods in time spread all over the American country. In the beginning of the 1850s, Germans spent their Christmas like what mostly everyone around the world do now, with a Christmas tree. Which became very popular in the United States to keep the tradition of having a Christmas tree during Christmas time in December. Another contribution that the Germans shared with America is beer. The Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association was established by a German immigrant in 1857 ("Contributions Made by German Immigrants in the U.S. During the 1840s & 1850s"). In Milwaukee, also known as the German Athens in America, was able to show a production of Albert Lörtzing’s opera Zar und Zimmermann to an audience with eight hundred people in 1853 when the city’s population did not reach 30,000 yet. In 1900 in Brooklyn, 174 associations with six thousand singers competed. This tradition is successful in some districts as an every year concert or concert series with professional musician and orchestra and a local nonethnic chorus. Germans are also connected with the development of American symphony orchestras. So they support the musical department. A German immigrant, Carl Zerrahn, a director of the Handel and Haydn Society for four decades. Famous conductors that were born to do this occupation include Theodore Thomas, the Damrosches, Leopold, and Walter, his son, who all took on the life in the musical department. Also along with Otto Kahn, who rewrote the shortfall of the Metropolitan Opera for many years (Daniels 162-3).
God used the German, the Irish, and the Italians in various ways.
People in this world made a big difference in the economy, in the founding and settling of America, improved many areas of the American culture, and much more. The immigrants brought the St. Patrick’s holiday, beer, carnivals, and lovely fiestas from Mexico. Without immigration, there would not be a “pop of color”, it would just be a dull place if only one immigration group came and gave their culture. For instance, one drop of rain cannot make a rainbow appear. There has to be rain and the sun to make a rainbow possible (Portes & Rumbaut
64-65).