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CHAPTER 1 Missouri Almanac Hay harvest, James Gill farm, c1910 Gill Photograph Collection Missouri State Archives Lawrence Janoski, Hogan St., St. Louis, 1918, Polish American. Photo Courtesy of Sandra Janoski Walls FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN: MISSOURI’S IMMIGRANT HISTORY 15 For the Sake of the Children: Missouri’s Immigrant History Robyn Burnett and Ken Luebbering garment factory. Hers is a story repeated count- Introduction less times. Fredrich Steines was a Prussian teacher who In contrast to those who came for economic came to Missouri in search of the freedom and opportunity, a smaller number came for political opportunity promised in the New World. He reasons. The “Forty-Eighters” who fled the arrived in St. Louis in July 1834 with his wife and German states following the failed democratic children, his parents, and several other members revolutions in 1848 arrived in St. Louis in the of his extended family. Within a month his wife 1850s and formed an important part of the state’s and all four of his children had died from intellectual elite. Carl Schurz, for example, cholera. “Was it not, in great measure, for the became an important journalist, serving as edi- sake of my children,” he wrote in an anguished tor of the St. Louis Westliche Post for a time. In letter home to his relatives, “that I had attempt- 1869 Schurz won election to the U.S. Senate ed the great undertaking?” Steines’ letter ex - from Missouri and went on to an illustrious presses the hope of most immigrants to Missouri national career in public service. that the sacrifices they make in uprooting them- selves from their homes and settling in a foreign A desire for religious freedom motivated land will be rewarded by better lives for them- some, as well. In 1838 several hundred selves and their children. Fortunately, not all Lutherans arrived in St. Louis looking for a place immigrant experiences end so tragically, and to practice their religion without the oversight of most immigrants realize at least some of their the state church in Saxony. Some stayed in St. dreams. Louis while others settled in Perry County. Helped in the early years by their American Immigrants figure significantly in the history neighbors, the settlements eventually prospered of Missouri. They have contributed to the state’s and these Saxons became the nucleus of the culture, politics and economy. They came in large and influential Missouri Synod of the search of economic opportunity, political free- Lutheran Church. Later in the nineteenth centu- dom and religious liberty. Most, like Fredrich ry and again in the twentieth, European Jews Steines, came full of hope and expectation. Their fleeing religious and ethnic persecution also stories share similarities, but the range of immi- immigrated to Missouri. grant experience is wide and varied. The stories A sense of religious calling motivated some of individuals illustrate both the patterns and the immigrants. Roman Catholic priests came to varieties of the immigrant experience. Missouri to help establish churches and schools, Most of Missouri’s immigrants came for eco- and often became leaders in their communities. nomic reasons, pushed from their homes by land Italian-born Bishop Joseph Rosati developed a shortages, crop failures, poor wages or faltering plan for opening the first hospital west of the economies and pulled to Missouri because of Mississippi in 1829, enlisting the financial sup- opportunities here – for jobs, land or a new port of Irish businessman John Mullanphy and beginning. Bridget Byrne left County Mayo in recruiting Sisters of Charity to run the hospital. Ireland at the age of thirteen or fourteen in 1869, Many immigrant nuns committed their lives to believing she could find employment to support serving others, founding schools, orphanages herself in St. Louis. First she worked as a maid and hospitals. Second- and third-generation for a wealthy family, then as a seamstress in a immigrant women also joined religious orders, 16 OFFICIAL MANUAL months later Elise and her family joined Christian and his wife in the bustling, westward- looking town of St. Joseph. It was not an easy transition, however. Within two weeks, her mother died and her world changed forever as she became household manager for her father and two younger brothers. Elise later married, had children and grandchildren, and according to her own story lived a long and happy life. Such stories of immigrant experiences that begin badly but end happily are common. Friedrich Muench immigrated to Missouri in the 1830s as part of a German settlement society. After some members of the group absconded with the society’s money, he and his brother-in- law used their own funds to pay back what the rest had invested. He and his wife settled on a farm near Dutzow. Quite unprepared for life as a farmer after a classical university education, Muench clumsily harvested his first crops using a sword from the Napoleonic Wars. From that inauspicious beginning, however, he went on to become a successful farmer and an important Sisters of St. Mary of the Third Order of St. Francis. agricultural innovator and writer. Missouri State Archives Others not so fortunate failed in their dreams carrying on the work of those pioneering nuns of a better life. Henrietta Geisberg Bruns came to and contributing to Missouri’s educational, med- Westphalia with her physician husband Bernard ical and economic development. in the 1830s. Opposed to the move from the beginning, Jette, as she was called, never found Whether they came for economic, political happiness in Missouri. She lost five young chil- or religious reasons, word of better opportunities dren, three of dysentery within the space of three drew many immigrants to Missouri. News weeks, and an older son killed in the Civil War. arrived in letters from previous immigrants and To the end of her long life, Jette believed she books extolling Missouri’s virtues. Immigration should have resisted her husband more strongly societies promoted the state as an attractive des- and remained in Germany. tination and large employers such as railroads Through the stories of individual immigrants, and meatpacking companies sent recruiting ordinary and extraordinary, patterns emerge. agents to Europe to find cheap labor. All were Immigrants did not come in a steady stream but effective in enticing people to leave their homes in distinct waves. Byrne, Muench and Dubach for a new beginning in Missouri. were part of the greatest mass immigration that Once immigrants were settled, they often came predominantly from the German states drew family and friends from the old country and Ireland beginning in the 1830s and contin- through a process called “chain migration.” uing until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Immigrants wrote letters home of their experi- The Civil War caused a brief decline in immigra- ences in Missouri and encouraged their friends tion, but following the war German and Irish and family members to join them. In every large immigration resumed in significant numbers. immigrant group in Missouri, established immi- The next important wave came from eastern and grants helped those newly arrived by providing southern Europe and peaked in the 1890s and shelter, work and an entry into American socie- early 1900s. Following the outbreak of World ty. In some areas of the German states in the War I in 1914, immigration to Missouri and the mid-1800s, authorities prohibited the popular nation decreased dramatically. Since then, feder- practice of reading immigrant letters from the al legislation has shaped immigration to the pulpit in the village church because of a fear that state. After the first world war, the U.S. Congress the land would become depopulated. In 1855 acted to curb immigration by imposing tight twelve-year-old Elise Dubach’s family decided to restrictions on the number of immigrants leave their home in Switzerland, where they allowed to enter the country. These limits lived comfortably on the income from their rent- remained in place until 1965, although there ed dairy farm, after a letter from Elise’s Uncle were some exceptions for European refugees fol- Christian praised Missouri and marveled at the lowing World War II and again for Cold War opportunity to own land in America. A few refugees. FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN: MISSOURI’S IMMIGRANT HISTORY 17 This 1853 plat of the village of Carondelet shows the French system of land division into commons and com- mon fields. Rather than walk from their farms into town, the French traveled from town to their farms. The commons were used as community pasture land and the common fields were used to grow crops. Missouri State Archives Early Settlement French left after 1804, large numbers of Anglo- Americans arrived, attracted by newly available When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark land under the American flag. The 1810 Census departed St. Louis in 1804 to explore the newly reported a population of almost 23,263, and purchased Louisiana Territory, Europeans had when Missouri attained statehood in 1821 it had already been living in what is now Missouri for surpassed 76,000. The pre-1804 population had much of the previous century. Comprised prima- been nearly half French, and these new settlers rily of French and Spanish trappers, these “Americanized” Missouri. Europeans were interested in trade with the Osage and other Indians rather than in establish- The great majority of the pioneers entering the ing settlements. new western territories were descended from Scotch-Irish Protestants who emigrated from the The earliest French settlers arrived in northern Irish province of Ulster and settled pri- Missouri between 1710 and 1720. French set- marily in Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas tlers founded the first permanent European set- between 1718 and 1775.

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