Luxembourgian Americans

Immigration

The total area of Luxembourg is 999 square miles; it is 55 miles long and 34 miles wide. The strongest influences on Luxembourger immigration were poverty and increasing industrialization of their homeland; by the mid-19th century, more than 12 percent of Luxembourgers were destitute. Luxembourgian church and civil records show that most Luxembourgers farmed and lived in villages. They were not landowners generally. The United States appealed to Luxembourgers in its wide open, farmable spaces, and these immigrants mainly settled in the American midwest.

According to the Institut Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, there were three major waves of Luxembourgian immigration: from 1830 to 1845, from 1846 to 1860, and from 1860 to 1900. However, the immigration first began in 1630, when the first known Luxembourgian Americans came to New Amsterdam (later New York) with the Dutch.

From the 1830s through the mid-1840s, the first major wave of Luxembourgers immigrated to the United States. Luxembourgers had also immigrated to South America and Latin America in the 1820s, but settling in these areas proved much more challenging than settling in the United States. Points of entry to the United States during this period included Louisiana, New York, and Maryland. In the early 1840s, Luxembourgers also settled in Chicago.

In the 1840s, major waves of immigration from Europe to the United States began, thanks to the decline of the slave trade on one side and poverty and famine on the other. By 1849, Luxembourgian newspapers decried the huge numbers of people fleeing the country, and this continued until the late 1850s. By 1858, however, immigration had slowed to a crawl, partly because of unrest in the United States that would lead to the Civil War and partly because living conditions improved in Luxembourg.

From 1860 to 1890, Luxembourgian immigration to the United States boomed once more, peaking in the 1880s. During this time, social life blossomed for Luxembourgian Americans. Various social clubs and community groups for Luxembourgian Americans popped up in all areas in which they were concentrated. Inexpensive farmland was the attraction for the second wave of Luxembourger immigrants; arriving from mostly agrarian areas in Luxembourg, these immigrants sought out familiar terrain, and the 1862 Homestead Act made the attainment of farmland seem much more possible in the United States than in Luxembourg. It was not uncommon for the proceeds from the sale of lands in Luxembourg to provide immigrants with 10 times more buying power in the United States.

Luxembourgers also emigrated for other reasons. They hoped to avoid forced transcription into foreign armies, a common occurrence at the time. Sometimes emigrants had their own personal reasons for leaving, such as desiring to avoid punishment for a crime or to hide an illegitimate pregnancy. It has been estimated that 70,000 to 72,000 Luxembourgers immigrated to the New World between 1840 and 1900. Those who arrived in the United States between the 1870s and 1880s benefited from the expansion of the railroad and were able to settle farther west. In the 1870s and 1880s, prime years for Luxembourger immigration, fewer than 10 percent of Luxembourgian Americans lived in urban areas, but their communities continued to thrive.

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