Slovak Americans

Waves of Immigration

There were only a handful of Slovak immigrants before the 19th century, and some of them were itinerants who moved on to other countries or returned to their homeland. Others were soldiers, including Major Jan Polerecky, who fought for the Americans in the Revolutionary War and then settled down to public life in Maine. Slovaks were also included in the Lincoln Riflemen of Slavonic Origin, a volunteer unit from Chicago that fought for the Union in the Civil War as part of the Twenty-fourth Regiment of the Illinois infantry.

Sustained immigration from Slovakia began in the 1870s, as a result of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's policies, which attempted to impose Magyar culture on the non-Magyar population. At the time, neither the U.S. Census Bureau nor immigration policies differentiated among the constituent peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A popular estimate of the number of Slovak immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries, before immigration was restricted in 1924, is 500,000. Most settled in Pennsylvania, others in the mid-Atlantic states. Not all Slovaks identified themselves as Slovaks; the empire's policies had taken hold, and many Slovaks had begun to think of themselves as Hungarian

About a third of the Slovak immigrants in this period were “birds of passage” who came to America to work long enough to make the money they needed to purchase land or other property back home. About 20 percent made repeat trips—working in the United States for several years, returning to their homeland for a period of time, returning to the United States to earn more money, and eventually returning home for good. Because of this, men outnumbered women significantly in the immigrant population. Those who remained sometimes married American women.

The reasons to stay in the United States varied. Some Slovak immigrants enjoyed their new country more than they expected. Others found opportunities too good to pass up. Others formed attachments or started families that they did not want to displace, especially children who thought of themselves as Americans. Still others were simply unable to follow through with their original plan—there were so many Slovaks working in the United States, earning money to buy land back home, that prices rose and the supply of land diminished.

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