Because they could get a job and afford a house in Missouri. They were escaping serfdom.
Perhaps they grew tired of the Brits starving and killing them?
Yeah, my ancestors are from Ireland and Italy. The Irish half escaped the famine and came here and procreated like it was going out of style. My family from Italy came over to escape the fascism (jokes on them). They brought with them the gabagool.
My ancestors were criminals. One was a horse thief in Norway and the other was a counterfeiter in Germany in the early 1800s. Both skipping their homelands around the 1850s, just ahead of the law. At least that’s what the family histories say that we can actually trace with reasonable accuracy.
I suppose we brought the lutefisk and lefsa from the Norwegian side and beer and sausages on the German side.
Hey, mine were criminals too, and they brought some of that classic Italian criminality to Scranton, Pittston, and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, enough to have a lengthy Wikipedia article about it. Funny, because it’s not something you recognize at the family parties as a kid.
Simpler times.
Not simpler, just a lot more concerned about family dirty laundry. There were a general attitude about the “old country” that they didn’t talk about. It was strong enough that my one Grandfather refused to teach me to speak Norwegian even though he and all the older community spoke it everyday. And you would go to church on Christmas or Easter day and the service was done all in Norwegian and you sang Norwegian hymns.
My family immigrants went farther west. The western prairies and northern forests of Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Canada. We bounced around a lot before the 1900s.
It can be hard to live in places where there’s little wood for heating, only a few crops for food that are subject to random blights, and an oppressive power next door stepping on your neck and trying to divide you from opportunity or independence.
Ireland is a beautiful place with a harsh history.
My Norwegian great-great-great-grandparents saw this and said, “Let’s move to North Dakota and live in a sod hut.”
Hey now, that’s a nice view
Maybe they were big fans of meth.
Probably more to life than grass, rock, and water.
Nah that’s just what capitalism wants you to think. Shrek is love. Shrek is life.
You can’t eat the scenery.
If you’re starving you’ll move to anywhere that has food.
My English great-great-great-great grandparents saw this and thought, “Let’s move to Newfoundland”.
Yeah, it’s not all about the view, otherwise Elon would be living on Mars.
Let’s send him to Mars, though.
To be fair the place was full of drunks.
You been to St. Louis?
French and German city heritage checks out.
And took forever to get to the beach.
