Immigrant Milwaukee, 1836-1860

This 1976 book by Kathleen Neils Conzen focuses on "accommodation and community in a frontier city", which she worked on as a graduate student with a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin. She wondered if immigrants effectively grouped together to make the transition as new Americans. Milwaukee is, of course, primarily a destination for German immigrants, some of them, my own ancestors. She found a high concentration of Prussians, Pomeranians, Bavarians, and Mecklenburgians in Milwaukee in 1860, using census data. 41 % of the heads of households of German descent listed skilled labor as their occupation, in contrast to only 17% of the city's Irish residents.

As the German immigrants adjusted to their new lives, Conzen analyzes the importance of socializing in taverns, the role of religion, fraternal and political organizations, German associations, cultural activities, educational endeavors, and the German press. By the third generation, she notes that assimilation was fairly typical, just as we know that it is for more recent immigrant groups. My one main concern is the lack of photographic evidence in the book, something which would have added greatly to the richness of the publication.