Immigrants to a Growing Nation: 1800-1880

This primary source portfolio documents the immigrants' saga through graphs, maps, prints, official documents, personal letters, and scrapbooks. The actual numbers of the successive waves of immigrants, their countries of origin, their reasons for migrating, and the adventures of the journey are vividly illustrated. The era is completed with materials documenting the final destination for different ethnic groups, their adaptation to work and cultural changes, and the varied political and social reactions of earlier generation Americans to the immigrants. This portfolio includes a Study Guide with reproducible student activities, and a timeline presenting important events between 1783 and the 1880s. 5 Illustrated Broadsheet Essays: * Introduction to Immigration 1800-1880 * The British, Scotch and Welsh * Germans and Scandinavians * The Irish * Americans and Immigrants 15 Primary Source Documents: * Poster" From Old Home to New Home: Scenes from the Journey * Excerpt from The Emigrant's Directory of the Western States of North America, 1819 * "The Lament of the Irish Emigrant: A Ballad," Boston, 1840 * Newspaper Clipping from The Nation, Dublin, January 22, 1848 * Broadside Advertising Help for Emigrants, Germany, 1851 * Poster: Germans in Texas * Letter from Clara Chaney, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, to her Grandmother in England, December 1850 * Poster: Nativism * Immigrants in Cartoon * Excerpt from The Statutes of California, 1862 * Central Pacific Railroad Payroll March 1865 * The Beaver Creek Tragedy: The Missing Orphans of Osten and Aase Sondreson by Robert Sanders * Excerpts from the Annual Report: Office of Commissioner for Protection of Emigrants to California, December 1860 * Poster: Irish and German Immigrants in the Civil War * List of Drafted Men who Failed to Report in the Eighth Congressional District, October 1863