Reading this thread had me looking over some Danish websites on the subject last night - there’s a lot of diaries and letters etc. available, so the motivations of the Danish emigrants from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s are well documented.
And yes, the chance of owning one’s own land was the major factor. If you were born as a farmer’s son in Denmark in 1840, chances were that farming was what you knew. If you had an older brother, he’d get the farm and you’d be working other people’s fields for the rest of your life. Add to that the fact that big landowners were forever expanding their possessions at the cost of the small farmers. Another factor was war and the risk of being conscripted. Going to war every 10-20 years was the order of the day - tough on the soldiers, probably as tough on the farmers who were expected to feed and house the troops, saying nothing of those whose fields were fought over. And even though democracy was introduced in Denmark in 1849, the social strata was still very much in place, with farmers and workers firmly at the bottom. Some were simply unhappy with their place in life. Lots of people left - as many as 2% in some parishes, a considerable drain. One thing I hadn’t previously heard about was the concept of “chain emigrations” where one or two set out and made a foothold, which enticed several others to come, etc. etc. One documented example has a couple setting out, eventually having 36 other people join them. Setting out for foreign parts must not have been quite as staggering an endeavour with a ready-made community at the other end of the journey.
The drain was large enough that the Danish parliament acted to establish and protect a large number of small farms, to avoid further loss of manpower. (Another consequence was that Danish citizens abroad can’t vote in Danish elections )
The problem with those guys was that they had expected something completely different. They expected to be able to scoop gold out of the streams and get rich, trading with the natives for what supplies they needed. The first couple batches of settlers weren’t farmers, they were speculators.
The description they were given of the New World was a land of plenty, bulging with gold and abundant in food. Most didn’t bring plows with them, and probably wouldn’t have known how to use them, anyway. Horses were rare, and after repeated abuses, the natives didn’t want to trade any more.
Governor Braford of Plymouth’s diary is very enlightening. They arrived in 1620, but it wasn’t until 1623 that they, “begane to thinke how they might raise as much corne as they could, and obtaine a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery.” They had at first held all suppies in common, but many of the men searched for gold or simply refused to work in the feilds, leading to widespread hunger. 1623 was the beginning of serious farming efforts, and the division of the land into plots, as well as the rule that each family would be responsible for raising their own food.
Well, the Plymouth plantation had two problems in that regard. The first was, like you said, that until 1623, they were a commune, which led to all sorts of hard feelings. The second was that they were in a lot of debt to their backers back in England, and so they spent a lot of energy into getting goods they could sell back there for a profit to pay off the investors.
i read “the worst hard time” earlier this month. having land of your own was a very big dream.
they did lie quite a bit to get people to come over. if they had known about sod houses, i don’t know if they would have jumped onto that ship. i know i wouldn’t have once i heard about the centipedes!!
Land, food, opportunity and freedom. Not necessarily in that order.
For many 17th-19th C. Europeans, the chance to come to America, even with no guarantee of success once they got here, was tremendously appealing and eagerly seized.
For part of my family, it was a combination of to many sons at home, and some youthful high spirits. I’ve heard mention of my great-grandfather being strongly encouraged to leave Finland in his late teens. It seems he was rather rebellious in the old world.
I wonder if sailing off to the new world was kind of like today’s young adults leaving the family farm and moving to the big city? It was away from Mom and Dad and great-aunt Helga who always pinches your cheeks and knows EVERYTHING that you do.
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