Danish American - History

History

The first Dane known to have arrived to North America was the explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681–1741). In 1728, he discovered the narrow body of water that separated North America and Asia, which was later named the Bering Sea in his honor. Bering was also the first European to arrive in Alaska in 1741. In 1666, the Danish West India Company took the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean and eventually, the islands of St. John (1717) and St. Croix (1733). The Danes exported African slaves to those islands, and those slaves were put to work in the snuff, cotton and sugar industries. These early settlers began to establish trade with New England. Later, in 1917, they sold the islands to the United States, and they were renamed "U.S. Virgin Islands."

In the early seventeenth century, individual Danish immigrants became established in North America. By the 1640's, approximately 50 percent of the 1,000 people living in New Netherlands (Now New York) were Danes. After 1750, Danish families who were members of the religious group the Moravian Brethren immigrated to Pennsylvania, where they settled in the Bethlehem area along side other German Moravians. Until 1850, most of the Danish who emigrated to North America were mostly single men. During this period, some Danes achieved notability & recognition. Among them were Hans Christian Febiger or Fibiger (1749–1796) who was one of George Washington's most trusted officers during the American Revolution, Charles Zanco (1808–1836) who died at the Alamo in March 1836 in the struggle for Texan independence, and Peter Lassen (1800–1859) a blacksmith from Copenhagen who led a group of adventurers from Missouri to California in 1839 where a trail was established that was soon to be followed by the "forty-niners." Lassen is now considered to be one of the most important early settlers of California.

Between 1820 and 1850, about 60 Danes got established each year in the United States. However, they soon totaled to more than 375,000 Danes between 1820 and 1990; a vast majority of whom emigrated between 1860 and 1930. The largest arrival year for Danish emigration in United States was 1882, when 11,618 new Danes settled in the USA.

The first significant wave of Danish immigrants to America consisted mainly of converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), who settled in United States in 1850. They settled down in the newly acquired state of Utah, which had been under Mexican control until 1848. There were about 17,000 such immigrants, and many of these Danes settled in the small farming communities of Sanpete and Sevier counties. These continue to be the counties in the United States with second and fifth largest percentages of Danish Americans today, respectively.

Between 1864 and 1920, some 50,000 Danes emigrated from the Schleswig area of Jutland, which was under the power of Prussia following the Danes' defeat, where Danes were forced to stop using the Danish language in schools. They were called North Slesvigers, however, most of these Danes are recorded in the census statistics as immigrants from Germany rather than Denmark. Most Danes who immigrated to the United States after 1865 did so for economic reasons. By 1865, there had been a large increase in the Danish population in Europe because of the improvement in medicine and food industries, which had in turn caused a high rate of poverty and ultimately resulted in a significant and rapid increase in Danish migration to other countries. Another reason for such a vast migration was the sale of lands. Many Danes became farmers in the United States. During the 1870s, almost half of all Danish immigrants to the United States settled in family groups, but by the 1890s, family immigration made up only of 25 percent of the total. It has been suggested that many of these immigrants eventually went back to Denmark.