Lithuanian American - History

History

It is believed that Lithuanian emigration to the United States began in the 17th century when Alexander Curtius arrived in New Amsterdam (present day New York) in 1659 and became the first Latin School teacher-administrator; he was also a physician.

After the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, most of Lithuania was incorporated into the Russian Empire. The beginnings of industrialization and commercial agriculture based on Stolypin's reforms, as well as the abolition of serfdom in 1861, freed the peasants and turned them into migrant-laborers. The pressures of industrialization, Lithuanian press ban, general discontent, suppression of religious freedom and poverty drove numerous Lithuanians to emigrate from the Russian Empire to the United States continuing until the outbreak of the First World War. The emigration continued despite the Tsarist attempts to control the border and prevent such a drastic loss of population. Since Lithuania as a country did not exist at the time, the people who arrived to the US were recorded as either Polish or Russian; moreover, due to the language ban in Lithuania and prevalence of Polish language at that time their Lithuanian names were not transcribed in the same way as they would be today. Only after 1918, when Lithuania established its independence, the immigrants to the US started being recorded as Lithuanians. This first wave of Lithuanian immigrants to the United States ceased when the US Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924 driven by xenophobic anti-immigrant attitudes against the newcomers from Eastern Europe. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at restricting the Eastern and Southern Europeans who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.

A second wave of Lithuanians emigrated to the United States as a result of the Soviet occupation of Lithuania during and after the Second World War. After the war's end and the subsequent reoccupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, these Displaced Persons were allowed to immigrate to the United States and to apply for American citizenship thanks to a special act of Congress which bypassed the quota system that was still in place until 1967.

Immigration of Lithuanians into the US resumed after Lithuania regained its independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990. This wave of immigration has tapered off recently as the decline of the dollar and the entry of Lithuania into the EU have made countries such as Ireland and the United Kingdom a more attractive option for potential Lithuanian emigrants.

Lithuanian days in Pennsylvania is the longest running ethnic festival in the United States.