The Scandinavian Element in the United States: University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 111, No. 3, September, 1914Babcock, Kendric Charles
History
The Scandinavian Element in the United States: University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 111, No. 3, September, 1914
Babcock, Kendric Charles
Scandinavians -- United States
The increasing density of this Scandinavian population in certain
localities,--what might be called its vertical distribution--is strikingly
illustrated in both urban and rural communities. Chicago had barely
emerged from the Fort Dearborn stage when the first Scandinavians walked
its streets. Yet within two generations there were found inside of her
wide-stretching borders more than 100,000 Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes
of foreign birth, and enough of the second generation to give her more
than 190,000, so that the city at the head of Lake Michigan was next
after Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Christiania,--the largest Scandinavian
city in the world.[163] By a similar calculation, Minneapolis would rank
sixth or seventh.
[163] _Svenska Folkets Tidning_, Jan. 1, 1896, estimated the totals as
follows: Swedes, 100,000, Norwegians, 62,000, and Danes, 35,000!
Rockford, Illinois, received the first of its signally prosperous
Swedish colony about 1853; by 1865 the city had 2,000 Swedes.[164] The
census of 1910 credits Rockford with 10,000 foreign born Swedes, and a
total of Swedish parentage reaching close to 19,000. One of the
west-central counties of Minnesota, Otter Tail, counted (1900) more than
half of its 45,000 population of pure Scandinavian blood of the first
and second generation of immigrants. Polk county, newer and farther
north in the same State, reveals almost sixty per-cent of the same sort
of population in a total of 35,000. For some of the still newer and more
sparsely settled counties even larger percentages might be obtained.
[164] Kæding, _Rockfords Svenskar_, 27, 35.
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