Early Farm Life in Bureau County, Illinois, and ... - New Page 1

Passage to Bureau County and the early years of Heinrich and Family
We will probably never know the exact circumstances surrounding Heinrich and Elizabeth’s
arrival in the US. We might never know why they left Germany except to say that there was a
migration to the US from Germany and other European countries prompted by poverty,
religious convictions, and the urge to go west to the US.
1820-1871 - Economic hardships, including those
caused by unemployment, crop failure and starvation,
was the primary cause of emigration during this period,
in combination with wars and military service. Most of
the emigrants came from Alsace-Lorraine, Baden,
Hessen, Rheinland, and Württemberg.
Source: http://www.rollintl.com/roll/gr1900us.htm
The following article was taken from an article titled Illinois, the Prairie State, by the Lee
County Historical Society, which was found on the Web site
http://www.leecountyhistory.com/articles/931118.htm.
Lee County shares a border with Bureau County.
Together, the railroad, the new plow and the reaper made it
possible to settle and farm the Midwest. Now the people
came to the prairies, not by wagon train or oxcart, but by
barge, steamboat and train. They came not by the hundreds
but by the thousands. In the half century between 1840 and
1890 the population of Illinois went from 476,000 to nearly
4 million. And it was the great European migrations of the
nineteenth century that so increased the population so
rapidly. On the heels of the English and Scots came the
Irish. Then followed by Norwegians, Germans, Poles,
Czechs, Russians, Italians, French, Dutch, and Belgians.
To many the state offered living space for homes, farms
and crops such as they had never dreamed of. These
immigrants came first as homesteaders or as they came to
be called, "sodbusters." And it was their thought to make
Illinois prairies one of the most productive farming regions
in the country. As Chicago grew into a city, its labor force
grew in its stockyards, railroad yards, mills and factories.
Great numbers were migrating from the south into the state.
In the 1850's Chicago and Illinois became the heart of a
giant new industry. Iron ore was shipped down from the
Great Lakes from northern Minnesota, while up from
southern Illinois, which had been found to have the richest
bituminous coal deposits in the nation, soon came mile long
Chapter 8 Page 2