Because Pennsylvania welcomed German religious dissenters, Philadelphia was
the most frequent port of entry for German immigrants during the colonial
period. One German American citizen of Philadelphia described the rival routine
of an immigrant vessel in 1728: "Before the ship is allowed to cast anchor
in the harbor, the immigrants are all examined as to whether any contagious
disease be among them. The next step is to bring all the new arrivals in a
procession before the city hall and then compel them to take the oath of
allegiance to the king of Great Britain. After that they are brought back to the
ship. Those that have paid their passage are released, the others are advertised
in the newspapers for sale."
Philadelphia had no monopoly on German redemptioners. In 1709, the government of
England encouraged several hundred of them to go to New York by giving them land
north of the city in return for their labor. In the 1720s, the French government
attempted to colonize the territory of Louisiana by inviting German settlers to
New Orleans. For the rest of the 18th century, German immigrants stepped off the
ships to begin their American lives in virtually all the colonial ports, from
Boston to Baltimore, Charleston, and Savannah.
After independence, two of the United State's major exports to Europe were
cotton and tobacco. Much of the cotton was shipped from New Orleans to the port
of Le Havre, France; tobacco frequently went from Baltimore to Bremerhaven, in
northern Germany. To avoid returning home with empty vessels, ship captains took
back emigrant passengers, most of whom were German. Sizable numbers of these new
immigrants then moved up the Mississippi River from New Orleans or inland on the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
In 1843, the newly independent Republic of Texas invited a group of Hessians to
establish a colony in Texas. The next year, about 150 families arrived in the
port of Brownsville, on the Gulf of Mexico. After they founded the city of New
Braunfels, in the central Texas Hill Country , Brownsville became the gateway
for many other German settlers.
Thousands of Germans also took the long sea journey around the southern tip of
South America to reach San Francisco during the Gold Rush of 1849 and over the
next few years.
It was New York, however, that became the nation's principal port of entry for
German immigrants, as for all other European groups. Nearly a million Germans
{and almost as many Irish) arrived in New York during the 1850s.1n response, New
York established an immigrant- receiving station at Castle Garden, a former
theater on an island off the southern tip of Manhattan Island. There newcomers
were screened for diseases and given information about jobs and lodging, to
protect them against "runners" who lured unwary immigrants to
boarding- houses where they would be fleeced of their savings.
Some of Germany's charitable organizations established offices in New York to
help newcomers. As Germans left Bremen, for example, they would be given the
address of the New York German Society in the city .There they could find Ger
man speakers who would advise them on the best routes to their final
destinations.
In January 1892, the federal government opened a new immigration-landing
station, at Ellis Island in New York Harbor. By that time the peak of German
immigration, in the mid-19th century, had passed, but even so about 1.5 million
Germans went through Ellis Island until its closing in 1954. By then the
international airlines were carrying the majority of the new immigrants to the
United States.
* These are excerpts from the book 'The German American Family Album' by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler