The 19th century was a time of rapid growth and change in America. It was a century of Westward expansion, and the building up of new cities like Chicago, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. It was a time where people from far off places packed up their belongings and sought out new opportunities as they immigrated to the United States. Immigrants brought with them their cultural backgrounds, traditions, and traits to their newly adopted land. The Irish, Italian, German, Polish, British, and Jewish were just a few of the different cultures that dominated the United States in the 19th century.
             The largest group of immigrants that came to the United States in all but three of the years between 1854 and 1894 were the Germans. By the end of the 1800s over five million Germans arrived and during the 1900s another two million came. The German immigrants came from a wide geographic area and for several different reasons (19th Century, 1998, para. 1). German immigration into the United States was a big movement during the 18th and 19th centuries and the Germans left their native land for several reasons. Upon their arrival into the United State they faced difficult challenges and had obstacles to overcome. Once the Germans arrived in the United States they moved westward, toward the Mississippi River. Many of them settled in several large midwestern cities, including Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis, and Chicago. There they established ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods-called kleindeutschlands, or Little Germanys-that continued to grow with the arrival of new immigrants (Marger, 2003). "By the late nineteenth century, Germans were the second largest ethnic group in the society, exceeded only by the British" (Marger, 2003).
             Immigration to the United States was happening from several European countries during the nineteenth century. These immigrants came to United States for several reasons. The largest number of German imm...