Latvian American - History

History

The first Latvians that emigrated to United States arrived in the late 1600s, when a group of Latvian settlers from the island of Tobago arrived in Massachusetts a few decades after the arrival of the first English Puritans. Around 1640 other Latvians settled in Delaware and Pennsylvania, together with Scandinavian settlers. Later, in 1849, a number of Latvians were part of the thousands of people who emigrate to California looking for fortune during the Gold Rush. However, the first significant wave of Latvian settlers that emigrated to the United States came in 1888 to Boston. They were mainly single young men who came to the United States looking for fortunes or fleeing mandatory military service of Imperial Russia. The Latvian immigrants were divided into two groups: The people who dreamed of Latvia's independence from the Soviet Union and those who wanted Latvian workers to ceased to be oppressed by Russia. By the end of century, those Latvians immigrants settled primarily in other East Coast and Midwest cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago, as well as in some cities on the West Coast, such as Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. Some immigrants also established themselves in rural areas, although they were few and usually did not form long-lasting communities. Although most Latvians settle in cities, in most of these (with the exception of the Roxbury district of Boston) the Latvians were also few and they not could form ethnic neighborhoods. The first Lutheran church built by Latvians in the United States was erected in Lincoln County, where there was a Lithuanian agricultural colony that disappeared due to climatic and political problems of its members, in Wisconsin in 1906. A new wave of Latvian immigration began around 1906, after the failure of their 1905 Revolution in Latvia. Many of the immigrants were political leaders and rank-and- file revolutionaries who could be killed by Russian soldiers if they were discovered, so they decided emigrate and to continue the revolutionary movement in other countries. Due to that most of the Latvians revolutionaries who emigrated in the United States were more politically radical than the earlier Latvian immigrants, reattached divisions even among the leftists themselves. In 1917, many Latvian Revolutionaries went back to Latvia to work in the creation of a Bolshevik government, and in 1918, when Latvia declared its independence, some nationalists also went back.

After this period during which thousands of Latvians emigrated to the United States, in the 1920´s and 1930´s with the promise of economic improvements in Latvia, due to the immigration quotas of United States established in 1924 that limited the number of Latvians and other immigrants who could settle in this country, and due to the Great Depression in the United States—immigration was generally discouraged, so there was little Latvian immigration. After World War II many Latvian refugees fleeing the Soviet Union, were established in other European countries. However, about half were eventually repatriated to Latvia, being the rest repatriated in Germany, England, Australia, Canada, United States and in other countries. From 1949 to 1951, 40,000 Latvians immigrated to the United States with the help of the U.S. government and various social service and religious organizations. Although many of these refugees had been professionals in their country, in United States they often had jobs as farmhands, custodians, or builders until they could find find better paying jobs. Most Latvians settled in cities, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. As with the Old Latvians, the most of the new Latvians, not could create neighborhoods and had to rely on social events and on the press for a sense of community. Within a few years, Latvian organizations managed to create schools, credit unions, choirs, dance groups, theater troupes, publishers and book sellers, churches, veterans' groups, and political organizations. From 1980 to 1990, 1,006 Latvians arrived in the United States. Latvia became reestablished as an independent country in 1991, however, few have returned.