Immigrants

Writing from Chippewa County's Clear Water post office in 1855, Thomas Barland remarked that immigrants were pouring in and taking up land he would never have thought of choosing, but even he could scarcely have imagined the tide of newcomers yet to reach Eau Claire. As the lumber frontier shifted from New England to the Great Lakes states, Yankees and Canadians sought high wages in logging camps and sawmills, and Europeans soon followed. Germans left political repression at home, Irish potato farmers fled famine, and Norwegians hoped to own land. They arrived by stage and steamboat, worked in Eau Claire's sawmills until they could buy farmland or start businesses, and settled near fellow countrymen while sending passage money so relatives and friends could join them. By 1885, Brittons, Fitzpatricks, Olsons, and Dusendofers shared a city of more than 20,000. Norwegians worshiped at First Lutheran, Irish Catholics attended St. Patrick's, and Eau Claire was transformed from a sleepy river stopping place into a community of many languages and cultures. In 1890, seven out of every ten residents of the Chippewa Valley had either been born outside the United States or had foreign-born parents.

Eau Claire, Wisconsin · United States