Why Thousands of Germans Flocked to Missouri to Farm
Immigration
As one would expect, settling in the middle of Missouri specifically in Osage County there probably isn’t many unique or interesting things to do. Could you even imagine the possibility of people risking their lives just to come to Missouri? Well, put yourself in the shoes of the German settlers who had moved to the United States from Germany for a better life. Many of whom were poor and likely just had a harsh experience crossing the sea. You must have had a pretty rough experience back home for you to travel this far and risk your life to end up in Missouri! Today, if you told someone that you underwent this journey they would have thought either you were crazy or your living situation back at home was terrible.
To Germans at the time trying to escape from the potato famine and having read Boernstein’s Memoirs and Duden’s book embarking on this long, potentially treacherous, and life changing journey was a no brainer. I mean who wouldn’t want to escape certain death in hopes of living in a paradise where food and natural resources are abundant?
Landscape
Somehow you managed to survive the journey across the sea, now what? Your only guide to this new land are the letters from Bernstein and that book from Duden. As they are your only guides, you decide to find your way to Osage County Missouri and settle down. Here, you find the nostalgic geography that makes you feel at home and the abundant natural resources so you decide to settle down and live here.
Farming in Osage County
For those settlers, farming plays a big and important aspect of the livelihood of the residents of Osage County who had immigrated here. With the perfect land and a good climate farming just make sense. Many of these farmers are either German immigrants or someone somewhere up their family tree had immigrated here from Germany to escape the Irish potato famine which had impacted a large portion of Europe at the time.
Inspired from the tales of Duden and Boernstein, the abundancy in natural resources convinced many immigrants, and the familiar landscape had made Osage County, Missouri the best place to escape their life of struggles. The poor Germans who were escaping the famine where not only able to survive from farming off the land but they actually thrived.
It’s no wonder when you try to search up Osage County in the online database of State Historical Society of Missouri you’re welcome to a barrage of the rural and fields of landscape you see in those old Windows computer backgrounds and pictures upon pictures of everyday people farming.
Sure one might think it’s just farming there’s really nothing special about it at all. That might be true to someone who doesn’t understand the history of the area. I think it’s interesting that the intense concentration of farming pays homage to the history of German immigration. Farming is an aspect of life that stems down from those very first settlers and continued on to still be a vital part of life today. As a tree leaves it’s roots in the ground, the history of German immigration left it’s marks in farming.
