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Immigrants at Locust Point, 1904

Maryland Historical Society

Throughout Maryland's history immigrants came in search of jobs and better economic opportunities. A smaller number came to escape political or religious oppression, and African slaves were brought to provide labor. But for most, land, better jobs, or new economic opportunities were the main motives for immigration.

The Colonial Period
The 150 settlers who arrived in Maryland in 1634 on the Ark and Dove were the first of many. Most were English or Irish who came to take advantage of the fertile land that surrounded the Chesapeake or lay west toward the mountains. In order to profit from growing tobacco, these early settlers imported forced labor from Africa. By 1755, black slaves made up 28 percent of Maryland's population. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the national government outlawed the slave trade, the shipment of Africans to Maryland had largely ceased.

Immigrants disembarking at Locust Point, 1904

Maryland Historical Society

In addition to the early English, Irish, and Africans, other groups such as the Scots-Irish settled on the Eastern Shore as farmers. The first Germans came south to Maryland from Pennsylvania in 1728 and more came after 1732, when Lord Baltimore offered 200 acres, tax free to any farmers willing to locate in western Maryland. Germans settled the town of Frederick in 1745, and in 1762 Jonathan Hager established Hagerstown. By the time of the American Revolution more than 20,000 Germans had arrived and even greater numbers would come in the nineteenth century.

From the end of the American Revolution to the beginning of World War I, immigration into Maryland was closely linked to the rise of its largest city, Baltimore. During this period over a million immigrants entered the United States through the port of Baltimore. Many would pass through and on to the farms and towns of the Midwest, but many stayed and prospered. Baltimore's first mayor, for example, was an Irish immigrant, James Calhoun. By the 1850's, 70 percent of the immigrants in the state lived in Baltimore. Most of the rest were in western Maryland.

Why Immigrants Came to Maryland
Immigrants came to Maryland through Baltimore for several reasons. First was transportation. Located inland on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore was the farthest west travelers could travel by ocean-going vessels. When the National Road was completed across the mountains to the Ohio River in 1818, access to the Midwest became easier. Ten years later, in 1828, the beginning of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad promised an even more powerful transportation link to the interior of the continent.

A second factor was the abundance of jobs. The building of railroads, canals, and roads provided many work opportunities for the immigrants. The rapid growth of Baltimore's population, from 13,503 in 1790 to 212,418 by 1860, which made it the third largest American city, meant many jobs in constructing buildings, streets, bridges, and wharfs. From 400 new houses per year in 1830, Baltimore was building 2,000 houses per year in 1851. In order to find enough workers, state and local government, as well as private employers, began to actively advertise the economic advantages of Maryland in Western Europe.

Immigration in the early Nineteenth Century
The first large wave of immigrants came to Maryland between 1830 and the Civil War. Some groups, like the French, who had come in the 1790s, were political refugees and welcomed to Maryland for their education, culture, trade skills, and business experience. But far more important in numbers were the Irish and the Germans. Pushed out of Ireland by poor economic conditions, the Irish found work building the cities and the railroads. Others became shopkeepers, clerks, craftsmen, and tavern owners. Clustering around St. John's and St. Patrick's churches in east Baltimore, the Irish became the main employees of the cotton and textile mills that sprang up along the Jones Falls waterway. The Ancient Order of Hibernians was founded in 1803 to help the newcomers find jobs, establish schools, and provide financial support when needed. Between 1850 and 1859 seven Catholic churches were opened in Baltimore, four of which-Immaculate Conception, St. John, St. Brigid, and St. Laurence O'Toole-were Irish. Unfortunately this rapid growth led to a fear of domination by foreign-born Catholics and encouraged support for the Know Nothing or nativist political party in Maryland by the mid-nineteenth century.

German Immigration
Even more dominant were the Germans, the largest immigrant group in Maryland in the nineteenth century. By 1860, when 25 percent of Baltimore's population was foreign born, 15,536 were Irish, but 32,613 were German. For $16 (equivalent to $352 today), German immigrants could purchase a ticket in steerage on a tobacco ship returning to Baltimore from Bremerhaven. Since they were the largest immigrant group, their impact on the economic, social, and cultural environment was significant. They became grocers, butchers, furniture makers, cigar and piano makers, brewers, and skilled craftsmen. The German Society of Maryland, founded in 1783 and led by prominent figures like General John Stricker of the Maryland Militia, was representative of the way the immigrants sought to help one another in their new country. The German Society found jobs for thousands of new arrivals, provided clothing, fuel, and health care for those who arrived with few resources, and even persuaded the state legislature to regulate the labor contracts to protect immigrant workers. By 1851 there were German newspapers like Die Wecker, and a multitude of cultural and social clubs like the Concordia Club to provide entertainment and a sense of community. Jewish immigrants from southern Germany joined this migration to Maryland and added to the diversity of the state's population. The Lloyd Street Synagogue was the third oldest in the United States.

Post-Civil War
In 1868, following the Civil War, a second wave of immigration began to form. That year an agreement set up by Albert Schumacher, a prominent German business leader in the state, created a cooperative arrangement between the North German Lloyd Shipping Line, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Tobacco wholesalers, doubling as travel agents, sold tickets throughout central Europe for steamships that would take the immigrants into the harbor to Pier 9 on Locust Point, where they could board B&O trains to travel farther west. By 1873 they were coming at a rate of 18,000 per year, and by 1913 the numbers passed 40,000 per year. Baltimore's German-American population grew so large that in 1873 the City Council created bilingual schools that taught in both English and German.

Most of these immigrants underwent health inspections as the ships progressed up the Chesapeake Bay, and then spent a few hours or days at a local reception center, one of which was a boarding house run by Mrs. Koether, a German immigrant herself. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century the new arrivals made Baltimore a patchwork of ethnic neighborhoods. Polish communities formed around churches like Holy Rosary, Czechs settled along Broadway in Fells Point, Ukrainians were clustered in Canton, and Greeks lived along Eastern Avenue. Between 1900 and 1910 about 40,000 newcomers from Eastern Europe arrived. The Italians, who settled in the now-famous Little Italy section of Baltimore, were more likely to come through Philadelphia and arrive at the President Street Station in Baltimore by rail.

Twentieth Century
Immigration to the U.S. peaked in 1913 but the beginning of World War I and the passage of immigration restriction laws cut it off in the 1920's. Only in the last two decades of the twentieth century did it return to its historical levels. The 2000 census found that 10 percent of the state's population was foreign born, the same proportion as in 1870. The sources of immigration, however, had changed. Now 35 percent of the newcomers to the state came from Asia and 34 percent came from Latin America. Instead of settling in Baltimore, the majority located in Montgomery, Prince Georges, and Howard Counties. Nevertheless they still came in search of new economic opportunities and a better way of life.

—Dean R. Esslinger