Vasa Order of America

In the mid-19th century, thanks to the blessings--in the words of poet and bishop Esaias Tegnér--of "peace, vaccine, and potatoes," Sweden experienced a population boom. While Swedes had been immigrating to the United States since 1840, significant numbers began to make the journey around 1865, drawn by the promise of ample land for farming, fewer income and property requirements for voting, and greater freedom of religion. Large waves of immigrants followed in the 1880s and 1890s, peaking in the decade between 1881 and 1890, during which 325,000 Swedes arrived in the U.S.

Up to this point the new arrivals were largely from rural areas of Sweden, bound for similar areas in the United States like Minnesota and Illinois, but between 1890 and 1910, immigrants began to arrive from more urban areas of the country and came to form a significant portion of the industrial workforce of the northeastern states of Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. By 1920, between one fifth and one quarter of all Swedes had moved to the United States. The vast majority entered through the port of New York, first through the processing facilities at Castle Garden in present-day Battery Park, then beginning in 1892 through the facilities on Ellis Island. The community in Brooklyn was a significant East Coast Swedish enclave, encompassing about half of the total number of Swedes in New York City.

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