Immigrating to American

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My great grandfather, Martin Wicklund, was born in Halsingland, Sweden, on December 23, 1872. In 1892, at the age of nineteen, he left Sweden and immigrated to the United States where he made Minnesota his permanent home. Although immigration from Sweden to the United States in the 1800s was primarily due to economic reasons, my great grandfather immigrated because he wanted religious freedom.

My great grandfather was raised on a farm in Sweden. At the age of nine, my great grandfather left home for a short period of time. He became a shoeshine boy on a ship on the Baltic Sea before returning back to his family in Sweden. At the age of 19, he left Sweden again, but this time he immigrated to the United States with his father and two brothers. They traveled over three thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean, spending nine days on a steam ship. He came through Ellis Island and settled in Minnesota.

Upon arrival in the United States, my great grandfather traveled to northern Minnesota. He lived with approximately 50 men in a crude barracks in northern Minnesota. Although he knew no English, he was able to get a job working at a lumber mill in Northern Minnesota. Around 1900, my great grandfather and his father bought 80 acres in Minnesota where they logged lumber on their own land. In 1913, my great grandfather married. Over the years he had six children and twenty-one grandchildren.

Since my great grandfather came to the United States with his father and his two brothers, saying goodbye to his homeland, friends and loved ones was not as difficult as it would have been had he come by himself. Once he arrived in the United States, the most difficult thing for him was learning English and adjusting to a completely different c...

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...g which they could deliberately join and contribute to financially (Rudolph 289-90). My great grandfather became very active in the Evangelical Free Church and remained so over the years. He was happy to be able to worship in a church of his choosing.

Works Cited

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America. 2nd. Princeton, NJ: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002. 166-67. Print.

Granquist, Mark. Swedish Americans. Countries and Their Cultures. Advameg, inc., 2011. Web. 27 Apr 2011. .

Rudolph, Vecoli. Religion. Encyclopedia of Multicultural America. Ed. Judy Gates. Vol. 2. Gale Research, Inc. 1995. 289-90. Print.

Stegeby, E. Kenneth. An Analysis of the Impending Disestablishment of the Church of Sweden. Brigham Young University Law Review 1999.2 (1999): 703. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 25 Apr. 2011.

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