Emigrant letters: the story of those who sailed to America

Between 1860 and 1920, more than 300,000 Danes left their homeland to seek their fortune in the USA. The letters they wrote home are among the most moving testimonies a family can possess – but they are often written in Gothic script, which their descendants today can no longer read.

The great emigration

From Sønderjylland and western Jutland in particular, thousands of Danes travelled across the Atlantic. For most, it was a farewell forever. The letter became the lifeline between two worlds: families waited weeks and months for news from Chicago, Iowa or Nebraska, and the letters were read aloud and kept like treasures.

The emigration was not a steady stream but a wave that grew and ebbed over time. From the late 1860s until around 1920, roughly 300,000 Danes left the country – an enormous figure for so small a population. The peak fell in the 1880s, when tens of thousands set off every single year. Behind the dry numbers lie just as many personal stories, and many of them still live on in the letters that were sent home.

Why they left

The driving forces were rarely clear-cut. For the smallholder's son with no prospect of land of his own, America's promise of cheap, fertile prairie was almost beyond comprehension. For others it was a matter of poverty, hunger or a debt that could not be paid. And for some, faith weighed heaviest of all – among others, Danish Mormons travelled to Utah to live out their faith freely. Most, however, shared the same fundamental dream: a life in which diligence could be turned into property and a future.

• Lack of land: the inheritance rules left many younger siblings with no land to farm.
• Poverty and hard times: agricultural crises and low wages pressed especially on farm labourers.
• The dream of one's own land: in the Midwest one could obtain cheap or almost free land through the American Homestead Act.
• Religious freedom: faith communities such as the Mormons actively enticed people with a new existence.

The journey across the Atlantic

The journey itself was an adventure and an ordeal all at once. Most emigrants first took a steamer from Esbjerg or via Hamburg to an English port such as Hull or Liverpool. From there the trip continued on larger ocean liners to New York. The early emigrants were received through Castle Garden on Manhattan, while later generations – from 1892 – arrived through the famous Ellis Island. For a family, the entire journey could take several weeks on cramped decks, and the first letter home was often written with a trembling hand shortly after arrival.

Where they settled

Most Danish emigrants headed for the Midwest, where the climate and farming resembled what they knew from home. States such as Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nebraska became new Danish-speaking homelands, and across the landscape Danish colonies, churches and assembly halls sprang up. In these congregations, Danish was spoken and sung for decades, and it was often here that the letters from the old country were sent. If you would like to delve into the emigration of a particular region, you can read more in our article on the family history of Sønderjylland.

What the letters tell us

The emigrant letters contain whole lives: the dream of land and work, homesickness, the joy of a newborn child, the grief of a death far away. They often mix Danish with the odd English word that the emigrant had taken up. For today's reader, they are a direct window into a forebear's innermost thoughts.

If you read a stack of old letters from America in sequence, an entire course of life emerges. The first letter often bubbles with hope and describes everything new: the wages, the food, the foreign language. Over the years the tone often grows more intimate – one senses both pride in what has been built up and a quiet sorrow over all that, and all those, one will never see again. Together the letters paint a portrait that no census can provide.

Find your own emigrants in the sources

Fortunately, Denmark is blessed with some of the world's best sources for precisely this history. Before you set about deciphering the letters themselves, it can pay to look up the name in the registers – often a single line in a record can confirm the departure date, age and destination alike. The most important places to begin are:

• The police emigration records: kept from 1868, when the law required agents to register every single emigrant. The records are searchable today and contain name, age, last place of residence and destination – a gold mine for genealogists.
• The Danish Emigration Archives in Aalborg: an extensive collection of letters, photographs, diaries and information about Danish emigrants in America, which many descendants have used to find their roots again.
• Censuses and parish registers: both the Danish ones before departure and the American ones after arrival can tie the two halves of a family's history together.

Once you have a name and a journey in place, the letters take on a whole new depth. Suddenly you know which farm the sender left and on which prairie the new life was lived.

Make the letters readable again

The letters are written in the Gothic handwriting that the emigrants learned at school before 1875. With MormorsBreve you can upload a photo and have the text made readable in minutes – and translated into English, so that the American descendants can read along too. Read also our page about emigrant letters from America.

Preserve the letters for the next generations

Old letters are fragile. The paper yellows, the ink fades, and over time the fold lines turn into tears. So keep the originals dark, dry and flat – ideally in acid-free folders – and handle them as little as possible. At the same time, take a sharp photo of each page in good light; that way you have a digital backup copy, and it is precisely such an image that you can upload to have the text deciphered. Read also our general guide to translating old letters if you would like to get started.

For many families, the very greatest wish is to be able to share the contents with relatives on the other side of the Atlantic. Once a letter has been deciphered and translated, it can be passed on as a readable document – and suddenly the great-great-grandchild in Iowa can read the same words that were once written at a kitchen table in Jutland.

A single deciphered letter can change a family's sense of itself. Pass the story on before the script falls entirely into oblivion. Try MormorsBreve today – the first pages are free, so you can watch your forebear's words emerge before you decide. You can upload your first letter here.