They Chose Minnesota

Why did emigrants leave their homelands and move to Minnesota? Where in the state did they settle? What did they do, and how did they organise? How did they maintain their ethnicity? Based on ground-breaking research, each chapter describes the unique concerns of individual groups and delves into personal stories. Farmers and factory workers, men, women and children, families and single people, idealists and pragmatists, people who were devout or irreligious or enthusiastic or fearful, those who cut their ties with the homeland or intended to return -- all form part of Minnesota's ethnic saga.