Swiss immigrants

SIGNIFICANCE: Among the earliest non-English peoples to settle in the United States (US), the Swiss had always constituted a comparatively small immigrant group who have settled throughout the US. Despite their relatively small numbers, they have significantly contributed to American industry, politics, science, religion, and other fields.

Although the Swiss were among the first non-English peoples to enter what is now the US, they have never constituted a large immigrant group. Indeed, they have seldom accounted for more than 1 to 2 percent of all incoming immigrants. Nevertheless, their impact as a group has been noticeable—from midwestern agricultural landscapes to the denominational landscaping of American Christianity. Moreover, they have also contributed more than their numerical share of distinguished public figures, such as the Jeffersonian politician and diplomat Albert Gallatin, the pioneer of American psychiatry Adolf Meyer, and the self-taught engineer and entrepreneur Louis Chevrolet, for whom an American automobile was named.

Most Swiss immigrants to the US have been German speakers, but members of Switzerland’s French- and Italian-speaking minorities have also come in substantial numbers. Speakers of Romansh, a tiny minority within Switzerland, have, however, never immigrated to the US in significant numbers.

Colonial Era

Swiss immigration to British North America began on a very small scale before the eighteenth century. The first Swiss person known to have visited the continent was the Bernese Diebold von Erlach, a young member of a failed French Huguenot settlement in Florida during the mid-sixteenth century. The first Swiss to participate in English colonial schemes were probably the several “Switzer” craftsmen who joined the initial wave of settlers at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. In the century that followed, some notable immigrants from Switzerland settled in the British colonies. These included the wealthy Jean François Gignilliat of Vevey, who in 1687 received a grant of three thousand acres from the proprietors of South Carolina, where he settled the following year.

The eighteenth century witnessed a surge in Swiss immigration to America, with 25,000 immigrants coming to British America before 1776. Religious persecution, social unrest, and the frail economic position of an early modern society with a paucity of arable land and few natural resources were major push factors that helped prompt their emigration from Switzerland. Reports circulated by colonial promoters and returning Swiss immigrants of the fertile soils, low taxes, and boundless opportunities in the Americas helped attract new immigrants.

Swiss immigrants settled in several British colonies. However, North Carolina’s New Bern settlement, founded in 1710, and South Carolina’s Purrysburg, founded in 1734, were important sites of early Swiss settlement in the southern colonies. Pennsylvania drew the largest number of immigrants from Switzerland. Many were pietist dissenters, such as the Swiss Brethren, who became known as Mennonites in America. These people were strongly attracted by Pennsylvania’s reputation for religious toleration. Most other Swiss immigrants were members of the state Reformed Church who came to the colony primarily for economic reasons.

Early National Period

While Swiss immigrants continued to trickle into the new US during the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, the next significant surge of Swiss immigration came after 1820. Between that year and 1900, about 200,000 Swiss came to the country. The leading cause of this immigration wave was the contrast between the severely contracted economic opportunities in Switzerland and the reportedly abundant opportunities in America.

About 60 percent of Swiss immigrants settled in rural areas—especially in the Midwest, where French-speaking Swiss viticulturists established the first significant Swiss settlement of the century, in what is now Switzerland County, Indiana. This trend continued during the second half of the nineteenth century, when Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin were favored destinations for Swiss immigrants. However, significant numbers of immigrants continued to settle in Pennsylvania and neighboring states, and small Swiss colonies also appeared in states such as Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee during this period. California also attracted Swiss settlers, especially Italian-speaking laborers from Canton Ticino, who began arriving in significant numbers during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.

Immigration was often encouraged by letters from immigrants in America to family and friends back in Switzerland, and it was maintained by the social and economic support networks created by chain migrations of communities. In some cases, Switzerland’s cantonal governments—eager to purge poor rolls and dispose of “undesirables”—subsidized some emigration from Switzerland. In at least one case, a canton directly financed the establishment of a major Swiss settlement in the US: New Glarus (named after its government benefactor, Canton Glarus) in Wisconsin.

Nineteenth-century Swiss immigrants were religiously diverse, with both Roman Catholics and Protestants well represented. Members of the Swiss Brethren continued to arrive in America, and they sometimes joined with their Swiss Mennonite cousins, whose forebears had come in colonial times. American Mormon missionaries in Europe helped create a new category of Swiss immigrants, as about 1,000 of their faithful converts settled as Mormon immigrants in Utah and Idaho.

Twentieth Century

Swiss immigration followed similar patterns during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Although the peak decade of the 1880s, during which more than 80,000 Swiss arrived in the US, would never be repeated, the numbers were still substantial. Between 1901 and 1920, more than 58,000 Swiss immigrated to the US. However, the rate of immigration gradually diminished after the Immigration Act of 1924 set quotas. Swiss immigration nearly stopped during the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, during the last decades of the twentieth century, Swiss immigration again became steady, although still demographically almost insignificant, with fewer than 1,000 immigrants per year arriving between 1971 and 2000. In total, between the years 1700 and 2018, 460,000 people emigrated from Switzerland to the US. Although Swiss immigration to the US has slowed considerably in the mid-2020s, the number of Swiss nationals in the US was reported to be 82,700 in 2022. Career opportunities, education, and family connections are reasons for Swiss emigration.

Bibliography

Bilateral Relations Switzerland–United States of America, 27 January 2023, www.eda.admin.ch/countries/usa/en/home/switzerland-and/bilateral-relations.html. Accessed 12 Mar. 2023.

Commetti, Elizabeth. "Swiss Immigration to West Virginia, 1864–1884." Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 47, 1960, pp. 66–87.

Grueningen, J. P. von. The Swiss in the United States. Madison, Wis.: Swiss-American Historical Society, 1940.

Hale, Frederick. Swiss in Wisconsin. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2007.

Haller, Charles R. Across the Atlantic and Beyond: German and Swiss Immigrants to America. Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1993.

"Over 800,000 Swiss Citizens Live Abroad." Swissinfo, 6 Apr. 2023, www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/over-800-000-swiss-citizens-live-abroad/48421624. Accessed 28 Aug. 2024.

Schelbert, Leo, editor. America Experienced: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Accounts of Swiss Immigrants. Camden, Maine: Picton Press, 1996.

"Switzerland Net Migration Rate 1950-2024." Macrotrends, 2024, www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHE/switzerland/net-migration#google‗vignette. Accessed 28 Aug. 2024.