Luxembourg ethnic settlements provided the newcomers with a sense of confidence and identity in this vast and unfamiliar land.

Emigration was particularly high in the area of the Moselle River Valley, where in the 1840ies and 1850ies a series of bad wine harvests pushed the indebted winegrowers into bankruptcy . The parcels on which they tilled the land were subdivided into smaller and smaller hereditary shares. While birth rates remained constantly high, the land could no longer support an ever-growing population. Thus, over the period 1839-1890, all the villages of the canton of Remich experienced population losses of up to 19%, the average being 13%. The population of the municipality of Stadtbredimus, in spite of a birth rate around 30 per thousand, dropped from 1215 to 982 (-19%). Natural population movement (births minus deaths) would have given at the end of that period a population of 1740: we have thus a migratory deficit of 758. The migratory patterns reflect a strong family and village emigration, where people emigrated and settled collectively, followed over the years by fellow Luxembourgers. Certain Luxembourg settlements have corresponding specific villages and areas in the homeland where the immigrants originated from. A strong Luxembourg identity prevailed and remained in these settlements and quite a few aspects of Luxembourg life can be located in these communities. This is especially true in self-sufficient areas, where Luxembourgers did not disappear in the American melting-pot, and where fellow immigrants kept coming in until roughly World-War I. Thus these settlements retained a strong old world ethnic background, which an be witnesses in their traditions, customs and language.

Remich anno 1837