Settling down

Several possibilities existed to reach the final destination. One could go up the Hudson River, then take the Erie Canal west to Buffalo, in upstate New York near the Niagara Falls. Two early Luxembourg settlements existed in the area: Sheldon in Wyoming and New Oregon in Erie counties.

From there the ships could take the immigrants over the Great Lakes, towards the metropoles of Chicago and Milwaukee, where they could fan out to their Midwestern settlements.

The second possibility was to travel by railroad straight west to Chicago, and from there go further west towards the Mississippi valley. In the 1840ies railroads did not go further, they mowed westward with the frontier. The very first settlers is a yet untouched area had then the arduous task, of clearing the land, tilling a virgin soil, built a house and bring in a harvest. Later settlers were more fortunate, as they could rely on fellow countrymen or relatives already firmly established in a Luxembourg settlement.