The story of New Glarus, portrayed at the Swiss Historical Village, begins in the small Canton of Glarus, Switzerland, in the 1840s. Economic conditions were difficult and many people were unemployed. An emigration society was formed and two men were sent to the United States to purchase 1,200 acres of land in the Upper Midwest for settlement.
In April of 1845, 193 people left Glarus for the New World. They traveled as a group down the Rhine River and then on to the port of New Dieppe in Holland. They had a difficult 49-day voyage across the Atlantic to Baltimore, Md. They then traveled by canal boat and the Allegheny Portage Railroad to Pittsburgh and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to St. Louis where they waited until they could contact the two scouts who were buying the land. Two men were sent out to locate the scouts and they met up in southern Wisconsin where land had been purchased in Green County. The colonists went by riverboat to Galena, Ill., and walked the last 60 miles to their new home.
New Glarus continued to be the destination for many Swiss immigrants, from Glarus and other parts of Switzerland, and the Swiss colony steadily grew. Today, the family names of those pioneers can be found all over south central Wisconsin.
The Swiss, continuing to keep alive the language, traditions, religion and food of their homeland, can be credited with playing a key role in the development of Wisconsin's dairy industry. The pioneering work of Nicholas Gerber in establishing crossroad cheese factories that gave birth to the "foreign type" cheese industry is shown at the museum.
Today the descendants of those immigrants welcome you to New Glarus and happily share their traditions with you. |
