Immigration was a very important issue in Carroll County in the late 1800s, but for very different reasons today. After the Civil War ended, many agricultural businesses in Carroll County faced an urgent need for field work as former county workers left Mississippi to seek employment opportunities in northern states. As a result, in late 1869 a group of farmers organized the Carroll County Immigrant Society.
The primary purpose of the newly formed Carroll County Immigration Association was to take “immediate action” to meet the county’s labor needs. In researching the best type of labor force to introduce to the region, the association first looked to California’s Chinese population as a potential source of labor for the county’s delta region. In the Hill Regions, the Association determined that Hill Farms would be better served by recruiting foreign immigrants from Germany, Scotland, Ireland, and England.
In addition to looking outside the United States, the association also looked to northern cities such as Chicago as a source of manpower. To further their cause, advertisements were placed in various Northern newspapers advertising the benefits of living and working in the South. The association offered paid travel to delegates across the United States to invite them to visit Mississippi in hopes of attracting a new workforce.
The association’s efforts soon began to bear fruit as immigrants began making their way to Carroll County. As an example, “The Times-Picayune” in New Orleans on February 12, 1870, from Hamburg, Germany, the steamship Bavaria arrived with over 200 of her workers bound for the Mississippi interior. It is reported that it is only and specifically refers to Weiden. The same article noted that the call for Southern workers was also answered by immigrants from within the United States. had arrived in the region, choosing to leave the cold and overcrowded Northwest in favor of the
Initial reports found that these new immigrants to the South were delighted with their new homes and were received by the local population with “all the sincerity that characterizes Southern yeomanry.” Likewise, locals found their new neighbors to be very hardworking and hardworking. But Carroll’s county soon learned that the very traits that made these immigrants good workers made their new neighbors yearn for something more than ordinary workers on other people’s farms. rice field.
In an 1881 letter to The Clarion-Ledger, an immigrant explained to the editor why it was so difficult to keep immigrants on farms. He suggested that it was impossible to keep workers in Mississippi in light of the Mississippi region’s “misguided and destructive agricultural system.” He noted that they were accustomed to agricultural staples such as pecans, walnuts, sugar and tea. He said that, unlike old world farming methods, Mississippi farming methods had worn down the land. We concluded that we need to decide whether to move to land of promising opportunities.
The lack of large numbers of Chinese or German descent in Carroll County today indicates that the predictions made 100 years ago have come true. Early foreign immigrants who settled in Carroll County in the late 1800s only stayed long enough to earn the money they needed to move elsewhere.
