Swiss American Historical Society Review
Keywords
Homestead Act, Swiss emigrants, Nebraska pioneers
Abstract
Hundreds of thousands of emigrants from all over Europe, as well as many Americans, were attracted to the West in the nineteenth century. It was the time of the “Homestead Act,” a law for land settlement signed by President Abraham Lincoln. It had taken force on New Year’s Eve, 1863.
Among the early settlers in the Great Plains of Nebraska in the 1880s were landless Swiss farmers. The presence of two families from the Bernese Oberaargau, Lisette and Ueli Uhlmann-Schütz, along with Annelies and Hans-Ueli Kleeb-Heiniger, was documented on 19th century photographic plates. The black and white pictures illustrate both their new property and living conditions on America’s Midwestern Prairie.
Sometimes a photograph can tell more than an entire stack of letters. Lisette and Ueli Uhlmann-Schütz–as well as Annelies and Hans-Ueli Kleeb-Heiniger–had no leisure time to write letters about their new life in America. Their daily work as pioneers in the Great Plains was extremely difficult. In these images, though, they seem to be touting their hard-earned success.
Recommended Citation
Horat, Karl
(2026)
"Swiss Settlers on the Nebraska Prairie in the 1880s,"
Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 62:
No.
1, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol62/iss1/3