European Heritage Month: European Heritage in Wisconsin

"There were more than 100,000 foreign-born Wisconsinites in 1850 — more than a third of the state's population. But only 48,000 could claim English as their native language. Nearly one-half of the English-speaking immigrants were Irish. The most common immigrants who spoke no English were Germans, followed by Norwegians and French Canadians. Many Finns settled in Douglas County. Danes flowed into Racine County. Italians populated Kenosha."

"A new wave of immigrants came to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Czechs came to Wisconsin and settled along Lake Michigan. They also lived in the north where they worked in the lumber industry or established small farms. Russians and Slovaks settled in Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine where they worked as industrial laborers. Many Russians arrived in the 1890s. Many also came in the 1940s with Holocaust survivors seeking political asylum. Thousands of eastern Europeans — especially Russian Jews — left their homelands for the first time in sixty years after the fall of Communism."

About 12 percent of Kenosha residents are Italian, according to the 2000 census, which is the highest concentration of any Wisconsin city.

The Italian-American Society came into being in September of 1923. The success of the new organization was soon very evident, as the membership doubled itself in one short month and continued to grow.

In 1858, a few brave voices fought for the Woods School amid political turmoil. The largely Anglo-Saxon and Protestant community in Lake Geneva’s town center wanted little to do with the Irish immigrants living west of town (along today’s Highway 50 at Snake Road) in an area known as the “Irish Woods.” These Celtic and Catholic immigrants kept to themselves, farming the land and struggling to make a living. Faced with discrimination, residents of the Irish Woods petitioned for their own school district in 1857. A year later, they had a one-room, wooden schoolhouse all to themselves — the Woods School.