Why did emigrants leave their homeland and move to Minnesota? Where in the state did they settle? What did they do, and how did they organize? How did they maintain their ethnicity? Based on ground-breaking research. Each chapter of They Chose Minnesota describes the unique concerns of individual groups and delves into personal stories. Farmers and factory workers, men, women, and children, families and single people, idealists and pragmatists, people who were devout or irreligious or enthusiastic or fearful, those who cut ties with their homeland or intended to return—all form part of Minnesota's ethnic saga."The work, which covers 60 distinct ethnic groups in 32 chapters, is the most ambitious ethnic research project so far undertaken by any state. If you are a descendant of Icelanders or Lebanese, Greeks or Japanese, you will find interesting material in this book about your forebears and how it was when they settled in Minnesota."—St. Paul Dispatch-Pioneer Press